by W E DeVore
“You want to stop staring at my bedding, Lila? To answer your question: Yes, I’ve been sleeping on the sofa or not at all. But I’m sure Yvie or Aaron or my fucking grandmother has already told you that. So, drop it.”
Lila gaped at her. “Alright then. I guess I’ll just come out with it, Clementine.”
Q flinched. She’d never heard her given name spoken by either of her in-laws. As a general rule, those closest to her only used it when she’d done something to aggravate them past the point of reason. Sanger was the exception to this rule, and because he never used her nickname, she never really knew how annoyed he was with her at any given moment.
Big Ben murmured something to his wife and Lila shot him a glare that shut him down instantly.
“I do not allow my children to call me by my first name, Clementine. Nor do I allow them to avoid their family obligations. There is no excuse for you to disrespect your parents and to stop coming to eat with your family. Three hours a week. That’s all I ask of my children. Three hours to come home, eat some food, and see their family…”
Guilt cooled Q’s appetite and the food in her mouth turned tasteless. She set the bowl down and exhaled slowly. Steady resolve filled her and she interrupted, “That’s the thing. You’re not my family anymore, Lila.”
Her mother-in-law stood up to her full six-foot height and put her hands on her hips. “What did you just say to me?”
Big Ben stood next to his wife and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Baby, please.”
Lila shrugged him off. “Explain yourself, Clementine.”
Q looked down in discomfort and measured her words. “I appreciate everything y’all did for me after Ben died. But I’m not your family. Not anymore. I know you like having me around because it reminds you of him, but it’s not real and right now, I need my own family.”
“And who would that be, missy? Because it sure as shit isn’t your grandmother. Your daddy’s on that island of his in the Caribbean…”
“Grand Cayman isn’t just his, you sound like Bubbe,” Q corrected.
“Don’t you sass me,” Lila snapped. “You look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Q complied and shrunk back in shame. “I’m just trying to make this easier on everybody. There’s no use in playing pretend. It’s just delaying the inevitable.”
“That is the biggest pile of horseshit I’ve ever heard, young lady.” Lila began to pace the room, picking up discarded clothes and dirty dishes at random intervals and carrying them to the kitchen and the laundry room beyond, continuing her diatribe every time she reentered the room. “You are my child, Q. Not by birth. Not by blood, but my son loved you and wanted you to be a part of our family. So, you’re family now. Whether you like it or not.”
Q’s eyes tracked her mother-in-law. She looked to Ben’s father for assistance and he gave her helpless shrug.
“…Spending all your time with that rock star of yours and doing god knows what with yourself at night. Missing counseling appointments, and skipping physical therapy and Sunday dinner.” Lila came back into the room and pointed her finger in Q’s face. “You will be at my house on Sunday, do you hear me?”
A heavy cloak of sadness pushed down its suffocating weight and Q searched for the words to explain that Sunday dinner was agony. That the endless recounting of stories of Ben tore at her flesh and picked her apart. That the shrine of his baby pictures and happy family portraits made her want to rip her hair out and scream. She fought against the roaring in her ears, as a panic attack forced its way to the surface until her mind was full of roiling animosity.
“No,” she shouted, standing up and escaping to the foyer. Leaning against the round table for support, she steadied her breathing and hissed, “Don’t you get it? It’s torture being around you. He’s everywhere and fucking nowhere and y’all won’t shut the fuck up about him. I don’t want to talk about him. I don’t want to remember all the good times. I don’t even want to say his name. He’s dead! Don’t you understand that? He’s never coming back and dragging me out like some fucking living memorial isn’t going to make you feel better about it. I want every single one of you to leave me the hell alone.”
Lila’s mouth gaped open like she’d walked in on a stranger robbing her son’s home. Q’s body vibrated with the power and energy she’d pulled back into herself. The panic attack dissipated and she swallowed hard, regaining her bearings.
Big Ben started to speak, to fill the deafening void, and Lila held out her hand to stop him. “It’s alright, Ben. Better out than in.”
She walked to Q and put both her hands on either side of Q’s face. “There now. Better?”
Q wordlessly nodded, not trusting her voice.
Lila studied her face, concern stitching her eyebrows together into an expression that Q had seen Ben wearing countless times. “My son wouldn’t want you to be on your own. I meant what I said, we’re your family. You will always be a member of this family. You understand me?”
Q nodded again.
“But we’ll give your space if that’s what you really want. Leave you be for a few more weeks. Come October, I expect you at my house every Sunday. No excuses. But I’ve got one condition for letting you off the hook.”
“What is it?” Q whispered.
“What’s my name?” she asked.
Q’s eyes flooded and she said, “Mama.”
