by Zoey Parker
“So, that’s what you’ve been doing?” I grinned at her. “Maybe this’ll be a break for you, then,” I said, reaching forward and plucking the plastic bag with the letter from her jacket. “I need some help analyzing this.”
Rosa grinned at me. “And just what do you want me to do about that, Jace?” She had a great smile and dazzling brown eyes, and, for a moment, I found myself lost in their depths.
“Whatever you can do,” I said. “I guess.” I grinned at her. “You got any cop friends?”
Rosa licked her lips. “I know some people,” she said after a pause. “What are you looking for?”
I shrugged. “Fingerprints, if they’re there,” I said. “If there aren’t any there, then I guess whatever DNA you can get from the paper.”
Rosa threw her head back and laughed. “DNA? Seriously? This isn’t a cop show, honey,” she said, in her lightly accented English. “I’ll have them check for prints, though,” she added when she saw the look on my face.
“Thanks,” I said sourly. “I know I’m not science whiz, but you might be able to find something. Oh, and I touched the letter. So my prints are gonna be there, but hopefully you can find some other ones.”
Rosa nodded. “I’ll tell my friends,” she said. She took a sip of her tea and looked at me with a smirk on her face. “You look good,” she said. “Not just nice. Good.”
I had to look away. I wasn’t used to taking compliments, especially not from a woman like Rosa. I didn’t like talking too personally with anyone, but there was something about her that inspired me to feel more comfortable. “I’ve been good,” I said with a smirk. I stretched my arms over my head.
Rosa gasped. “Oh, wow,” she said, reaching forward and grabbing my left hand. “Are congratulations in order?”
“Ha,” I said with a smirk. “Not hardly. It was a business deal.”
Rosa shook her head. “If it were just business, you wouldn’t be wearing that ring,” she said with a catty smile. “I know men like you. Men like you don’t wear rings unless they want to.”
I glanced down, suddenly more conscious than ever of the feel of gold encircling my finger. “Seriously,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just an arrangement.”
Rosa raised her eyebrows at me. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Don’t you go anywhere.”
Rosa stood up from the table and sashayed off into the kitchen. I heard the sound of her low heels tapping around on the floor. I frowned to myself. I didn’t see what the big fucking deal was about. Rosa knew my ways, hell, she’d been one of my ways quite a few times. She knew what my deal was.
But she also knows about Margot, I thought. I let out a sigh. When I’d first met Rosa, the wounds from Margot’s death were still pretty raw. It had been a couple of years, but she hit me hard. Plus, I’d been so young when we were together. Margot had been my first real relationship, the only adult relationship I’d ever had. I was sure we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. I’d told Rosa about her one night after we’d fucked. We were lying in bed, and she’d asked me if I’d ever been in love.
“I could tell you,” I said, rolling over onto my side, “but then I’d have to kill you.” I grinned at her.
Rosa didn’t take the joke. “I don’t think that’s true,” she said softly. “I think you have been in love, and you just don’t want to admit it.”
I flopped onto my back and stared hard at the ceiling. “You don’t know that, though,” I said.
Rosa laughed shortly. “You men are all the same,” she said, turning to face me. “You think you’re impossible to read, like no woman could ever figure out your secrets.”
I shook my head. “That ain’t true,” I replied, even though she was more on the nose than I would have liked to admit. “I just went through a breakup, but I was a kid. I didn’t know shit.”
Rosa laughed. “It’s not that. It’s just, I can tell. You’re removed when you’re with me. I can tell you loved someone once, that you opened up and gave someone everything.”
Her words were a little too close to the truth. I got out of bed and yanked my pants on, looking in the dim light for my shirt. “I gotta run,” I said.
“Come on,” she said. She rolled on her belly. “Tell me. I don’t care about your past, Jace, and it won’t make me run away. But sometimes you need to get things off your chest.”
I sat back down on the edge of the bed. Not looking at her, I told her everything. How we met at a bar, how our first kiss was magical. How she tasted like sugar, and how I wanted to carry her away and never let anyone else have her.
“She died,” I finished. “She died, and there was nothing I could do to save her.”
Rosa’s warm hand on my shoulder was comforting, but suddenly I had the feeling things were about to become uncomfortable and emotional. I stood up and grabbed my jacket, tossing it over my shoulder.
“Thanks for talking,” Rosa said when I was almost out of the room. “I can tell it helped you.”
Rosa shook me out of my daydream when she sat down at the table and pushed a flute of champagne towards me.
