Inked Armor

by Helena Hunting

  Tenley followed my directions until we reached the bay Nate had rented when he and Cassie cleaned out the house. Tenley let the engine idle while I mustered the energy necessary to get out of the car.

  After a few minutes, she gave my hand a squeeze. “We don’t have to do this.”

  “I’m good. I just need another minute.”

  Another minute turned out to be ten, but Tenley didn’t push. She held my hand and waited for me to grow some balls. When I finally opened the car door, she turned off the engine and followed behind. I used the key Nate had given me, followed by the assigned code. The sound of the locking mechanism was reminiscent of gunshots, and I had to remind myself we were perfectly safe. No one was waiting inside to ambush us. I lifted the bay door and the automatic lights flickered on.

  Even though my stomach was empty, I felt as if I were going to throw up. I immediately started to chew on the corner of my mouth, but the steel rings weren’t there anymore. I flicked out my tongue ring and made the circuit back and forth over my lips, instead. It was moderately soothing. Tenley’s hand moving in circles on my back helped, too.

  Nothing had changed since the last time I was here. The unit was full of boxes and antique furniture wrapped carefully in plastic or protective blankets. I could recall just from the shape of each piece what it looked like underneath. The first seventeen years of my life was packed inside this place. I’d spent the better part of a decade trying to forget it all. It hadn’t worked.

  “Cassie did a better job organizing this place than she did in the basement of Serendipity. It was a shit-ton of work,” I said, mostly just to fill the silence.

  “She must have had help.”

  “She wouldn’t let anyone touch a thing. She went to the house every day for weeks, boxed things up, and then moved them here.”

  “Everyone grieves differently, I suppose.” Tenley snuggled into my side; the contact kept me grounded.

  “Her way was better than mine.”

  Time gave so much in the way of clarity. I could see now how difficult it had been for Cassie when she lost her sister because in many ways she lost me, too. Not forever, but for a long while. We were close, even during the beginning of my rebellious, ass-hole teen phase. She’d been the one person I could go to when I screwed up and needed to find a way to fix things. But I’d been so submerged in guilt and blame afterward, I cut her off along with everyone else.

  I exhaled a heavy breath and stepped across the threshold. As organized as it was, the space made me feel panicky—all the stuff just sitting there in boxes with no real place or function. Moving toward an ornate cherry desk, I ran my hand over the plastic-covered surface.

  “This used to be in my mom’s office. She always had a stash of twenties in the back of this drawer. I never touched them, though.”

  “That would be hard to resist as a teenager.”

  I shrugged. “She put a lot of trust in me, even though I didn’t deserve it most of the time. I didn’t want to mess with that. I miss her a lot.”

  “You were close?”

  I nodded. “She let me get away with too much shit, but she understood me better than my dad. We were a lot the same, me and my mom.”

  It had been a long time since I’d let myself feel all the emotions that came with losing them. I’d been quick to don emotional and physical armor after their murders. It had been easier to bury it all than to face the pain.

  Tenley gave me space as I moved around, running my fingers over all the things I remembered. Everything was covered in a layer of dust. I didn’t like it. I stopped at a lamp made out of bent silverware.

  “That’s really cool,” Tenley said from behind me.

  “My mom and I made it when I was a kid. I thought it was cool because I got to use a blowtorch. Dad hated that she put it in our sitting room. He said it didn’t match the antiques. Mom had all these cool ideas that didn’t fit with convention. Dad was different; always looking to climb the social ladder. She couldn’t have cared less. I loved that she didn’t give a shit what people thought most of the time. I mean, she wasn’t exactly thrilled when I came home with an eyebrow piercing on my seventeenth birthday, but she wasn’t bothered by it. It was my dad’s reaction she worried about.”

  “Did you get along with your dad?”

  “As long as I followed the rules, which wasn’t very often. We argued a lot. He was away on business most of the time, so it was just my mom and me. And Cassie, when she lived with us. Mom was permissive and I took advantage of that. Dad would try and put the hammer down if I’d been a shit while he was gone. It wasn’t very effective.”

  “Isn’t that what all teenagers do?”

  “I guess. But some of the crap I pulled was pretty awful. I started hanging out in Damen’s tattoo shop during my junior year. I thought he was so cool back then. I came home wasted all the time, fucked up on drugs, with hickeys all over the place. That was when things went downhill. I shouldn’t have been out with Damen and his drugged-up loser friends the night my parents died.”

  I stopped at a stack of long, narrow boxes, ones that would hold framed art. I went through them, reading the descriptors scrawled on the front of each one. I recalled every piece by title alone.

  “You remember yesterday when I told you that you couldn’t keep going over all the possibilities? That you had to let it go?”

  “You were right on both counts. But it’s not easy,” Tenley said softly.

  Her arm came around my waist. I looked down at her. No pity was in her eyes, just understanding.

  “It was a hypocritical thing to say. I still think about it sometimes—about what might have happened if I’d just stayed home like I was supposed to that night. If I hadn’t started hanging out with Damen in the first place, I wouldn’t have been grounded or pissed my dad off, or gotten all shitfaced. Things might have been different.”

