by Lucy Score
She slid her thumb under the tab and ripped the envelope open like the tearing off of a bandage. The handwriting, so terrifyingly familiar, leapt off the page with its intended message: hate.
You owe me and you will pay.
When I get home, you’ll never forget your place again.
She swallowed hard against the fear and bile that rose in her throat. “He can’t touch me,” she reminded herself, pressing her face into Aldo’s pillow. “He can’t ever touch me again.” But the words didn’t ring true. There were too many ways for the system to fail her. Too many ways for Gloria to fail herself.
“Get a grip,” Gloria muttered. She forced herself to sit up and look at the letter. She was here, and he was miles away, behind bars. Nothing was wrong in this moment besides the fact that he could still touch her with his poison. Venom through ink. She could feel him in the room with her.
“Read it again," she told herself.
Steeling her spine, she read the words again. Reminded herself where she was, where he was.
Sobriety hadn’t done Glenn any favors. He was still a warped, miserable monster. And he blamed her for it all. But he was wrong. She had already paid for her mistakes. It was his turn.
Glancing around the room, feeling Aldo’s presence, Gloria breathed deeply. She couldn’t put another man between her and Glenn. No. It wasn’t healthy. But maybe she could put the spirit, the essence of Aldo Moretta’s faith in her, in that craggy, terrifying void.
She swiped at the tears that had slipped unnoticed from the corners of her eyes and reached for her phone. “Hi, it’s Gloria Parker. Do you have a minute to talk today?”
Ty and Sophie Adler’s house was bursting at the seams with a barking dog and laughing toddler. Ty, in a t-shirt and gym shorts, met Gloria on the front stoop.
“I’m sorry,” Gloria apologized on automatic. “I didn’t realize it was your day off. We can talk later.” She made a move to back away, to stop inconveniencing him.
“If I didn’t have time to talk, I wouldn’t have told you to come on over,” Ty argued good-naturedly. “Now, come on inside so my wife and I have to pretend to be human beings in front of company.”
He held the door for her and waited until she tentatively stepped across the threshold. This wasn’t a matter she wanted to bring into the man’s home. It wasn’t something she felt like she could or should share with Sophie. They were new friends. New friends didn’t dump abusive letters from psychotic exes on each other in the early phases of friendship. They talked about nail polish colors and buy-one-get-one deals at the grocery store.
“Hey, Gloria,” Sophie called from the kitchen over the shrill of toddler. “I made some lemonade. Want a glass?”
Cold lemonade on a throat scorched from bitter emotion. “That would be great, thanks,” Gloria called back.
The source of the giggles rocketed out of the kitchen and threw himself at his father’s knees.
“Daaaaaaaad!” Josh Adler was five hundred pounds of energy packed into the wiry build of a three-year-old. He favored his father with dirty blond hair and a dimpled chin. But it was all his mother’s mischief that danced in his bright eyes.
Ty hefted his son high, expertly missing the turning ceiling fan by inches. Sophie breezed into the living room, pretty in leggings and an off-the-shoulder top. She handed Gloria a tall glass of lemonade garnished with a wedge of lemon and sprig of lavender and pressed a borderline indecent kiss to her husband’s mouth.
The irony of wild child Sophie Garrison settling down with ultimate good-guy-with-a-badge Ty was amusing enough to bring a smile to Gloria’s face. Love could heal, Gloria decided, watching the three of them glow together as a unit.
The pang of longing hit her hard, square in the heart. Would she ever have an ounce of that happiness? That belonging? Would she ever have a family? A man who looked at her the way Ty looked at Sophie?
Embarrassed, Gloria looked away. One of the throw pillows on the couch moved, then barked. And she realized it was a tiny dog…with couch stuffing hanging out of her mouth.
“Damn it, Bitsy,” Sophie yelled.
“Damn it, Bitsy,” Josh repeated.
“Nice goin’, Soph,” Ty said, juggling Josh into his mother’s arms. “Why don’t you take our future felon here and make yourselves scarce?”