Lila pulled Q into a tight embrace and abruptly let go. She walked to the door, calling over her shoulder to Big Ben. “Come on, old man.”
He followed after his wife. As he passed Q, he asked, “You need anything to get ready for the storm?”
“Sanger’s getting a kit together. He has to stay, so…”
“Good. He’s a good friend.” Big Ben wrapped her into his arms and she sagged against him. He said quietly, “The best thing my son ever did is bring you into our family. You’ll always be my daughter, sweet girl, whether you like it or not. I love you come rain or come shine, you understand?”
She nodded against his chest and remembered the afternoon Ben had announced their engagement. His father had lifted her off her feet and swung her around, proudly proclaiming that he’d always wanted an even half-dozen daughters.
He let her go and she followed him to the doorway, watching as her in-laws got into their car and backed it out into the street. A cool breeze blew across the porch, momentarily lowering the crushing weight of humidity and she heard a scraping noise. She looked to her right to find a manila envelope blowing across the porch, coming to rest beneath the swing. She knew what was written on the outside of it before she picked it up.
Burn.Bitch.Burn.
Motherfucker.
◆◆◆
She stared at the filth on her kitchen table and checked her phone again to see if Sanger had texted her back. Not wanting to open the envelope on her own, she’d taken it into her kitchen, made herself a cup of coffee, and called Sanger. When it went straight to voicemail, she figured he was working a case and decided that she could bring it to him instead, if she just knew where he was at the moment.
While she waited for Sanger to call her back, she briefly debated whether or not to call Derek to let him know that their stalker had reached out for some attention once more, but decided against it. He and Fiona had taken off to California to visit their son, and their son never asked for them to visit. She didn’t want to spoil it, knowing how much Derek wanted a relationship with his only child, especially now that his son had grown into a young man who was hellbent on hiding the fact that he was the progeny of two founding members of one of the most famous rock bands in the world.
Studying the manila envelope, Q wondered what had set her stalker off again. They’d been strangely quiet throughout her pregnancy. She and Derek had been careful to only take pictures of the two of them from the neck up for any promotion, even resorting to Photoshop on a few occasions to hide Q’s rounding shape. The constant flow of imagery of Q and Derek alone, working on their a
lbum together seemed to have fulfilled the stalker’s demands and the letters had stopped as suddenly as they’d began.
The object of the stalker’s hostility had been Q’s marriage to Ben. Burn Bitch Burn’s singular desire was for Q to be faithful only to Derek. Now that Ben was gone, Q was terrified what new requests her stalker had in mind.
The lock on the front door turned and Sanger’s voice filled the house. “Clementine! Clementine, you here?”
“In the kitchen, cowboy,” she called.
Sanger rushed in and stopped when he saw the envelope on the table. “What the hell?”
“I know, right?”
He sat down across from her. “You open it?”
“No.” She chewed on her cuticle as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened the envelope.
“God damn it!” he exclaimed, slamming the contents down to the table.
It was a photograph of her asleep in a hospital bed. Her arm was in a sling and her leg was elevated. A huge arrangement of white roses and orchids stood on the nightstand beside her. Sanger was sitting in a chair nearby, his legs stretched out and his eyes closed. His arm was resting on the bed, his fingers clasped around Q’s good hand.
Pointing to the flowers in the picture she said, “Derek sent those the day of Ben’s funeral. What does it say?”
He turned the photo over and read out loud:
He did not enter by means of sacrificial blood, he entered the most holy place by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. This is why the covenant cannot be put into effect without blood. Just as people are destined to die, and after that to face judgment, so to shall another be sacrificed to take away the sins of this bride; he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation. Burn. Bitch. Burn.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“Ben was redeemed when he died,” he replied. “I don’t think it’s from our part of the Bible, sounds a little too messianic to me.”
All of Burn Bitch Burn’s notes had been created from snippets of biblical text strung together into the form of a threat. A former rabbinic student and the son of an Orthodox rabbi, Sanger was typically the first to identify the origination text.
Q read the threat again and realized that her stalker was sending a warning. “You’re next, Aaron. Isn’t that what they’re saying?”
“Maybe. I don’t know what to make of this - if I’m being honest.” He leaned back in his chair. “What could have set them off? You and Derek do or say anything on social?”
“I didn’t.” She picked up her phone and scrolled through several Dark Harm social media feeds, trying to determine if anything untoward had been published without her knowledge.
“How did they take this picture, Clementine?” Sanger asked, interrupting her search.
She glanced up at him. “Public hospital. It was all over the news. It wouldn’t have been hard.”
“There was a cop on your door,” he said.
“What?” she asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“For the first few weeks, we thought that maybe your stalker had something to do with the shooting.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” she demanded.
