by TylerRose.
Standing outside the door to watch the conflict, Demitrius stepped aside to let her pass. He looked to the visitor standing helpless on the narrow walk to the steps.
“I don’t think you should take any of that personally,” he said.
“I don’t,” Julian replied. “She’s hurting in too many ways I can’t help her with. Please don’t leave her alone. She makes dangerously bad decisions when she’s left alone.”
He disappeared. Demitrius exhaled a hard breath. He’d inherited half of Jerome’s businesses, all of the warehouse and its contents. Now, it seemed, he’d also inherited the mess Jerome had left behind in the personage of a girl named Tyler. He took out his phone to call his Mother.
“Mama, I’m not going to be home for a few days. I have some things I have to take care of. Call Mrs. Jones if you need to go to the store. Don’t go alone.”
“I am capable of taking care of myself, Demitrius,” his mother scolded. “I’ll be here when you get home, whenever that be.”
“Thanks, Mama. I love you.”
He went inside, locking the screen and inside doors behind himself.
“The building is being watched,”she said to Landra Ahr as she passed his room.
Shutting the bedroom door but not locking it, she sent the vidpad back to Julian’s desk. She would have no property of theirs. They would have no property of hers, which meant bringing the painting and her still-packed suitcase and messenger bag to herself from the station. Her other clothes appeared on the bed.
Suitcase emptied, she created two duplicates and repacked everything she would not need in the next few days. She tied a leather shoelace onto one handle, a black shoelace on another and a white on the third, to help her remember which one held what clothes.
Light tapping of a knuckle on the door. “Can I come in.”
She opened the door with a thought, halfway through a joint.
“That was pretty intense.”
“I’m tired of talking,” she said, handing the joint over. She slid her legs into the bed, under the blanket. “I want to smoke a joint and go to sleep for a while. I’m wore out.”
He helped her finish the joint.
“I’ll be in the living room.”
“You don’t have to stay at all,” she told him.
“Of course I do. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I left and something happened. I’m staying for a few days. If you need me, you know where to find me.”
Joint finished, he left her to rest. In the living room, he started pushups and hand stands with the news on. May as well get in a workout while there was nothing else to do.
“Someone is coming up the back stairs,” Landra Ahr said through the television.
Demitrius was there in four seconds, gun in hand, to see a white dude in a light brown suit. Fed of some sort. He tapped on the door in a very un-Fed like manner. Demitrius opened the heavy inner door to talk through the screen.
“My name is David Brooks. I know my daughter Tyler is here. May I speak with her, please?”
“If I say no, whatever agency you work for gonna come bustin’ down my door?” Demitrius asked.
“No. My agency doesn’t do that on our own soil and they don’t know I’m here. Please. I haven’t seen her since February of last year. She’s not in any trouble. This is purely a personal visit.”
“Wait here. I’ll see what she says.”
He shut the door and locked it. Going into Jerome’s room, he found her sitting up and into the first half hour of Empire Strikes Back.
“There’s a guy out here says he’s your father. He wants to talk to you.”
“Did you let him in?” she asked.
“He’s out back on the deck.”
She stopped the movie. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Demitrius went out and sat at the table with the stranger, not saying a word other than “she’ll be right out.”
Dressed but with bare feet, hair combed, eyes as accusatory as when she’d been arguing with Julian, she stopped at the corner of the table.
“This the right guy?” Demitrius asked.
“Yeah, that’s him. He’s always had bad timing.”
“Jesus, Tyler, what happened?” David asked, leaving the chair.
Hands up stopped him from hugging her.
“It’s been a bad week and I’m in a really bad mood, Dad. What do you want?”
“I couldn’t find you when the checks came through. I’ve deposited the insurance money into an account in your name. You get hers and the second husband’s. Also the money from her retirement account,” he said, reaching into a pocket to hand her a savings account book. “And this. I had a team go through the remains of the house. Not much was there and salvageable.”
He picked up a shoebox off the table and offered it to her. She took it, not lifting the lid to look.
“Surveillance on this building and these people will cease,” she said. “None of them are in contact with Jerome and Jerome isn’t going to be coming back here.”
“Did he do this to you?” David asked, indicating Demitrius and her face.
“Your people will know damn well he didn’t. I wasn’t here before yesterday.”
“Where have you been?”
“Given that this planet was attacked by aliens in February, I think you can believe me when I say I was traveling around the galaxy.”
“What can you tell us?”
“Nothing.”
“But—Tyler—you have information we can use.”
She stepped backwards away from him. “Get off this property. Don’t come back. Ever. Call off the dogs and leave these people alone.”
“I don’t know that I can make other agencies—“
“The hell you can’t,” she cut him off, too dangerously calm. “You are in the CIA for fuck’s sake. Tell the FBI and any other agency to leave us all alone. These people saved your asses. They deserve to be left alone. Stop the Feds from looking for Jerome. Leave him in peace.”
“He has an alien being with him—“
“So what!” she growled a sound that caught Demitrius’s attention. “She’s a thousand billion light years from home and scared out of her wits you backwards assholes are going to slice her open and dissect her. Leave her alone!”
“There’s a threat on the end of that sentence,” David said.