  “The what-ifs are so hard to deal with.”

  I turned back to the boxes and continued flipping through, still caught up in memories and guilt I couldn’t shake and maybe never would. This whole thing gave me new insight into how resilient Tenley was. Inside of a year, she’d got her life back together and found a way to move on that wasn’t completely self-destructive. I’d taken seven times as long to do the same, and I was still working on it. The paths we took to reach the same end were vastly different.

  “Shit. I think it’s here.” I stopped at one of the boxes halfway through the pile.

  ELEANOR’S ANGEL was written in big block letters on the top of the box. If the contents matched the description, it was the painting I kept dreaming about. The one I remembered from my childhood, and the first thing I saw when I opened my parents’ bedroom door that night.

  I didn’t know what I expected to get from it. I slid the box out from between the others and peeled the tape off. The flaps fell open. It was the right painting. I could tell because of the scuff mark in the corner of the mahogany-colored frame from when I’d dropped it a long time ago.

  “I probably shouldn’t touch it.” My voice cracked. “I don’t want to leave fingerprints. Just in case, right?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should call Officer Miller.”

  “What if it’s nothing? What if I’m not remembering right?” I asked, irrationally panicked. My vision went blurry.

  “Shh. It’s okay.” Her gloved fingers cupped my face. “If we call Officer Miller, we can ask her what we should do.”

  “If you leave your gloves on, you could look at it first. I don’t want to call for nothing.”

  “I can do that. What should I be looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe we should just leave it alone.”

  “I don’t think it hurts for me to look,” she said reassuringly.

  Tenley carefully lifted the painting out of the box. In the garish fluorescent lights, I could make out the details of the art clearly. Seeing it brought back another flood of memories. It was such a strange painting. I’d never aske
d my mom what compelled her to use that particular color scheme. Seeing it now, with the perspective I had gained, I understood her a lot better. What I couldn’t understand was why in the world my dad had let her keep it in their bedroom. It was as horrifying as it was ethereal, which I suppose was much of the appeal. The angel was painted in various shades of red. The part that freaked me out, though, was the way her wings appeared to be dripping down the canvas, as if they were bleeding feathers.

  It was eerily familiar, I realized. In some vague way, it reminded me of the original version of the tattoo I was putting on Tenley. Except I’d changed most of the red to gold and silvers, so it was more a reflection of life, not death.

  Tenley leaned in closer, inspecting the painting. Her leather-clad fingers hovered over the surface, never touching.

  Even from where I was standing, I could make out the maroon dots scattered over the canvas and the frame. Ones that didn’t match the brushstrokes.

  “I’m right—I have to be. That painting was there when I found my parents.” My legs went watery and I leaned against the wall in case they decided they weren’t all that interested in supporting my weight any longer.

  “We should call Officer Miller.”

  There were so many unanswered questions. It didn’t make sense that this painting hadn’t made it into evidence. Maybe if it had, the case wouldn’t have been closed. I didn’t want to speculate, but I had a pretty good fucking idea whom I wanted to point the finger at. The question was why.

  “Do you see all those marks on it? What if it’s blood?” I asked.

  “It could be, but the only way you can get any answers is if we call Officer Miller.”

  “Right. Yeah. Okay.” I rooted around in my pocket and found my phone. I couldn’t manage punching in my pass code because my hands were shaking so badly.

  “Can I help?” Tenley asked.

  I passed her the phone and she keyed in the code. Miller’s number was in my contact list already, so Tenley pulled it up and hit call. I didn’t track the conversation that followed.

  Tenley passed back my phone. “She’s on her way. Why don’t we wait in the car?” Tenley took my hand and tugged.

  “What about the painting? I don’t want you to touch it again.” As irrational as it might be, I worried about its tainting her as it had me.

  “It’s fine where it is. Officer Miller will be here in a few minutes to take care of it.” Tenley used the same tone she did when she talked to TK, all lilting and calm.

  “Right. Yeah.” I shivered. “It’s fucking cold out here.”

  I let her lead me to the car and open the door. She came around the driver’s side and started the engine. As I stared out the windshield, watching it unfog, I recognized that I was in shock. I kept replaying the night I found my parents’ dead bodies: the climb up the stairs, the smell of blood and brain matter, the horrifying visual accompaniment, and the painting on the floor where it didn’t belong.

  My pocket buzzed but I didn’t think to answer it. Tenley’s phone went off almost as soon as mine stopped. It was Lisa. She probably wanted to talk about New Year’s, which wasn’t on my radar, considering the shit that was going down.

  I watched Tenley’s mouth move, forming words I didn’t hear as she pushed her fingers through my hair over and over. Her attention remained fixed on me the entire time. She hung up after what could have been minutes or hours. I wasn’t tracking enough to know.

  “I really fucking love you.” It came out sounding as if I’d been gargling with gravel.

  “I love you, too,” she said, her smile sad.

  My vision did that blurry shit again, so I rubbed my eyes. My palms came away damp. I stared at them, not sure what was going on. My skin felt wrong, my chest tight.

