The whole house smelled like brown sugar, peppers, and melted butter. For once in over twenty four hours my stomach growled at the very first whiff of whatever was on the menu. Charlie’s curiosity got the better of her and she slinked out of my room and downstairs to see exactly what the men were up to. I figured Noah’s sudden departure for the sake of food would have consisted of take-out of some variety; that I smelled and heard the clattering of a busy kitchen standing at the cracked door surprised me.
It occurred to me, as much as I knew about Noah, there were still a great many things I stood to learn about him. After this display of culinary skill perhaps he was the sort who dealt with tragedies best with the need to do something productive to feel alive and like his life mattered. My father always had been the same way. After my mother’s death I don’t think he stopped cooking for a month. When he ran out of people to cook for he just started baking. I was a happy sugar-laden second-grader for a long time. The only difference was that my father, on his best day, was only a mediocre cook. Noah seemed to have his shit together in the kitchen.
The solemn realization there would be few other things I’d get to know about him before I left for the east coast steadily sank in.
Charlie came up the stairs a little while later with a hot plate in one hand and a blue Gatorade bottle tucked under her other arm. She gave me a chastising look like I knew I should not have been out of bed.
“Food, meds, sleep,” she said as she handed me the plate. “Food courtesy of Noah.” She pulled two brand new prescription bottles from her pocket. “Meds courtesy of the pharmacy on the corner.” She gently put her hands on my shoulders, spun me around, and walked me with purpose back to the bed. “And sleep courtesy of the meds. In that order.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared down at the generous serving of a smoked salmon fillet on a bed of steamed rice and veggies. “Wow, Noah really made this?”
She set the bottle of Gatorade and the prescriptions on the night stand. “He did indeed. And it’s scrumptious. Are you good for now? I’m going to hop back downstairs to clean up.”
“Yeah, of course. Don’t let me keep you.”
Charlie vacated quickly, closing the door behind her and leaving me to my first meal since breakfast the day prior. As I ate I thought about how I had to give them credit for keeping my spirits up. Charlie hadn’t really known me from Eve, but she opened her house and her heart to me in my time of need simply because Howard asked her to. She seemed genuine about it, too. There was Howard, offering the best moral support I could ever hope for. And there was Noah, caring for me so fiercely he cooked for me despite my not wanting to see him.
Speak of the devil, though, and he appears.
There was a soft knock on my door and Noah’s voice from the other side, “Piper?”
I set my plate aside and stood up, ready to go lock myself in the bathroom if I had to just to keep from seeing him. This was hard enough just knowing he was there, I’d have buckled completely if I actually saw him.
“Don’t come in,” I said in a shaky voice.
“No, don’t—don’t worry, I won’t. I just wanted to know how you liked the meal.”
I relaxed and walked to the door so I wouldn’t have to raise my voice. “So far I love it.”
“Good. You know, when I promised you the best smoked salmon you’d ever tasted this was not the way I envisioned making it for you. But there it is.”
“It tastes just as good. The Gatorade’s an unusual pairing, though.”
He laughed awkwardly, “Yeah. I guess I didn’t think. I must have grabbed it from the fridge out of habit since it happened to be there. My mom used to give it to me when I got sick as a kid. It wasn’t quite as boring as water and not as overpowering as the herbal teas she made for herself. If you don’t want it I can get you something else.”
“No. It’s great. Thank you.” I smiled a bit and made a bid to change the subject. “How are your parents? You never told me about them in all this time.”
“Because they’re pretty boring by comparison. Average as families go. No drama to speak of outside of their two screw-up sons.”
“You’re not as screwed-up as you might think.”
“My brother almost killed you because of me and I was blind to it, sweetness. My name may as well be synonymous with the word screw-up; at least in the definition of constantly going about things the wrong way.”
“I appreciate the self-deprecation for my benefit, Sir” I said.
