by Shelly Crane
“What?” Jeff said but nobody answered him.
What? My head spun. Merrick and Sherry fighting? Those two were like glue to each other.
“Shut up, Piper! If that’s the case then why did you come get me yesterday morning, huh? When Sherry was crying, you came to Lillian’s room, where I was all night, and woke me up to go to Sherry,” Cain said and I could see his high color getting higher.
“Because you caused all this! That’s why! I figured you should be the one to comfort her, though in my book, she doesn’t deserve any,” Piper said and walked out with Polly in tow.
But something was terribly wrong with Polly. She hadn’t said a word the whole time and it wasn’t like her to miss an opportunity for drama. And she’s so pale. And her eyes are so cloudy and gray. She slinked behind Piper like she was tethered to her and had not a care nor a bit of strength.
“Cain, what is she talking about?” I asked him again.
“Yes, Cain. What the heck is going on?” Marissa asked after me, she looked almost angry.
Cain sat back down, turned to me and spoke.
“This is the drama I was telling you about. For some reason, Merrick and Piper claim they saw Sherry and I in the hall making out that night. Outside your room. Piper, I could see making all this up but Merrick? I don’t know what’s going on but...he really believes he saw us, Lillian. It’s weird. He was furious yesterday.” He ran his hands over his head a few times then linked them behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Yelling at Sherry, pushing her off. I’ve never seen him that way. Especially with her.”
Marissa and Jeff scooted their chairs back and left then. Their sudden departure and silence speaking volumes.
I pondered what he was saying. Did he expect me to believe him? That he was caught making out with Sherry, whom he confessed to me earlier to having feelings for, but it was Merrick who was making it up? What in the world is going on here?
“So...you’re saying Merrick didn’t catch you.”
“I’m saying I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do that to her or him.”
“Cain.” I gauged my words carefully and looked around for eavesdroppers, saw none. “You told me you had feeling for Sherry.”
His eyes went wide and then he refocused and spoke quietly.
“Yes, I did. But I would never act on it. She’s married. Besides, I wouldn’t have told you but you figured it out. I was trying to move on too, remember?” he said referring to me moving on, per our earlier conversation.
I couldn’t disagree or judge him for that but the rest of his story was a little ridiculous.
“Ok. So you got a little carried away and got caught. Denying it isn’t going to make it just go away,” I say softly.
“I didn’t do anything! What is wrong with everyone? Am I that untrustworthy that no one would believe me when I say I flat didn’t do something? Sherry is the most loyal person in here and no one believes her either.” He scooted his chair back too, loudly. “What is going on here?”
He left then. Leaving me feeling strangely guilty and weird and off kilter.
I went to find Sherry.
I found her a while later after searching everywhere. She was hunched over on a pallet in the utility room. She was perfectly still, eyes open, staring at the wall. I wondered how long she’d been in here.
“Sherry? Honey, are you ok?”
As much as I liked Cain and didn’t appreciate him kissing someone the same night he had kissed me, though I had kissed Mitchell a few nights before so how much room did I have to talk, Sherry was my friend and I hated to see her so broken down.
“Lillian, something is...happening. I’m going crazy or something.”
”Why do you say that? Because you gave in to Cain and kissed him? He can be very charming.”
“I didn’t!” she yelled suddenly and sat up.
Oh no. Not this again. Not Sherry. She didn’t seem the lie and weasel type to me.
“Sherry. It’s ok. Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing. I went to check on you but you were asleep so I sat in the hall with Cain outside you’re room and we talked. I hugged him. But I always hug him, it was nothing new. Merrick has seen me hug him a hundred times. That was it. He went back in your room and I went back up the hall. Merrick said we were kissing, like really into it and there was no way he mistook it for hugging him. I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
“Sherry. It’s me. You can tell me. It’s ok, I won’t judge you.”
She burst into a hysterical round of tears and I felt like the utter worst friend and consoler.
“Sherry. I’m sorry,” I tried to touch her shoulder but she pushed my hand off.
“That’s it. I can’t take this anymore. Nobody believes me! I have to talk to him,” she said breathlessly as she got up from her pallet.
“You mean Cain?”
“No! Merrick!”
And she proceeded to make her way out of the room, into the hall and to the commons room with me following after her.
I saw Merrick there, looked like he was waiting for something but he didn’t seem upset to me. He seemed his normal chipper self. I could only stop. Pray for Sherry and stare at the train wreck about to happen.
As soon as he saw her his eyes lit up and he reached his arms out for her to walk into but she stopped and stared like a deer in the headlights. He spoke.
“Honey? What’s wrong?”
He made a step forward. Concern etched all over his face. She stepped back again.
“Merrick?” she asked softly.
“What’s the matter, babe? Did something happen?” he asked and then reached for her again.
She stood perfectly still and let him wrap his arms around her and then he kissed her sweetly on her lips, cupping her jaw in one hand. She let him kiss her but didn’t participate and he pulled back. “Something’s wrong, I can tell. Tell me what’s the matter, sweetheart.”
Wow. Three endearments in one minutes time.
“Merrick?” she asked again.
“Sherry. What is it?” he asked, getting more impatient.
