Roses Are Red (Edith's Fatal Love Trilogy Book 1)

by Alexis Murrell

  Rolling my eyes at her, we get up and leave her room. I point out where Aiden and I’s room is, but I purposely bypass it.

  “Wait, so this is where all the magic happens?” she giggles. I thought that she was following right behind me, except she goes directly into our room without me even knowing.

  I rush back to our bedroom. “Yup, where we sleep and get dressed for work.”

  “Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t act like that.”

  I push her back into the hallway and lock the door. “I know what you’re talking about, but I’m choosing to ignore it.”

  “Don’t worry; I have a whole week to get you to spill the beans. You won’t be able to keep things from me forever.” She moves past me slowly while moving a finger up and down in my face. I swat her finger away, then pull on my shirt, checking to make sure everything is covered. She won’t find out everything. This will be the one thing I will make sure she doesn’t find out about.

  I show her the whole house, telling her the history that I learned. Her favorite parts of the house are the swimming pool and the built-in theater—the two places she plans on spending most of her time.

  “What’s down this hallway?” She points down the hallway that I saw Grace being escorted to one time when I saw her coming out of Aiden’s office. There’s only one door, and supposedly this is another section of the house that I haven’t seen. Aiden never showed me when he gave me the grand tour of the place. But I heard from the staff that there’s another section of the house that they don’t clean.

  “I don’t know. I heard that it’s another section of the house. I haven’t checked it out for myself, though.”

  “This is perfect. We can go check it out together, come on,” she encourages.

  Since I’ve never seen this side of the house before, I follow her through. Everything on this side is different; it’s practically empty, like what a house would look like if someone was moving into a new home. Some staff members come out of a room together, talking amongst themselves. When they see us coming, they pause and put their heads down as we pass. Nancy raises her eyebrows at me, and I shrug my shoulders, because I don’t know why they’re scared of us.

  I take the lead and walk over to them. “You guys don’t have to stop talking just because we are here. You can keep doing whatever you’re doing. We’re just looking around.”

  Hesitant on what to do, they walk past us slowly, looking at us from the corners of their eyes, then quickly run into another room.

  “That was weird,” Nancy said.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  I have a feeling that I know why they were so scared. It seems like everyone fears him, including me.

  We continue checking out everything, but most of the rooms are empty, or have things in them, like old, outdated furniture. A lot of the doors that we try to get into are locked.

  “Let’s check out this last room; then we can go back,” I say. I’m tired of being in this area. It freaks me out. I can’t believe he allows his staff to stay over here like this. There’s so much I don’t know about this man. I wish that I knew all of this before getting into a relationship with him.

  Nancy opens the door, and we walk into what seems to be a bedroom. A fully furnished bedroom, where a woman is sitting on the bed. She has her head in a book, so she doesn’t notice us at first. When we walk further into her room, she looks up and stands before us.

  I know this woman.

  “Grace?”

  “Edith, what are you doing here?” I can hear the worry in her voice.

  “I’m giving my best friend a tour of the house, and she wanted to see this side as well,” I explain.

  She shakes her head and begins rubbing her hands down her dress. “You really shouldn’t be on this side.”

  “Huh, why not?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer me. She looks down and plays with her hands.

  “Um, are you going to introduce me?”

  Oh, right, Nancy is here. “Yes, sorry. Nancy, this is Grace. Grace, this is Nancy. She’s one of Aiden’s staff that I met when I moved in here.”

  Nancy puts her hand out, and Grace shakes it, then snatches her hand back quickly. You would have thought that Nancy’s hand burned hers from how quickly she moved.

  “Grace, are you all alone here?” I asked.

  “Yes, I have my own room. Some people don’t get that here.”

  I find this information interesting, because I didn’t know a lot more people lived here. Yes, the house is always filled with people going in and out. However, I didn’t know that Aiden houses some of his staff.

  “I’m glad I ran into you, then. I’ve meant to find you to check up on you.”

  Nancy taps my shoulder, and I look over at her. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you for thinking about me,” Grace says, she keeps going back and forth between playing with her hands or her dress.

  “That’s what friends are for, right?”

  She looks up at me, puzzled.

  “We’re friends?” she whispers.

  I smile at her. “Yes, everyone needs a friend.”

  She whispers to herself the word ‘friend’ before it settles in. Then she begins to smile for the first time. Since I have lived here, not once have I seen her smile. Most of the time, she’s wearing a worried or fearful expression. I understand now why she always looked that way, yet it’s good to see her smile since she doesn’t do it often.

  “We can be friends, too.” We look over at Nancy, whose hand is raised in the air to get our attention like we were back in elementary school. She doesn’t want to be left out of the moment.

  Grace laughs, looking at Nancy. “I don’t know you, but if you’re nice like Edith, then I think we can be friends too.”

  It warms my heart, seeing Nancy befriend Grace. She needs more friends.

  “Why don’t you come to hang out with us for the rest of the week? Aiden is going to be gone, and I’m staying the whole week,” Nancy asks Grace.

