by Ciara Shayee
The fourth of July…
Unbidden, a memory stole away her senses, catapulting her back there.
The strong, acrid smell of cleaning fluid stirred the young girl awake. Blue-green eyes peeled open slowly, their groggy owner groaning quietly as the throbbing in the back of her head became more noticeable.
“Indie? Indie, he’s gone. P-please wake up, Indie. I’m scared.”
Grace’s terrified face moved into Indie’s line of vision, her wide baby-blues overflowing with tears. They fell onto Indie’s scratchy, too-big, grey t-shirt.
“I-I’m awake,” she rasped, shifting onto her elbows. The movement sent a ringing, stabbing pain through her entire body, nausea churning in her gut as she tried to stay upright and conscious. My sister needs me, she repeated on a loop, over and over. Grace helped her sit up with trembling hands. “What hap-happened?”
“He h-h-hit you. You f-fell and hit your head o-on the floor. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Help me up, please?”
Grace hurried to her feet, gently pulling Indie with her. The girls pressed themselves together, supporting each other as Indie shook under the strain of keeping her stomach settled.
“All right,” she breathed shakily. “Let’s get up to our roo—”
A loud, menacing voice cut her off and sent shivers down their spines. Their hearts raced with fear. “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve cleaned up this mess. Get it done before I go to bed or there’ll be hell to pay, you hear?”
Neither girl could stomach looking towards the tall man in the doorway, let alone talk to him, so they nodded jerkily and whimpered once he’d left them alone. As soon as they heard the study door close down the hall, Indie fell to the floor, Grace’s support not enough to fight the agony of her pounding head.
“Indie!” Grace hissed tearfully, sinking to her knees. She didn’t know where to put her hands, or what to do to help.
“Just give me a second…” As Indie fell, her arm shot out in a weak attempt to hold herself up, knocking over a bowl of pureed raspberries for the dessert he had insisted upon. As Grace’s hands hovered nervously over Indie, the red puree spread across the floor around her in a sticky, oozing mess.
The symbolism wasn’t lost on either girl. Neither was the date on the calendar hanging a few feet away.
July 4th, 2004.
“Hey, are you okay?” Grace snapped back to the present with a gasp. It confused her when Laker was blurry, the hand he placed on her forearm out of focus. It took a minute for her to realise she had tears pouring from her eyes.
“Oh God, sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Hey, now who needs to quit apologising?” Gently handing her a bunch of tissues from the box on the side-table, Laker smiled softly at his upset friend. Grace offered him a small smile, grateful for his innately friendly nature. It was at times like this she saw why Indie liked him so much. He was an easy man to love.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Grace stared at him with wide, new eyes as she reconsidered her own thoughts. She loved him, of course, but as a friend. A pillar of support, fun, and smiles when times were tough—both now, and in the past. But thinking back on the way he and Indie interacted, the way they seemed to seek each other out without even realising…could they be heading towards less-than-platonic love?
It was a startling thought; one Grace would ponder often in the coming days.
~ oOo ~
True to the promise they’d made earlier in the morning, Reagan and Peter arrived at exactly five o’clock with Archie and Kristen in tow. Having met their older brother’s fiancée a few times by then, Indie and Grace were relatively comfortable with her presence, though due to her chilly nature, neither of them harboured particularly fuzzy feelings towards Archie’s future bride.
Reagan and Peter headed straight to the kitchen, where they joined Laker, Grace, Indie, and Marley. Archie and Kristen paused in the living room so Kristen could greet her sons. She’d been away in New York with her boss, one of the downsides to being his assistant being the travel that took her away from Carl-Roman and Chase so often. Archie forced his mouth closed into a tight smile when he spotted the disapproving frown on his fiancée’s face, clearly unhappy about Carl-Roman’s outfit. Having come from a family of lawyers, bankers, and doctors, Kristen wanted her sons to be dressed smartly at all times. In a simple pair of soft jeans and a cotton, checked shirt Chase would avoid scrutiny.
Unsurprisingly, the lime green and bright blue t-shirt and comic strip printed board shorts weren’t up to scratch, nor were the navy surfboard patterned shorts Archie was wearing; she knew better than to tell him what to wear, though.
“Evening, buddy,” Laker said jovially as he passed Archie, Kristen, and their boys in the hall. He smiled at his friend’s fiancée. “Kristen, you look pretty today.”
Archie hid a smile by turning away when Kristen barely managed to conceal her grimace. “Still the same old charmer, I see.”
“Of course!”
“Uncle Laker, can I be a charmer, also?”
Laker chuckled, scooping Carl-Roman into his arms.
“Course you can, campione.” Thanks to the amount of time they’d spent together in recent weeks, Carl-Roman knew that ‘campione’ was simply ‘champion’ in Italian, so he beamed, directing Laker back towards the kitchen with his parents and baby brother close behind them.
The unhappy expression that had taken up residence on Indie’s face melted away as soon as Laker re-entered the room with Carl-Roman grinning in his arms. The sight was heart-warming to say the least, the pair of them sporting mile-wide smiles as Laker purposefully jostled the little boy until his giggles filled the room. Warm butterflies erupted in Indie’s stomach, her hands drifting to rest over the spot where her baby wriggled. He or she always seemed to move when the children laughed, or when Laker was around.