“Come on, Mr. Parrot,” Sophie sighed, toting Josh up the tidy little staircase. Bitsy followed on Sophie’s bare heels.
“Step into my office,” Ty said, opening his arm toward the couch. “I assume this has something to do with Glenn Diller?”
Gloria nodded and sat on the cushion that hadn’t yet been eaten by the dog. She pulled the letter from her purse and held it for a moment. She was so used to hanging on to her shame, her secrets. It was hard to turn that off. Hard to break open and share that shame.
“I got this in the mail last night.” She handed the envelope, the shame, over to him.
Ty read it, his eyes going cop cold.
“There’s nothing you can do about it, is there?” Gloria sighed. She’d known. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t pissed.
“There’s no specific threat,” Ty said diplomatically.
“He tried to kill me. He spent the last decade beating the life out of me.” Gloria couldn’t quell the red rush of fury that swept through her body.
“The law’s the law,” Ty said, bravely stepping into her anger. “I’m not saying it’s right. And I’m definitely not saying that he has the right to keep on torturing you. You need a personal protection order. We can turn letters like this into a crime.”
“And the law will do what the next time he threatens my life?” Gloria demanded. Nothing. They would do nothing.
“Not much,” Ty admitted. “But every brick you add to this case, every piece of evidence keeps him away from you.”
“Why is it my job to prove that he’s a monster?” She collapsed back against the cushion. “Why does it fall on me to fight to be safe?”
“I’m fighting with you, Gloria.” Ty’s eyes were serious. “I’m not going to let him anywhere near you ever again. But I have to operate within the law. So, why don’t you come on down to the station tomorrow, and we’ll start the paperwork. I’ll do what I can, I promise you that.”
Gloria nodded numbly. It wasn’t enough. She wondered, if anything would ever be enough as long as Glenn Diller was still alive. Would she ever feel confident in her safety?
“Mind if I hang on to this?” Ty asked, tapping the letter against his palm.
“Knock yourself out.”
19
“Move that ass, private,” Aldo bellowed as a freckled white guy from Omaha, Nebraska, chased fruitlessly after Corporal Talia Williams, a woman with seven inches of leg and two deployments on him. “Move! Move! Move!”
He cracked a grin from his vantage point—a cobbled together lifeguard chair made by a bored maintenance crew—as the private took a nose dive into a muddy trench that Williams vaulted like a gazelle.
The cheering from the tire flip zone caught his attention, and he pulled out his field glasses to watch Luke hefting a truck tire that came to chest height. “Nice job, captain,” Aldo announced through his bullhorn.
All around him, men and women challenged themselves with physical feats of strength. Gritted teeth, dirt and sweat mingling on skin of every color. Accented “fucks” and “son of a bitches” rose up from the desert floor.
Shared suffering, he thought with satisfaction. It cemented relationships, built teams. These soldiers had each others’ backs by the nature of their deployment. But sweating through the dusty desert duty, the physical discomfort of deployment, missing everyone and everything that was important “back home” forged a different, deeper bond. They were brothers and sisters in a camo colored, duct-taped family that battled both boredom and life and death situations.
Aldo took this connection as seriously as he did the rigorous Guard training. To him, a good soldier didn’t only know how to te
ar down and rebuild their M-4. A good soldier loved the unit, thrived on the discomfort, and pushed all the harder because of it.
He set the example that he needed his team to live up to. Strength, positivity, loyalty. A whistle blew, and a cheer roared through the rag-tag crowd gathered at the finish line. O’Connell, a long-legged, battle-tested Irishman whose credits included amateur mixed martial arts titles, crossed the finish line six feet in front of the next closest competitor as he’d been favored to do.
Toward the end of the requisite thirty minutes of rest for the winner, the chant began.
“Mor-et-ta. Mor-et-ta.” The crowd increased and the chanting grew louder. This was their version of fun. A half-mile obstacle sprint in eight-million-degree heat under the unrelenting sun.