Sir? That came out much earlier than I expected it to. In fact, I never expected it to come out of my mouth again at all after what happened.
It was difficult to hide a renewed mirth in my voice now that we were actually speaking, though. I kept thinking back on the last time we were together at my apartment; how he claimed he was broken and I didn’t care. Noah was special to me because I harbored no desire whatsoever to fix him. He was perfect as he was; flaws and all. Any extra growing or fixing of himself he wanted to do of his own accord was icing on the cake.
“You still…”
“Old habits,” I corrected quickly. “It’s too soon to say.”
“Understandable.”
“Oh, look at us.” I sighed at the irony and impossibility of, well, us. “Quite the pair we make, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Only that I’m broken now too.”
Noah fell silent.
I rested my head against the door. My fingers trailed shakily up my collarbone to my neck to where his collar sat ever so briefly. No matter how happy hearing his voice on the other side of the door made me, my choice to move back to New York was all but set in stone in my mind. I tried to find the best way of telling him what happened at Ethan’s without really telling him what happened in excruciating detail. He deserved to know at least a little.
“He took the collar you gave me. Cuffs, too. Made me cut them right off with my own hand and threw them against the wall like they were a little girl’s plastic jewelry. With the exception of beating me senseless he never touched me, just let the others have at. And Selene was there right at the very end… she was so cold. He won’t ever let you be happy, you know. Selene practically attested to it. When they dropped me out there he brought a gas can and said if I didn’t leave L.A. he’d destroy everything I love. I got the hint.”
There was a bit of a strain in his voice after those details were revealed. “Don’t… don’t worry about any of that right now. Eat, before it gets cold. Then try to get some sleep, all right?”
“Hey, will you do me a favor? Can you call Declan or Anya and have them swing by my apartment? Cocoa’s been alone all this time. Since she partially helped save my life the least I can do is make sure she’s fed.”
The smile returned in his voice. “She’ll be taken care of.”
“Are you going home tonight?”
“Not likely. I’ll be out here in the den if you need me. Howard’s couch is deceptively comfortable.”
I shuddered to think about the amount of stress this caused him as much as it did me. I was sure knowing his brother did this to me would wreak havoc on his night terrors.
“Don’t you have a pretty specific rule about not sleeping in strange places?”
“Yes, and I’ll risk it.”
{CHAPTER TWENTY THREE}
Charlie had long since gone to bed. I was left alone in the guest room upstairs to find some form of rest between the twinges of pain and fear of my own dreams. Vicodin only moderately deadened the pain. I mostly floated right on the edge of darkness for a few minutes before a white-hot tremor shot through me in one place or another and snapped me awake with a hiss and a whimper. This occurred more times than I could count throughout the night.
Fuck! I hated being an invalid! This wasn’t me. I was too strong for this to destroy me. I was too strong to huddle in a corner and allow this pain to go unanswered. I wanted to believe wholeheartedly I wasn’t a victim; that was what I always hea
rd Anya say about her patients. While she couldn’t ever give details, some days she’d have this air of hopelessness to her which screamed her hatred of humanity because of a woman she was trying to help. She always tried to tell them they weren’t a victim but a survivor. It was a loaded word though not altogether untrue. Perhaps I fell somewhere in between.
I woke sometime just before dawn to the television in the den where Howard and Noah had been taking turns standing vigil over me. That was a little awkward in itself. I kept telling them I was okay, that they didn’t need to worry about me. Apart from a terrifying sense that no matter where I went I wasn’t safe I really was fine. I was alive, and that was what mattered. Everything else was in flux. My whole life had been one series of adaptations after another. This was just one more I’d need to get used to. Granted, this was one I could file under the ‘I vote that never happens again’ tag. Neither of them would hear any of my protests. While they respected my desire to remain alone save for Charlie’s check-ins, they refused to leave the immediate area unless one of them was there to keep watch—over me or for Ethan, I wasn’t sure.