“Only if you make me issue it, Dad. So don’t. I’m past the point of giving a shit and pushing me will make things get really messy really fast. Now that’s not a threat. It’s a warning. And it’s the only one you’re going to get. Leave. Now.”
She went inside, back to her movie.
“So that’s that,” Demitrius said. “I’d do what she says if I were you.”
“I wasn’t around when she needed me,” David said. “It is my fault and I am sorry for that. Now she doesn’t need me and I realize I missed almost all of her childhood. She’s my only living daughter and I love her. Please tell her I love her. It’s okay.”
Demitrius watched him walk down the back stairs and get into a vehicle and drive around the corner of the building. He visually double-checked all doors and locks while Landra Ahr ran a test of all the scanning systems. Satisfied all was secure, he went upstairs. Without a word, he went into Jerome’s room, took off his shoes, and sat on the other side of the bed to watch the rest of the movie with her.
The shoebox was on her lap and she needed almost another half hour to open it. A little ceramic kitten she had painted and glazed herself and given to her mother as a Christmas gift when she was a child. Staring up at her, it demanded to know where she was that day. Tyler’s eyes went wet, misting over hot and thick.
Both sets of wedding rings in a small box. She’d never taken the first set off when she’d divorced David. She’d moved them to her other hand. Having them here meant they’d found her body and she’d been wearing the rings.
Then she saw the ruby and pearl ring. A heart shaped ruby with one pearl half its size on
left and right, set in gold. Given to Mary by her mother Adelaide when Mary turned 18. Tyler picked it up and slid it onto the forefinger of her left hand. She put the lid back on, the rest of the items of no significance at the moment. Maybe another time. She set it aside on the end table.
Demitrius sparked up a joint to share. Hearing her continue to fight and sniffle back tears, he wondered at what point he should say something. What was there to say? Her mother’s entire life had boiled down to a few trinkets in a nondescript cardboard shoebox.
“How old are you now? I know you were 17 in March last year.”
“I don’t know. What day is it?” she asked, dull and emotionless.
“July twentieth.”
“Then I am nineteen years and twenty four days old,” she said.
Still a baby. On her own for a year and a half already, close enough to alone for the three years before that, and dealing with some seriously heavy shit. Alone. He’d been witness to the smallest part of her troubles, the aftermath of incidents both seen and unseen. Just sitting beside her in near silence wasn’t enough. He lifted a hand to walk his fingers up her shoulder to the base of her neck in a pulling sensation.
“Come here, baby.”
Tentative eyes looking at him, he held his position while she read his soul. She made the move to lay her head on his chest. Small as she was, needing the warmth of a human being. He was a stranger…but he wasn’t. He didn’t have a deceptive bone in his body where she was concerned. He’d not lied to her, not told any half-truths. He thought of Jerome like a brother from another mother. He was a good man with a gentle soul. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t kick ass if needed. He would. He’d already had her back while she argued with Julian and told her father off. No questions asked, not a hesitation in his thoughts. She needed and he was there.
“Your dad said he was sorry for not being around when you needed him and he loves you. I know none of that helps you now but he asked me to say it.”
“No, it sure doesn’t. I just never felt so alone before in my life.”
“You’re not alone, baby. Jerome gave me the warehouse and wanted me to let anyone who needed a place stay here. Apparently he meant you without knowing he meant you. You can stay as long as you need to and I’ll stay with you as long as you need me to.”
Silence, watching the movie until it was over and she took it out.
“You got out Jerome’s tonfa and sai,” he noticed, picking up a tonfa.
“They seemed the easiest for me to throw if someone came in,” she said.
“Would you like to learn how to really use them?”
“Okay.”
In the weapons end of the room, he showed her how to hold the tonfa, how to swing them, block with them. He stopped when she winced in pain.
“Are you sure you don’t have some broken ribs?” he asked.
“I did a few weeks ago. Couple cracked ones.”
“How few weeks ago?” he asked, sincerely concerned.
“Five? Six? I guess. I sorta lost some days over the last couple weeks. I can’t be sure exactly how long without asking Julian. I don’t feel like talking to him right now.”
“They’re only just finishing healing. We’re done for today,” he decided. “Rather stop short than reinjure you.”
She gave him such a puzzled expression that he wondered if he had a blueberry between his teeth.
“What?” he asked.
“You. Other than Chen, you’re the only person I’ve met since I left here who did not have some sort of ulterior motive or personal agenda, who didn’t want to manipulate me into something or get something out of me. The first man to look at me and not see a piece of female meat to fuck or possess. I honestly don’t know how to feel about that.”
“You don’t have to feel anything about it. Would you like to go for a drive? When’s the last time you got in a car and just drove for hours and hours?”
She had to think on that. “I can’t remember.”
“Then get dressed and we’ll go for a while. We’re already halfway there, being this far out and it’s only going on one o’clock.”
He turned away to put the tonfa and sai in their places on the wall. When he turned around again, she had her shirt off and he saw the extent of the bruising. She was covered. Her entire back. Fingers on the neck and shoulders, hand and fist prints down her back and ribs.
“Jesus Christ, Tyler. How can you even breathe?” he asked before he could stop the words.