Aldo had a title to defend. Once every month or so during deployment, he organized the course, and he challenged the winner to a rematch. And he won. Always. Not because he was the fastest or the strongest. But he never let the possibility of losing enter his stubborn mind. He believed in victory.
His athleticism was well-honed, his body toned and trained or performance. It was as much a part of him as his loyalty. He was fast, strong, and ruthless. Characteristics, capabilities that served him well in all areas of his life.
It was his job to be the best, to set the example.
He crossed the hundred yards of dust and rocks, rolling his shoulders, stretching his chest as he went. O’Connell met him with a grim handshake. There were no trophies at stake. Just pride, which, to Aldo, was worth more than any award.
Second Lieutenant Steph Oluo gave them both a nod. “Gentleman,” she began grandly into the megaphone. “Once through the course. First one to cross the finish line wins. Any questions?”
There were none. Neither competitor wanted to waste their oxygen on words.
The crowd, half exhausted from 12-hour shifts and the other half just getting ready to begin another monotonous day, picked their favorites, alternating between cheers and trash talk.
He wouldn’t change a damn thing.
Aldo went through the course once more in his head. It was a circle, ending where it began, but between start and finish was a half mile and six obstacles. Aldo gave his quads one final stretch, feeling the muscle fire up under the strain.
He toed the dirt line with his boot next to O’Connell and let the crowd noise fall away. He could hear his breath, his heartbeat steady in his head. Instead of a pistol start, they went for drama, and two NCOs chucked lit flares into the dirt. Aldo shot off of the line like a bullet. He was a big guy. Speed didn’t come naturally. It came through constant hard-fought battle.
O’Connell was snapping at his heels as they rounded the first turn. Aldo’s body warmed and sang with the pace. His hands carved a knife-edge swale through the sweltering desert air, his arms pumping like a metronome. The Jeep tires were first. Two sets of tires, two-by-two. Aldo lifted his knees and jogged through them, fueled by his competitor in his peripheral vision.
They cleared the tires at the same time, taking off into dead sprints toward the Over Under Over, a pair of five-foot walls sandwiching a low crawl. He easily cleared the first wall, but the rocky desert floor was murder on his knees in the crawl. The pain motivated him.
Taking a sharp stone to the palm, Aldo pulled himself out from under the netting a second after O’Connell.
He made up time scrambling over the second wall and let his legs eat up the distance between them.
They hung together, neck and neck, swapping for the lead, never more than arm’s length from each other. O’Connell’s high school athleticism was showing, but so was his youth. His breath was coming in sharp heaves as he pushed himself into the red zone. Aldo would wait him out, make his move at the end when the twenty-something was gassed.
“You gonna puke?” O’Connell groaned as he heaved himself over the first sawhorse.
Aldo jumped it and the second one with gazelle-like grace. “Nope. You?” He took great pride in the fact that he didn’t sound winded.
“You’re playing with me, aren’t you, LT?” O’Connell gasped. He landed hard and came up running.
“I want you to feel that you’re doing well,” Aldo said conversationally.
“I really hate you, LT.”
Aldo laughed and launched himself at the last obstacle between them and the finish line. A ten-foot wall with ropes. He ignored his rope, running straight up the wall, and just when gravity kicked in, his fingers closed over the top. He pulled himself up and over and dropped into a crouch waiting until he heard O’Connell hit the ground next to him before taking off.
One hundred yards to the finish. His legs churned, arms pumped, every cell in his body fired to do its job and carry him across the finish line.
He was fucking alive and strong. And a winner.
An hour later, rehydrated, stretched, and congratulated, Aldo flopped down on his cot. He slipped the photo, protected by a sandwich bag, out of his chest pocket. Gloria grinned up at him from the side of the lake, hair touched by the wind. He loved that glimpse of lightness in her eyes, around her soft mouth, that he hoped would be there permanently. He longed to see her without the pinch of pain and shame.