“You...believe me?” she choked out through tears.
“About what?”
“About what? Is this a joke?” she asked and appeared more confused than ever.
I was right there with her and then I saw Cain come walking back down the hall. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at them too in total confusion.
“What do you mean? What’s going on?” Merrick asked.
“You don’t remember? You...you thought you saw Cain and I...” she looked over at Cain for a second and he looked back at her astonished and shrugged, “..you thought you saw Cain and I kissing.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Merrick asked incredulously and looking none too happy. “You kissed Cain?”
“No! You thought I did. You really don’t remember?” she asked, breathing the words.
“No, I think I’d remember that.” He scowled. “Did Cain kiss you?” he asked softly and looked back at Cain for a split second.
“No! No. No one kissed anyone.” She thought for a moment and then. “What day is it, Merrick?”
“Uh...Friday.”
“No. It’s Sunday. You don’t remember the past two nights at all, do you? The Lighters attacking us?”
“The Lighters attacked? How? What happened?” he asked in a rage and Sherry, Cain and I exchanged worried looks.
Then Piper walked in.
A Bad Case Of The Blues
Chapter 23 - Sherry
At first, I didn’t see Piper standing there. I was too enthralled in the situation. Merrick accused me of something so against my morals and thoughts. So incomprehensible and degrading. He had yelled at me, gritted his teeth at me, pushed me, left me crying and confused and now claimed to not remember any of it.
I was more than relieved. I hoped he forgot the whole thing completely, even though the question of his kiss with Piper was still lingerin
g there, unanswered. But then I hear Piper grunt angrily.
“Well, well. Merrick? What’s going on in here?” she asked and I wanted to run to her and introduce her to my fist.
Instigator.
“What do you mean? Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” he spoke loudly now and there were others in the commons room watching us, that didn’t know about Merrick and I fighting.
“You don’t remember?” Piper asked and eyed evilly the arms still around my waist.
“I guess not since I have no idea what it is everyone is talking about. What did you mean ‘what’s going on here’? What should be going on?”
“Nothing.” She looked confused and angry, then started to turn and walk back into the kitchen but Lillian- surprising the heck out of me- grabbed her arm to halt her.
“Um, I don’t think you get to just walk out and pretend like you don’t know what’s going on,” Lillian said but Piper being the Keeper she is, ripped free of her grasp easily and gave her a look that would melt butter.
Then Cain was there beside Lillian and yelled for Jeff, who was walking in from the kitchen with Marissa.
“Jeff, help me get her to sit down and chat.”
Jeff scowled at Cain like he was the devil but grabbed Piper’s other arm and they escorted her to the couch. Merrick and I walked to the other one and we all sat or stood, facing each other in a silent circle for a minute.
“Ok, I’ll start,” Cain said finally. “I think our Piper here has been playing games. Somehow, she got Merrick to think he saw Sherry and I kissing, then she gets me to go see Sherry and then Merrick to go right after me and see me with her there too, in the laundry room. I didn’t put it together then but I should have when I saw you spying on us. Then, you confront me about it, in front of Lillian and Jeff, knowing they’d be furious about it.”
I remembered something.
“And Polly. Polly came to get me to tell me Merrick wanted me. She said he was in our room but when I went back there...” I paused and felt a grimace that I couldn’t stop before going on, “he was in there with Piper.”
“What? What do mean I was in our room with Piper?” Merrick shouted unbelievingly.
I couldn’t stop as the pieces all fell together. I spoke directly to Piper.
“You wanted me to catch you in our room with him. You wanted me to think he’d kissed you.”
Piper sat there calmly and quietly and then she spoke and what came out was pure hatred garbage.
“Well, you caught me. You figured it all out. I did it. I wanted Merrick to see what life could be like without you and that he didn’t need you to feel human,” she spat out the words, especially ‘human’ like it was all so disgusting.
I shook my head in rage. Merrick was sputtering and shaking beside me but couldn’t make any syllables audibly into words.
“You thought I’d just give up on him?” I said looking right at her. “You thought I’d see you trying to kiss him and assume it was him kissing you? You thought I’d see his anger at me and be scared and want no part in it anymore? You honestly thought this was some fling that you could break up with petty juvenile tactics? We are married,” I bit out. “And, you don’t know me very well.”
I lifted from my seat.
Merrick grabbed my arm gently to hold me in place and I saw that even Piper had backed herself into the couch a little. I realized I had practically growled the words at her. But I meant every word.
Jeff spoke then and looked at me for the first time this morning.
“So you didn’t? You didn’t have an affair with Cain?”
“No! I would never do that to Merrick.”
I felt like I’d said that statement five hundred times in the past twelve hours. Jeff sighed and I saw his relief. He believed it too. They all had. Believed that I’d cheat on the love of my life. The person I fought for. The person I would risk everything for.
I was devastated.
Did no one have any faith in me? Or faith in Cain? I buried my face in my hands to hide my expression- of rage I’m sure.
“How is it that not one person believed us?” I said softly and was met with guilty silence and avoiding gazes as I lifted my head.