  Grace looks over at me, almost like she needs permission that it’s okay for her to join us. I don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s only us girls hanging out. The only person he was worried about was Nancy. He didn’t want her to find out about what’s going on in the house. So, Grace shouldn’t be a problem. She has to deal with him just like me.

  “Yeah, come on, join us,” I nod, letting her know that it will be fine.

  She thinks it over, then tells us okay. Nancy cheers and helps Grace carry some things she wants to bring with her.

  Before we walk out the door, Grace pulls on my arm, stopping me in my tracks. “Um, what about Mr. Delfino?” she whispers to me.

  I touch her hand. “Don’t worry about him if he says anything; I’ll tell him we invited you. Everything will be good.”

  That seems to calm her down, only a little. Nancy yells for us to hurry up before she leaves us, and laughing, we race to catch up with her.

  ALL OF US GATHER IN the kitchen to cook one of my favorite meals—tacos. Whenever Nancy and I used to have sleepovers in high school and college, we would make tacos because it is a fast meal to cook. So, we were able to make it and get back to doing our schoolwork quickly. Another reason is that Nancy likes to tease me, saying that’s the only meal I really know how to cook without someone having to come in and help or supervise me.

  “It’s taco time.” Nancy pulls out all the ingredients needed for us to cook.

  Grace walks over to the fridge and takes out certain items that we may need.

  Nancy playfully hip bumps her. “No, you go and sit down. You’re probably always working; let us cook for you.”

  Grace stands there, hesitant, before going to sit down. She’s not used to someone else doing something for her; usually, it’s her doing something for them. So, I can understand why she wouldn’t be moving quickly to have a seat and only watch.

  “Go on; we have all of this,” I say, waving her to go
sit.

  I kick off things by cutting up some vegetables while Nancy cooks the meat, adding in her special seasoning. I glance over to check on Grace. She’s sitting there looking stiff. There has to be some way to get her to relax like I am. Both of us can go back to our reality after this week, but until then, I want us to have fun.

  I try to strike up a conversation with something that will get her to loosen up.

  “Grace, how long have you worked here?”

  “Um, I’ve worked here for a while, I was young when I began, around you guys’ age.”

  “Wait, you are older than us? I would’ve never figured. You look young still,” Nancy states.

  “Yeah, I’m older than you think,” Grace says in a small voice.

  I find that surprising. I figured she was older than me, but not that much older. It makes me wonder why she started working here in the first place, and why she’s still working here. She has to have dreams that she wants to accomplish other than being a housemaid all her life.

  “Interesting, did you ever go off to college?” I ask. Grace is such a mystery; I can’t figure her out. She’s so quiet, I want to know her story.

  “I went off to college. I just never finished.” She focuses on something outside. “I used to hope that I could go back and finish; I wanted to become a journalist.”

  “It’s never too late to go back and pursue your dream. People go back all the time, at all ages. What do you say?” She doesn’t look too enthused about going back to college. She may not have thought about going since it’s been so long, and that dream was just that—a dream she once had and wanted to achieve, but not anymore.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Why not?” Nancy asks. I can tell she doesn’t like Grace’s answer, just like me.

  “I don’t know, too much time has passed by now. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to go back.”

  Curious, I ask her why she thinks she wouldn’t be allowed to go back, but she grows quiet, not answering any more of our questions. Any hope I had in me finally getting some answers about her dies.

  I let go of pushing her, since it’s not going anywhere; she isn’t going to talk. So, I decide to make small talk as we finish up making dinner. Nancy makes a couple of jokes, teasing Grace to get her to laugh. I tell her stories about the things we used to do whenever we had slumber parties. You can tell she’s really enjoying being around us and laughing at how we act with each other.

  “You guys are crazy. I can see why you both are friends; you really do balance each other out.” She wiggles her fingers between us. “Nancy, if you didn’t have Edith in your life, I feel you would be all over the place. You live life literally to the fullest.”

  Nancy pats me on the back. “I couldn’t agree with you more. She keeps me from going too crazy, and I help her live a little. If it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t even be dating Aiden right now. I had to push her into giving him a chance, and now look at how she’s living.”

  If only she knew what he was doing to me. She wouldn’t be proud of the fact that she helped push us together.

  “Oh, hush, I didn’t need your help with dating. I would have started dating eventually, just not on your timeline,” I argue.

  “Yeah, right. You would have still been single, and still hanging onto your old love if I had not helped you.” She gives me a look that says, you know I’m right.

  Grace waves a hand between us to get our attention. “Wait, what old love?”

  I roll my eyes at Nancy for bringing him up. This was not the time or place to be talking about something that happened in the past. “He’s just someone I used to be in love with. We had plans to be together forever, but things changed. I lost him the same night that I lost my father.”

  Grace frowns and gets up from her seat to come over and hug me. It takes me a minute to register that she’s hugging me. She did not strike me as an affectionate person.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says in my ear.

  Closing my eyes, I hug her back. Nancy pats me on the back, knowing how much they meant to me. They were my whole heart.

  “Thank you,” I say, clearing my throat.

  Grace goes back to her seat. “I know what that loss feels like. Maybe one day, I’ll tell you my story.”