He’d snapped the shot of her during their little lake picnic. Aldo had wanted a picture of the two of them, needed it. But it would be too easy for him to write a story from a picture. Too easy to build up a relationship that didn’t yet exist. Couldn’t yet exist. She needed this time and distance. Putting restraints on her, demanding exclusivity, wasn’t fair. It was the same reason he’d resisted the urge to give her his contact info. She needed the time.
He hoped he’d survive the wait.
“Mail call,” Luke announced, shoving through the tent flap. He had twin packages under his arm.
Casually, Aldo slid the picture back into his pocket. “Whatcha got there, cap?” he asked.
“Looks like we both got something from Harper,” Luke said, tossing a box into Aldo’s lap. Aldo wondered if his oldest friend realized he was grinning like a kid on Christmas morning.
“That Harp is something.” Aldo held up the Dirty Mad Libs notebook and the six-pack of socks she’d packed for him.
Luke was studying the bag of cookies as if it were an ice-cold six-pack. Love written all over the dumb bastard’s face.
“Miss her?” Aldo prodded.
“Huh?” Luke tore his eyes away from whatever shenanigans Harper had packed for him. “Yeah. Sure.”
Aldo sighed. His friend was one of the smartest, most loyal men in the world. And he could be a real dumbass.
“You’re not a terrible asshole for having feelings for her, you know,” he told Luke.
Luke swallowed, and for a second Aldo thought he’d blow it off. “I feel like I am,” he admitted.
“She wouldn’t want you to be alone forever, man,” Aldo said, careful not to mention the name that still hit Luke like a knife to the heart. “Besides, you’d have to be a complete fucking moron not to have some kind of big feelings for Harpoon. I’m half in love with her.”
Luke gave a rusty laugh. “She’s something.”
“What’d she send you?” Aldo asked, making a reach for Luke’s box. He didn’t like to push Luke too hard when it came to the woman he’d loved and lost.
Luke held the box out of his reach. “I’ll show you if you come clean about that picture in your pocket.”
“Asshole,” Aldo grumbled playfully.
“That’s Captain Asshole to you,” Luke teased. With a ninja-like move, he feinted left and snatched the picture from Aldo’s shirt pocket. “Aha!”
“Please,” Aldo scoffed. “Like you didn’t know who it was.”
“What’s going on there?” Luke asked, dumping his box in Aldo’s lap.
Aldo pawed through it on principle and stopped when he got to the small stack of pictures. Harper and the dogs. Harper in the office with Beth and an even grumpier than usual Angry Frank. Harper and Gloria… A fist clo
sed around his heart and squeezed. They had facemasks on and were making fish faces for the camera, and Aldo had never seen anything so damn beautiful in his life.
“Shit.” He’d been doing well. Not thinking of her every ten seconds. Staying focused on what needed to be done. “You think she’s doing okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think so. Harper wouldn’t let her not be okay,” Luke told him, rubbing a hand absently over his chest. “I could really go for a beer or ten right now.”
“How about a run instead?” Aldo offered. “Nothing like a few miles choking on dust in heat that feels like you’re wearing a parka to get your head right.”
“Let me change.”
20
One month into deployment…
It was weird being back here. Back in the same gravel lot where she’d nearly lost her life a few short months ago.
But so much had happened since then. A lifetime in some ways, Gloria thought, deliberately turning away from the spot where she’d taken what she thought was her last gasping breath. She focused on the neon signs in the skinny windows and the music that was leaking out of Remo’s front door.
Different circumstances. Different life. She was an independent woman. Okay, so she was living with her mother, but she was working a full-time job and ready to buy herself a glass of wine with her first official paycheck, damn it.
Her ballet flats hit the planks of the front porch with conviction, and when she opened the door, it was to a jovial Benevolence happy hour, not a murderous monster.
Fortified, Gloria stepped into the Friday night party and made a beeline for the bar. She smiled at the whispers. She was giving them something else to think about. “Poor little Gloria Parker” was slowly being replaced with “that Parker girl who took over the Fourth of July.” She’d yet to do anything grand with the planning, but just volunteering was enough to get tongues wagging.