She twisted to look over her shoulder, trying to see her back. “I’m sure it looks worse than it feels.”
T-shirt on and pulled down, she reached for jeans. He said nothing of the dozens of bruises down her legs, instead going around the bed to get a couple joints from the drawer.
“No, wait,” she said, and stretched out over the bed. “Those are the originals. Don’t take those.”
“Originals?” he questioned.
She smiled up at him, hand on his, and two joints appeared in her hand. “Put the originals back. We take copies.”
He looked at the two joints in her hand. “They smoke like the real ones?”
“Every joint you’ve smoked with me has been a copy,” she informed him.
“Okay, then. I’ll leave a note for Chen in case he gets back before we do.”
Demitrius had a 1969 Camaro Z28 in yellow with black and red flames. Joint already fired up, windows open to the warmth of the day, he headed up Garden Road to Sylvania-Metamora Road and turned West.
Silent for a while, without the radio on, she phased in and out while staring at the fields on her side of the road. Emotionally numb, farmhouses dotted the open spaces and miles of corn streamed by. The occasional cattle or dairy farm broke up the endless fields. She burst out laughing to see a male horse trying to mount up and the female taking three steps forward to thwart him.
“Not today, buddy!” Demitrius crowed.
The ice broken, they talked on little things. He had grown up in the poorer neighborhoods around Hawley Street. She’d always been an East Side girl. He was ten years older than she, had been friends with Jerome’s older brother Terrance. Then Terrance had died and he’d become friends with Jerome during those hardest years between 15 and 18.
He knew Kevin Neiland, Jerome’s attorney through that time of many family court hearings and probation meetings. She did not talk about her relationship with the lawyer who also ran one of the regional motorcycle clubs.
They drove on straight on through Berkey and Metamora, Ohio, saw a bank sign that read 93 degrees. With the winds of the road and the moving car, it didn’t seem that hot out. At Royalton, they stopped at a little gas station to fill up, use a toilet and get a soda. They turned South onto Route 109 and then right onto Route 20.
Without thinking what he was doing, he took his hand off the gearshift and rest it on her knee. She said nothing. He’d not done it as an overt move, but because he was accustomed to doing so with his former girlfriend…who had been killed downtown when the Owens Corning building had come down. They often drove these roads and he’d forgotten it wasn’t her in the seat beside him.
“Sorry,” he said when he lifted his hand to shift down at a stop sign.
“I didn’t mind.”
He held her hand through Chesterfield and Gorham and they turned South onto Ohio Road 66 at Fayette. South for a number of miles and under the Ohio Turnpike. Left onto 24 and that turned into Alternate Route 20 at the little town of Archbold.
“Can we stop there?” she asked, seeing the sign for the Christmas Shop.
He turned into the parking lot and they stepped into Christmas in July. Several rooms of everything Christmas, her troubles were forgotten for a while. They sat down to have a cup of tea and a snack in the Tea room. They didn’t linger, getting back on the road shortly after their little pot was finished.
Her mood had been lightening steadily in the open space of huge fields and long, straight roads. He found she was a charming youn
g woman capable of conversing on a wide variety of topics.
More farms. Silos, little houses, campers in the drive way, beet farms and soybeans. They drove on to the East through Clinton, Wauseon, Delta and Swanton, past lines of idyllic houses.
Stopping at another gas station, because he didn’t like the tank getting below three quarters full these days, Tyler went into the store to hand over the money and bought something else she thought she might need later.
They followed Alt Route 20 until it became 295, and then became Route 2. They drove under the Turnpike again and kept on until they reached South Reynold’s Road. Right turn onto it, then another into the parking lot. They made one last stop, supper at Giuseppe’s restaurant.
She was self-conscious in the very busy restaurant, eyes sweeping around the entry to assess the energies of patrons and employees. There was a line to get in, but he didn’t stand in it. He went directly inside, to the left, around the bar and into the large open dining room. There was a dance floor on the left, then a set of pool tables on a raised platform in the middle.
Demitrius took her to a booth near the kitchen doors, and flipped the “Reserved for Owner” sign over.
“You own this place?” she asked, sliding a third of the way into the round booth that could easily accommodate seven people.
“I always owned a piece of it. Now I own 49% in silent partnership with the chef. Jerome gave me his share along with everything else he owned.”
“Mr. Detweiler. Good to see you. What can I bring you?” the waitress asked.
Tyler ordered an iced tea, unsweetened and he got a soda. Watching her eyes dart around in disconcertion, he realized a place like this was probably difficult for her. A telepath in the middle of a couple hundred non-telepaths, the noise was doubly loud to her.
“Would you rather take it home to eat?” he asked her.
Her relief was palpable as she nodded.
“How about a pizza? We can take that home easily enough.”
She nodded again. The waitress was disappointed to not have a bigger order. They sipped on their drinks while waiting for the box to come out. Pizza, salad, cheesecake for dessert, Tyler held the boxes on her lap for the easy drive back to the warehouse. Straight down South Reynolds, left onto Heatherdowns, and just past Cass Road, they were home. Such an odd feeling to be driving these roads after so long on space stations, ships and other planets.