At first I couldn’t be certain what was being said on the news station as the volume was gradually turned up on the TV. Frantic reporters were scurrying to get a live picture of something. Their exasperation and flagrant media outrage dripped from phrases such as “Top Story”, “Massive Blaze”, and “Bel Air”. Having no television in my room, I pried myself from bed to sneak a closer look. Moving was slow-going considering every millimeter of my body was somehow tied to one bruise or another. Now that I’d been granted a bit of rest and the muscles relaxed it seemed to hurt even more to stretch them.
When I reached the door it pulled open without creaking. I stood just inside the frame and watched the chaos through the crack. There was a good view of the television from that spot. It faced my room at a slight angle. Howard sat on the sofa which faced away from me. Once the reporters began to speak again my attention was immediately averted from him and to the news.
The female reporter at the scene accepted the handoff from the studio. “Thank you, Lisa. As you can see behind me, fire crews are still attacking this inferno from all angles forty minutes after the 911 call came in from this prominent Bel Air neighborhood. The call was made by a nearby resident who said she smelled smoke and, when she walked into her driveway to investigate, saw the glow of the fire that began somewhere on—”
As the newscast went on I noticed Howard becoming increasingly agitated. Just then I saw Noah ascending the stairs out of the corner of my eye. His gaze was locked to the beige carpeted floor in front of him as if the language being spoken on the television was completely foreign. I ducked back into the room a little further to hide in the shadows.
Howard heard him and looked over just as he reached the top of the stairs. “Christ, Noah. Where have you been? Come look at this.”
“Hm?”
Howard flipped the remote in his hand and sank back into the leather, using it as a sort of pointer toward the newscast. “That’s Ethan’s house. Up in flames. To think… Piper could have been in that.”
My stomach did a somersault. Ethan’s house burning on live TV the morning after he practically tortured me to death couldn’t have been a coincidence. Someone set that fire, and I wouldn’t have put it past Ethan to do it himself just to get rid of the evidence.
Noah’s face remained awash in a distant albeit pointed mask as he blinked to look from the TV to his friend.
“How unfortunate.” It was not the tone of a man shocked to hear such news.
Howard let the remote fall from his grasp and into the gap between himself and the arm of the couch. “Noah…” He stood up and stared at him. “Where were you, exactly?”
“Just went for a walk, Howard.”
After a long moment he replied knowingly, “You reek of gasoline.”
“Best take a shower then.”
He nodded once, slowly, and with a strange mix of mortification and understanding. “Yes. Best you do.”
Imagining Noah dousing the inside of Ethan’s Bel Air estate with gasoline and setting it on fire struck a very specific sort of chord in me. Nobody had ever gone that far for me before. Ethan deserved nothing less after what he threatened me with. I’d even say the punishment fit the crime to the letter. The place where he kept and tortured me was gone, and hopefully the hint that he ought to never consider doing it again—to me or anyone else—was received. At the same time it frightened me Noah was capable of arson. Any evidence of my being at Ethan’s house at all was now wiped clean. Apart from the photos of my injuries and my word there was little else to convict him if it got that far; if I decided to take it that far.
Noah, how could you be so stupid!
I flung the door open and stepped into the low light of the den. “Noah, wait.”
He stopped mid-stride on the way to the bathroom to look back at me. I was somewhat pleased he acted as if nothing at all had changed in my appearance. I watched him study my face as I studied his. He didn’t appear as shocked or appalled as I expected.
Finally I broke the silence. “Was anybody hurt?”
Noah slipped his hand into his pocket as he approached me. He stopped almost too close for comfort and I started to backtrack into the haven of the guest room. His boldness, though, and sudden casualness prevented me from backing in the whole way. He took my hand in his, softer than he had ever touched me before. My fingers practically floated atop his. The heavy contents of his palm were emptied into mine.
“Not a soul.”
I felt the restraint he struggled to maintain at the same moment the full-bodied aroma of gasoline flooded my senses. He released my hand and disappeared into the bathroom.