Her eyes followed his face as he tipped it back and let out a playful roar. Despite her fear of loud noises and hatred of being around lots of people with no way to keep track of everybody, Indie felt content with her family around her. Sure, her heartbeat was slightly faster than it should have been, and okay, so maybe her eyes were running routine patrols of the room, cataloguing even the most minute adjustments in people’s positions.
But those routine scans of the room? They were every few minutes now, instead of the continuous loops she’d been doing a week ago. And her heart was calmer than it had been in weeks. There was a long way to go before she’d be comfortable in a group, but there had been so many improvements that it was becoming increasingly difficult to see the things that were still wrong.
“What do you think, Indie? Do you think we should put this one in there and have him for dinner?”
Laker pulled Indie from her thoughts by tipping Carl-Roman upside-down to make him shriek in protest. His eyes—her eyes—widened in his little face, his mouth in an adorable ‘o.’
“Hmmm,” she hummed, smirking at her nephew and friend. “Do you think he’s chunky enough? There’s a lot of us eating tonight.”
Laker frowned playfully, tipping Carl-Roman back so he could inspect his tummy. “I’d say so. There’s plenty there for us all to nibble on.”
“All right then,” Indie said, playing along. “I’ll get a bigger pot.”
“No! Daddy, save me ‘fore Auntie Indie and Uncle Laker cook me!” Carl-Roman wailed in a mixture of horror and childish delight, squealing and rolling and trying to buck himself free of Laker’s hold. Indie and Laker laughed as Archie plucked him from his friend’s hands, the six-year-old bestowing the best stink-eye he could manage upon the chortling pair.
“Meaners,” he mumbled, sticking his tongue out over Archie’s shoulder as he carried him to Reagan and Peter, who were laughing heartily by the French doors.
“Yeah, Laker, you’re a meaner,” Indie teased, turning back to the Bolognese on the stove.
“Oh, but so are you, bella ragazza. So are you.”
“So, is there anything I can help with, chef?”
“Um, I suppose you can lay the table? Marley will probably help.”
Laker loosely draped an arm around Indie’s shoulders, his hand squeezing her upper arm before he released her. “I want to help. Quit worrying I’m going to get offended or something.”
She tipped her head to the side just enough that she could see his face. She wanted to see if he was telling the truth. His sincere expression as he bent at the knees to make their faces level said it all.
“Hey, I mean it. I’m not going anywhere.”
With that, he smiled and left her to get on with dinner, scooping Marley from the breakfast bar to help him with the table. She was only too happy to help her idol.
It was then, watching Laker with her daughter and the rest of their family, that the realisation slammed into Indie’s gut with the force of a wrecking ball.
If there was one thing she wanted, one thing she would ask for, it was for Laker never to leave her side.
The realisation both terrified her and electrified the blood in her veins.
chapter twenty-four
The beige walls crept closer.
A plain white clock with a broken hand ticked ominously with every passing second.
The overhead fan stirred the leaves of a slightly wilted fern.
A fat, beady-eyed pigeon stared into the room from the window ledge.
Blue-green eyes flicked rhythmically from the pigeon’s eager gaze to an impassive face across the room. Less than two meters separated the only two people in the office, and yet, to Indie, it felt like the Grand Canyon.
With the sudden sound of a voice, the walls snapped back to their rightful place; the clock was drowned out by the rush of Indie’s thoughts refilling her brain.
“How are you feeling today, Indie?”
She shrugged, her tense shoulders jumping a little.
“We can sit here in silence for the entire hour if you’d like, but I don’t think it will help you in the long run.”
Indie met the eyes of Ines Danton, the woman she visited twice a week for an hour and a half, as per her doctor’s instructions and her dad’s need to see her well. Grace’s session finished twenty minutes before, Indie’s beginning less than five minutes afterwards. As yet, Ines’ earlier greeting and her more recent enquiry into her well-being were the only words that had been spoken.
Indie huffed in frustration. “I can’t…” she trailed off.
“You can’t, what?” Ines spoke softly, just as Megan had. In the pale, almost sterile environment of her office, even that softness wasn’t enough to completely relax Indie. She was annoyed with her new shape, unable to curl up like she wanted because her bump was in the way, so she was sitting sideways in an armchair opposite Ines, studiously avoiding her psychologist’s gaze.
As many times as she’d been there by now, Indie was still unused to being away from the house; Ines had suggested she work on that. A fear of leaving the house was the last thing Indie needed, so Ines said. Indie was, unsurprisingly, reluctant to accept her suggestion.
“Would you prefer if I spoke? You can answer with gestures if you’d like. It’ll be a temporary solution until you’re feeling more comfortable.” Grateful for the reprieve, Indie dropped her head in a single nod. “All right.” As she paused to gather herself, Indie took in Ines’ wavy, white-blonde hair and the way it moved with her head as she jotted notes on the pad in her lap.