  Hearing her say that makes me smile, it lets me know that to some degree, she feels comfortable enough with me that she wants to tell me about what she has been through.

  “Okay, okay, let’s change the topic, picking something a little lighter,” Nancy interjects. She gets up, taking all our dishes with her to wash up.

  Grace checks the time on the wall. I check with her, noticing how late it is. “Actually, it’s late, and I have to wake up early tomorrow to work on some of my tasks.”

  “I forgot it’s still a workweek, I’m so used to us being able to do an all-nighter whenever we have sleepovers,” Nancy recalls.

  “Yeah, we’re not in college anymore. We’re in the real world,” I tease.

  We clean up the kitchen, making sure it is spotless. But before we part ways with Grace, Nancy asks her if she’s going to hang out with us tomorrow, too.

  “Oh, yeah, I would love to hang out with you guys again. I had a lot of fun,” she says, smiling.

  “Good, we’re hoping that you will hang out with us all this week, it’s going to be fun,” I explain.

  All of us say goodnight and part ways.

  “You know, I like her. I think with a little more time hanging out with us, she will start to come out of her shell and open up more. Showing us the real Grace, and not this one who is closed off. What do you think?” Nancy turns to me before stepping into her room.

  “I think you might be right. She needs to be around us more and feel like she can open up and even make some friends, because I don’t think she has any from what I have spotted,” I say.

  “Let’s keep doing what we’re doing, and hope she keeps coming out of her shell each day that I’m here. Deal?” She puts her hand out, and I shake on it.

  We’re going to make this week the best week Grace has ever had. Hopefully, she’ll feel like she has made some new friends at the end.

  During this whole week, we made sure to include Grace in everything we were doing. We took her on a spa day, which she has never been to before. Then we went shopping and pampered ourselves by getting our hair and nails done. Nancy made sure we took advantage of the house, using everything. The only thing she wanted to save for her last night was the bar.

  “What in the world are you doing in there? It’s been like an hour now, and you still haven’t come out.” Nancy told us we had only thirty minutes to get ready, and all of us meet up.

  It took me a little longer, being that Aiden called me. We only talked two times since he’s been gone, which I am grateful for. He explained that things have been busy where he is, but that he plans to make it up to me when he’s back. I hope he doesn’t, because all he’s going to do is give me another dozen roses and a gift. He may think that it will make everything better between us, but it won’t. I don’t say any of that to him. I just make it seem like everything is perfectly fine between us.

  As for Grace, it only took two days to get her to let down her walls and show Nancy and me who the real Grace is on the inside. We found out that she is funny and competitive when it comes to playing games. She is an incredible writer, which explains why she wanted to enter into journalism. She also showed us a picture of her parents, who died long ago, telling us stories about her wonderful childhood with them.

  “I’m coming, just head down, and I’ll meet you guys there,” I yell back.

  Earlier this week, Grace told us where all the guys hang out, and that they have a pool table and bar. We chose that place to spend our last night together.

  I walk through the door and feel like I’m walking into a real bar. There are two pool tables in the middle of the room, and on the wall is a dartboard and a full-on bar where you can sit at.

&nb
sp; “I’m happy you dressed like we were actually going to a real bar. I was almost worried there,” Grace teases me.

  She’s standing over by the pool table, setting everything up for us to play tonight.

  “I tried, I didn’t feel like having you both gang up on me because I was in my pajamas,” I say.

  Nancy already found her new partner in crime when it comes to messing with me, and Grace loves to tease people if she finds something funny.

  “You make it so easy; I can’t pass up a moment to mess with you.” She playfully shoulder bumps me and walks over to Nancy. Who, by the way, is already digging around the bar looking for who knows what?

  I take a seat at the bar. “What are you looking for?”

  “Wine, it’s my last night here, and I want to go out with a bang,” she replies.

  None of us liked talking about our last night to come. So, we all made a promise not to mention it ever. It didn’t matter if it was the last day, we wouldn’t bring it up so that we could enjoy this time together. Plus, any time we did bring it up, Grace would get sad and switch back to being the old Grace again, causing Nancy to start noticing her mood changes whenever it was brought up. This made her start asking questions that I had to give vague answers to.

  I look over at Grace and see her mood shifting again from hearing what Nancy said. I grab her hand fast, and Nancy stands up quickly, looking horrified.

  “I didn’t mean to talk about this being my last night. It just slipped out,” she rushes to say.

  Grace squeezes my hand. “No, we’re good. I’m fine. Let’s have those drinks.” She nods her head at the drink in Nancy’s hand.

  Nancy pours us all each a glass of wine, and we go over to the pool table and start up a game. Three glasses in, and we don’t know who is winning or losing. We’re just having a fun time playing around.

  It’s my turn to hit a ball, and I’m playing against Grace. Missing by an inch, we all fall to the ground, laughing.

  “We know who won this game,” Nancy laughs.

  Grace gets in position to take her turn when the door opens, and she drops her pool stick. I’m too busy laughing to notice who walked in until I hear his voice.