The reporter on the scene confirmed Noah’s claim as the door clicked shut. “Miraculously, nobody was in the house when the blaze started. The owner of the home left on business mere hours before, and all staff had been sent away on leave at the beginning of the weekend.”
My breath caught in my throat when my fingers uncurled to find the tattered remains of my collar staring up at me.
***
“I knew he was mad. I guess I just didn’t expect him to go that far.”
I stared at the mangled weave of chain-link in my hands, fingers idly taking in the coolness of the metal that graced my neck for less than a day before it was forcibly removed. Charlie sat beside me on the bed. Even though the doors from both the bathroom and the den remained unlocked, neither Noah nor Howard let themselves in at any point. They allowed me to have my space and talk with Charlie as if we’d been long-time friends.
“It was my fault,” she said. “Has to be.”
I shot her an incredulous glance. “In what way was any of that your fault?”
Charlie sighed and timidly tucked a piece of hair behind her ear before she looked up at me again. “Noah asked me to show him the pictures before I went to bed. I warned him, but he insisted. So I did.”
“What did he say?” I asked at length.
“It’s not so much what he said as it is what he did. The photos hit him pretty hard. He excused himself to the back garden for some air, and proceeded to get sick.”
That explained why he wasn’t full of shock and horror earlier that morning after I came out of the room. He’d already had his own form of freak-out. Noah’s adequate and rather expected revulsion to the images still hurt. The wounds must have been as ugly as they felt.
When I didn’t respond Charlie made an effort to justify it. “He hates himself for what’s happened. I suppose that’s why he decided to get even with Ethan.”
I shrugged, unsure of exactly how I was supposed to react. “Maybe.”
She nudged my arm. “For what it’s worth I’d be flattered if someone burned down a house for my honor.”
“It’s not about honor. Well, it is. But it’s not. If—no, not if, when. When the cops figure out it was arson there will be an investigation. I’ll have to tell the
m what Ethan did if it leads here.”
“And, if there’s any justice in the world, they’ll give Noah a metal for only committing arson and not out-right murdering him.”
I admired her optimism. “If only.”
“If the cops come snooping around we’ll give Noah an alibi. I’m not above lying to the police for you both, especially when Ethan deserved it.”
“Thank you, Charlie. Do you know if he happened to get in touch with Anya or Declan about stopping by my place?”
She nodded. “Anya’s going over today to take care of your cat. She also wanted to come over here and see if she could offer her services, whatever that means.”
A little knot of uncertainty tightened in my stomach. Of course Anya offered her services. Such was her profession and practically ingrained in her blood. I clarified it for Charlie. “It means she wants to play therapist.”
“May not be a bad idea. While I’m happy to be an ear for you, I’m not exactly proficiently qualified for this sort of thing. My talents stop at listening. There’s no advice I can give you that’d be worth a damn.”
“You’ve done more than you know.”
She plucked a pen from the nightstand and pulled a notepad out of the drawer. As she handed them to me she said, “Write down Anya’s number. I’ll give her a call.”
***
Anya arrived two days later with Declan in tow. My plan to not see anyone for the duration of my recovery appeared to be thwarted at every turn. They meant well, that much was true. While Anya came up to see me, Declan busied Noah downstairs. Anya smiled at me the way she always did as if nothing about me had changed.
“Hey lady, I come bearing supplies,” she said as she shut the door behind her.
She dropped a duffle bag on the bed beside me and started sifting through its contents. Fresh underwear and lightweight shirts from my wardrobe were among the much-welcomed contents. So was my laptop. At least I could contact Dr. Fairbanks and inform him I wasn’t dead. This wasn’t exactly what I pictured my first week as a Team Lead being like. Anya also pulled out the comfort food to end all comfort foods for anyone of the female persuasion: chocolate. Lindt milk chocolate to be precise. My Anya knew me well.
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