“Just me by the time this picture was taken,” he admitted. “Myers and Juban were pretty convinced it was gang-related from day one. But it just didn’t feel right to me. Still doesn’t.”
Q stomach turned in revulsion. “I told you, Aaron. I saw them. The boy that shot me didn’t take this picture. I can promise you that.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Encircling the rapidly cooling coffee mug with her hands, she leaned back and replied, “Do you know how many Dark Harm fans I saw on the Scarification tour? Whether they’re young or middle aged, male or female, they’re all pale, dressed in black, and dying to interview a vampire.”
He grinned at her. “Alright then, Miss Marple, how did this pale vampire wannabe get into your room and take this picture without you, me, or the cop on the door putting a stake through their heart?”
“Well, you were exhausted and I was doped out of my mind on Vicodin… Maybe the duty was swapping out?” she guessed. “Maybe he was asleep, too.”
“Maybe your stalker works at the hospital. That could be how they got your medical records a couple years ago.”
While she’d been rehearsing with Dark Harm before the U.S. tour, she’d received another letter from Burn Bitch Burn with a copy of her discharge papers from the day she’d miscarried the first time. It had been a working theory that her stalker worked for a medical coding company, but hospital personnel were still on the list of possible suspects.
“Maybe somebody just bought themselves a set of scrubs and blended in,” she speculated before returning to her phone. As soon as she tapped on the Dark Harm Instagram feed, she found what had awoken Burn Bitch Burn from their stupor.
Pain and nostalgia washed through her as she saw the photograph of Ben and her backstage at Madison Square Garden after a Dark Harm concert. She still was wearing her Archangel costume. Derek was nearby, covered in sweat from the show. He was grinning at her and she was smiling back, her eyes closing as Ben placed a kiss on her neck. Yvie and Sanger were standing off to the side, distracted by some activity outside the lens frame. The memory filled her and she could hear the rumbling of the exit music and the buzz of fans and tour staff around them. She read the words that accompanied the picture before closing her eyes to better recall the moment:
Three months ago, the world was darkened when a member of the Dark Harm family left us. Today we rise. Today we make music in his memory. Rest in power, sweet Ben. -Fi
Sliding her phone to Sanger, she said, “Fiona posted it before she left. We all have access to this account.”
He read the caption out loud and looked up at her. “Did you know about this?”
She shook her head. “No. No one told me. I’ve been avoiding social media since it happened.”
He continued to look through the feed, his eyebrows stitching together as he studied the screen. “There’s more. They’ve been posting something almost every week since he died.”
“Like I said, I haven’t been looking,” she said. “They’re good people. They liked Ben…”
Sanger stopped on an image and exhaled loudly. “You should see this one.”
He handed her back her phone and she saw herself standing centerstage in a t-shirt and jeans. Ben was lifting her off the ground, her legs kicking out behind her. It had been a surprise that Derek had arranged. Ben had shown up to rehearsals for the concert in Miami and stayed with them on the road for the next two weeks. The rest of the band was a blur behind them. The caption read:
This afternoon, our dear friend, Ben Bordelon, was taken from this mortal coil. Our Archangel has lost her Love and we have lost our Brother. There are no words left for us to say, so we’ll speak out another’s:
There is a silence where there be no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free.
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
D.S.
She turned the screen over and stood up to get a glass of water, desperately wanting to drown the hot angst that surged up through her throat. As she reached for a glass in the cupboard, her left hand began to tremble uncontrollably and she dropped it. She watched the glass descend from her hand to the polished cypress floor and shatter around her bare legs and feet. Sanger reached her before she could react and picked her up in his arms, carrying her to the living room.
He set her on the couch and checked her for wounds. Finding none, he said, “Doesn’t look like you got cut. I’ll go clean that up.”
Q shook her head and clung to him, curling her body into his lap. He rested back into the couch and pulled her to his chest, rocking her back and forth.
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “I’v
e got you. No one’s going to hurt you.”
The warmth of human contact soothed her sadness back down to a manageable level and she whispered, “It’s not that, Aaron. I said the most awful things to Ben’s parents before you got here. I bitched out Bubbe for wanting me to evacuate. I can’t sleep. It’s making the world all squishy and I don’t know what to do.”
He didn’t respond for several minutes. “Did you talk to the doctor, like I asked?”
“She gave me pills. But they make me dream and the dreams are worse than not sleeping. Drinking only knocks me out for a few hours and then my voice sounds like shit the next day and Derek yells at me and then I’m on edge...”
Sanger held her tighter and brushed his lips against her forehead. The action had a narcotic effect and the weight of it tugged down on her eyelids.