“Sherry,” Cain this time. “It doesn’t explain how she got Merrick to see us kissing. I mean, how she got him to think we did,” he said hurried.
“No, it doesn’t,” Piper said happily and laughed.
“Wait. Wait,” Merrick finally found his voice. “Ok. You are saying that I somehow thought I saw you and Cain kiss, but you didn’t. And Piper somehow orchestrated all this?”
Well, when you put it like that...it does sound crazy. But it was true. I didn’t get a chance to answer. Merrick suddenly grabbed his head and leaned forward groaning.
“Merrick?” I kneeled in front of him. “What is it?”
“My head. It feels like it’s...splitting,” he moaned.
Then he jerked, moaned louder and fell forward to the floor. His hands shook and he jerked and grasped his head.
“Merrick!”
I tried to sit him up but he wouldn’t, just kept moaning and rocking back and forth. I was scared to say the least. Something was happening to him and I knew it had something to do with what had happened. A tumor? A blood clot? But that doesn’t make sense. If it was that, Piper wouldn’t have seen what Merrick saw in the hall. So what is going on?
I try to sooth him, tell him I’m here. Everyone was crowding around, Jeff sank to the floor with me beside him, and even Piper seemed in an upheaval about Merrick’s condition, though she had no right to be.
Then he stopped rocking. Stopped moaning. His eyes opened, he let go of his head. He sat up and looked right at me. His breaths came out in loud blows. His big wide green eyes locked with mine. He was oblivious to all the others standing over us.
“Sherry. Baby,” he pleaded breathlessly with his eyes, looking terrified and shameful. He grabbed my face gently in between his warm hands that I loved so much. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe...I remember. I remember everything.” He buried his face in my hair and wrapped his arms around me. “I can’t believe you let me talk to you like that.”
“I didn’t exactly let you,” I say quietly and he pulled back and wrinkled his nose into a grimace.
“No. I guess not. Sherry, I love you so much. I would never hurt you. You know that, right? Those things I said, the things I did...honey, I didn’t mean any of it. That wasn’t me. I don’t know what came over me.”
“You do remember? All of it?”
“Yes. And don’t you ever let me put my hands on you in anger again.” I heard a gasp but didn’t look to see who it was. I hadn’t told anyone that Merrick had pushed and grabbed me. “You scream, you run, you do something. Hear me? Don’t just sit there and-” he stopped and then turned a rage filled gaze to Piper who swallowed and heaved a breath. He all but growled and bellowed the words at her. “You. You did this. Why? How?”
She tried to get up but Jeff held her in place with a hand on her shoulder. She stayed silent and looked nervous.
“What do you remember?” I ask, still letting him pet my hair because I missed him so much last night I refuse to make him stop, and he seemed to really need to touch me.
“I remember seeing you, a vision of you and Cain...” he winces, “kissing and- but I can see now it wasn’t real. It was a compulsion.” His eyes registered the word as it said it. He was figuring it all out. “It played over and over in my head, non stop. I couldn’t think about anything else. I just thought I was so upset by it that it was making me crazy. In fact, it was making me crazy. I felt like I was on the edge, I couldn’t sleep, I was shaking. I haven’t eaten, I couldn’t think.”
“That’s why you were so...irritable,” I suggest.
“Sweet, Sherry. That’s a nice way of putting it. Gah, honey...” he shakes his head and then starts again. “I remember yelling at you, pushing-” He closed his eyes as if in agony. I ducked my hea
d so as not to meet eyes with anyone. “Pushing you against the wall and grabbing your arms. Going to bed alone, but I couldn’t sleep because of the vision. Then, in the morning, Piper told me to go check on you. That I’d been too hard on you and you were upset so I did and found you and Cain in the utility room. I was so furious. I thought there was no way I could forgive you. Then I went to take a nap, Piper followed me and then you walked in on her trying to...kiss me.”
“That’s when Polly had told me to go see you.”
“It would seem. Then, after I woke up, I went to go find Lily but didn’t see her anywhere and I saw you at the piano with Ryan. I remember thinking that you were probably messing with Ryan too.” He shook his head at himself. “I watched you walk away, and then I went back to bed. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t remember anything. I remember thinking something was wrong because it was so late and you hadn’t woke me. I hadn’t remembered you coming to bed either. It’s so clearly compulsion. I can’t believe I fell for it. How Piper? How?”
We all turned and looked at Piper.
She promptly turned on the water works.
“I’m not sorry! I thought I could make you see reason.” She sniffed. “You can’t love her, Merrick. She’s a vile, selfish human and vain and a vapor compared to us. You can’t give up everything for her. I won’t let you!”
He ignored everything she said and went forward with his question. Not looking a bit of sympathetic for her tears.
“I asked how, Piper.”
“It doesn’t matter. It apparently didn’t work as it should have. Only two days worth? It worked a lot longer with the others.”
“What does that mean? And again I say how? The only person we know who uses compulsion around here is Danny but his only works one task at a time, but he couldn’t make me see the vision. And Marissa...” he trailed off.
I looked at her, she was practically cowered in the corner, waiting for blame to be placed on her for this. It looked like she had seen the blame coming every since the word ‘vision’ was mentioned.