  “It’s okay, baby. I’m right here with you. I know this is hard.” Tenley climbed over the center console and into my lap.

  Mindful of the new ink, I buried my face in her hair and tried to fight the rising tide of fear. She whispered soft words of reassurance until I was no longer at risk of losing it completely.

  A police cruiser turned the corner and came down the narrow stretch of asphalt. Tenley slid back over to her seat as the vehicle came to a stop a few feet away. I opened my door at the same time as Officer Miller got out of the cruiser, along with another cop I didn’t recognize. Tenley met me at the front of the car and linked our hands as Miller and her partner approached. Introductions were made, none of which I retained. Tenley did all the explaining as she brought them over to the painting.

  Officer Miller and her partner snapped on rubber gloves as they looked it over.

  “Have either of you touched this?” Miller asked.

  “I took it out of the box, but I was wearing gloves,” Tenley replied.

  Miller nodded and turned back to the framed art. She and her partner inspected the piece. “Are you seeing this?” Miller asked.

  There were nods and more murmuring, lots of gestures.

  “That painting used to scare the shit out of me as a kid.” When the male officer turned to look at me, I went on, as though it required further explanation, “I think it’s because the color is incongruous with the subject matter.”

  He gave me a funny look. “Are you an art teacher or something?”

  I pried my eyes away from the angel to meet his inquisitive stare. “Tattooist.”

  His eyes moved from my feet to my face. “Huh. I never would have guessed.”

  “I’m calling this in,” Miller said. “We need to get it to the lab.”

  Tenley put me back in the car. I watched as Miller paced around, making calls, conferring with her partner. The painting went back in its box. Tenley handed over the key to the storage unit. Miller locked it up and came over to the car. I stared at her through the glass when she tapped on the window. She opened the door and crouched down.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  “You did the right thing by calling me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tenley’s going to bring you to the station. We’ve got a few questions for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hang tight, there.”

  Miller shut the door. She and Tenley had a conversation. Based on the number of times they looked my way, I could guess what it was about.

  When we arrived at the station, Officer Miller met us at the front doors and ushered us quickly through the lobby. There weren’t any suspicious stares this time. Their eyes slid over Tenley and me, pausing briefly before moving away. One of the receptionists even smiled when we passed.

  I froze when we reached the hallway. I’d been down there before, and the memories associated with it were not pleasant. “Where are we going?”

  “To my office.” When I didn’t move, Officer Miller’s features softened. “This isn’t an interrogation, Hayden.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, squeezed the shit out of Tenley’s hand, and followed them down the hall. The fluorescent lights above hummed and flickered, giving it an ominous feel. In spite of Miller’s reassurance, the farther we went, the greater my sense of disassociation became. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop from being sucked back into the past.

  We were led into a small office with an old, beat-up fake-leather chair behind an equally beat-up desk. Two plastic chairs sat on the opposite side. When I was offered one, I quickly dropped into it. I was light-headed. Tenley sat down beside me and I slid my chair across the floor to close the space between us. The metal against linoleum made a horrible screech.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled when everyone in the room flinched.

  My knee was going a mile a minute. I shrugged out of my coat and draped it over the back of the chair. I yanked at the collar of my shirt; my tie felt like a noose around my neck. The office was cramped, with shit strewn all over the desk. The lack of order stressed me out even more than I already was. It was too hot, and I couldn’t seem to drag enough oxygen into my lungs. I wanted t
o roll up my sleeves, but then everyone would know I was faking civilized in my dress shirt and tie.

  “Can we get Hayden a glass of water?” Tenley asked.

  “Of course. Duggan?” Miller looked to the male officer.

  He nodded once and left. It was a little less claustrophobic with one fewer in the room, but not much. Tenley started up with the slow circles on my back, but it didn’t help calm the anxiety. Duggan came back with a bottle of water. I drained it and immediately wanted to hurl.

  Then the questions started, which didn’t help the nausea. I recounted the events of the night my parents were murdered, from the moment my parents walked out the door, to the moment I came home. The more of the story I relayed, the clearer the details became. I told them about Damen picking me up, about the kids I remembered being with us, about the girls I later found out were dancers from The Dollhouse.

  “There was a guy there, I can’t remember his name.” I rubbed my temple, the headache cropping up behind my eyes making it hard to think. “Brant or Brett? I’d only seen him once before. He was around the same age as me, I think? Is this even important?” I glanced over at Miller, who was recording everything I said.

  “Anything you can remember, no matter how insignificant, could be helpful.”

  “Okay. This kid, I’m pretty sure his name was Brett. Anyway, I didn’t talk to him because he was a loser. All annoying and shit. I remember him being way too loud, like he wanted to fit in. He pretty much attached himself to Damen both times I met him. I thought he was a creep because he kept watching me. I was with this girl—” I glanced at Tenley, mortified that I had to relay this in front of her.

  She gave me a smile that held no judgment, so I continued.

  “I was already messed up at that point because Damen had brought out a boatload of weed and I’d been pounding beers. That night, that Brett kid and Damen kept having these side conversations. Damen kept blowing him off. He got pretty pissed at one point and then the kid left. I never saw him again after that.”