What is she writing if I haven’t said anything? she wondered.
“Your dad tells me that you and Grace have been working on my previous suggestion,” the psychologist began. Immediately, she noticed the way Indie’s body slumped. “You don’t like it?”
Chocolate curls bounced with Indie’s negative head shake.
“I didn’t expect you to,” Ines admitted easily, her lips twisted into a smile. “It’s a huge adjustment for the both of you, and for Marley. To be honest, I didn’t expect you to take to it so quickly. I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”
It never paid for me to fight before.
“But I guess that’s more of an ingrained habit than a choice the pair of you made, am I right?”
The way Indie’s eyes shot to Ines’ for the first time this session told her everything she needed to know. “No, I don’t read minds,” Ines sighed ruefully. “Although, it sure would help, huh? I’ve spent a lot of time studying cases like yours, getting to know people who were victims, just the same as you were.”
Indie’s brows furrowed. Victim. It made her feel somehow less, as though she wasn’t a full person because she’d been victimised. A lot of people were victims of life, but they didn’t all end up spending hours with a psychologist, or wind up with a pathological fear of work boots, crowds they couldn’t monitor, or loud noises.
“Grace tells me you’ve been spending more time with extended family, friends, and neighbours.”
Not for the first time, Indie was glad she and Grace had given Ines permission to share the content of their sessions with one another, as well as their dads. If they could talk about Grace’s session for long enough, she might get away with not talking about herself. She nodded, just a tiny dip of her head as she waited to see where Ines was leading her.
“Do you enjoy seeing them? Your aunt, uncle, cousins? Your neighbours?”
Another nod; this one more definitive than the last. Ines smiled, obviously pleased.
“And your brother. You’re more comfortable with him now?”
Nod.
“Good! That’s good.”
A rock settled itself in Indie’s stomach because she saw where Ines’ eyes moved next—the dark blue t-shirt she’d borrowed from Laker.
“I understand his friend is staying at your father’s house, too.”
It wasn’t a question, so Indie kept her lips pursed. She felt protective of her relationship with Laker, of their rekindling friendship—especially the nickname he’d given her. The last thing she wanted was for Ines to dissect it or turn it into something it wasn’t.
We’re just friends, Indie recited to herself.
“Does Grace often spend time with you and Laker?”
“Sometimes…” the question caught Indie off-guard. “Why?”
Ines’ smile was almost smug as she off-handedly replied, “I was just wondering. Do you feel as if your friendship with Grace is lessening at all now that she’s staying at her house while you’re at yours, with Laker?”
“Of course not! That’s…that’s ridiculous!” Indie’s eyes glowed incandescent with anger. How dare she insinuate that she was replacing Grace? After everything they’d been through, there was no way any relationship would ever be as strong as theirs.
“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. That wasn’t my intention, Indie.” Something about the woman’s face told Indie she was sorry, but there was another emotion there, too. Almost like…pride?
“When you’re at home, cooking breakfast, cleaning up, or just relaxing, who is it you feel most relaxed with?”
Blue-green eyes turned stormy with indecision, the strong mind behind them carefully contemplating her thoughts.
Reagan had become a support all over again, his gruff, quiet nature making him easy to be around. Indie didn’t have to worry about him hovering, which she liked.
Peter, her dear Uncle Pete, was a calming influence. He always had been. Despite his over six-foot frame and semi-muscular shape, he came off as a gentle giant.
Heidi and Pippa, Indie was ashamed to admit, were probably the people she made the least effort to spend time with. Their chirpiness, high-pitched enthusiasm, and endless teenage drama made them difficult to relate to. They’d grown into lovely, obviously-caring girls, but Indie couldn’t reconcile them with the young twins she remembered. Their relationship was growing, but slowly.
Then there was Archie. His boyish, playful nature had stayed the course, though he was always on hand with gentle encouragement when it was needed. Kristen, despite being a good mother to her nephews and fiancée to her brother, rubbed Indie the wrong way with her standoffish nature. Ever-observant, she’d noticed the fierce glare on Kristen’s face whenever she got close to Chase or Carl-Roman when they were both around the boys. Not that Kristen was around often. Archie and the boys spent a lot of time with the family while Kristen seemed to prioritise work.
That brought Indie’s thoughts to Carl-Roman and Chase. Rays of sunshine in a sometimes cloudy life, she adored those boys almost as much as she adored Marley. With every beaming grin Carl-Roman gave her, every gummy chuckle Chase released when she tickled his chubby belly, they reminded Indie of why she needed to get better. She wanted to be the best auntie she could be to her adorable nephews.
On the periphery of her thoughts, Indie had to acknowledge that, lingering in the back of her mind when she was around any of her family members, Grace included, there was a strong, vibrant undercurrent of guilt saturating her every breath.
If I’d tried to escape before, would we have had all this sooner? Did I hold us back? Did I fail them all?
But, no. Her entire family reminded her often that she had no control over what happened. It wouldn’t sink in overnight, but she was starting to wonder if they might be right. Shaking off her worry, Indie sucked in a deep breath and tried to centre herself again.