“What’s this?” I squinted down. “Nothing too expensive, I hope.”
Rosa laughed. “I had to toast the new groom,” she said. We clinked glasses together and drank.
“Thanks.” The champagne was good: not too sweet, perfectly dry and crisp on the tongue. I downed my glass in two swallows, then I stood up.
“You gonna be okay?” Rosa eyed me. “I don’t know when I’ll have results on this,” she added, tapping the letter, “but it shouldn’t be too long. I’d say a couple of days. That all right with you?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her I’d just remembered our talk about Margot, but I had a feeling she knew.
As I walked out the front door and climbed behind the wheel of my car, I realized she was likely right. It wasn’t just that I’d married Katie for protection. No, I’d wanted something from her, too. Turning the ring around on my finger, I stared off into the horizon.
I just don’t know what it is that I want. What a fuckin’ mystery.
Chapter 11
Katharina
When Kenny got there, he plopped down in front of the television and grabbed a beer from the fridge.
I stood there, watching him, feeling nervous. “Are you going to get drunk?” I cringed; my voice came out sounding much more harshly than I meant it to.
Kenny turned towards me. “Nah,” he said with a grin. “I’d have to drink, like, fifteen of these to even get a buzz.”
I swallowed hard, glad that he hadn’t noticed, or at least, acknowledged, my rudeness. “I’m going to go to my room,” I said finally.
Kenny nodded. “Yell if you need anything. I dunno when Jace is coming home.”
I stomped to the other side of the house, feeling more pissed off than I had any right to be. I didn’t know why I was so mad. It wasn’t like a real marriage, where Jace would have to tell me where and when he was going someplace, or when he’d be coming back home. I didn’t have a right to know this stuff at all, so it bothered me that I was taking it so personally. It wasn’t like Jace was doing this to hurt me deliberately. I knew that; I wasn’t being stupid.
But not being able to get to the bottom of my own emotions was always frustrating to me. When I was with Troy, any time I got mad, he acted like my emotions had no place being where they were. He gaslighted me, and every time I was upset, he’d spin it to make it seem like I was being crazy. It sounded stupid, but I fell for it every single time. After all, he was my first real adult relationship. He was the one I trusted, the one I thought I loved.
I shook my head. Katie, you have a lot to learn about relationships, I thought to myself. You really do.
But the funny thing was I didn’t know how I was going to learn any of that with Jace. Jace was great, but he wasn’t the warm, cuddly kind of guy I normally would have wanted. He was a lot like my father.
> Sitting down on the bed, I pouted. My dad had been a good guy, but he’d been a strict father. I wasn’t allowed to date, and I wasn’t allowed to hang out with my friends late on school nights. Dad always suspected that I was trying to sneak around with boys, but the truth was nothing so shady as that. Normally, I was interested in hanging out with my girlfriends and listening to them talk about their experiences. Even though I desperately wanted a boyfriend, to be in love, I was too shy. And I was too tall; most of the guys at school barely came up to my chin.
Frowning, I stood up and walked over to the closet. The room I’d slept in the first night at Jace’s was pretty sparse, but I wondered what he had locked away. At first, I was disappointed. The closet had a clear plastic bag with another duvet cover and some things that looked like old textbooks. I sighed in frustration and went to close the door. Somehow, something got knocked off balance, and then suddenly the floor at my feet was littered with photographs.
Bingo. Satisfied, I sat down and started digging through them. There were a lot of typical shots—Jace with his guys at strip clubs, Jace with his guys at bike shows. I rolled my eyes at a series of photos that looked like someone’s bachelor party; Jace was reading something off a piece of paper to a guy with a cake-covered stripper in his lap. But after a moment, I laughed. The guys were just having fun, and nothing looked particularly dangerous, just a bit sexist.
Finding the photos in the spare closet made me wonder what else Jace was hiding. I slipped into the hallway, careful not to disturb Kenny, another beer in his hand, and padded down to the closet outside of Jace’s bedroom. This closet was much better organized, with old clothes in boxes and some photo albums that looked like they were falling apart. Hope rose inside of me as I grabbed one of them and tiptoed into Jace’s bedroom.
It’s your bedroom, too. But it didn’t feel like my bedroom. It felt like a boyfriend’s bedroom. Blushing at the memory of last night, I curled up on the bed and dragged the album onto my lap.
The Silent Havoc: 1982-1992 was printed on the inside cover. I grinned. There was my dad in the middle of the first page. He was standing with his arms crossed over his chest, giving the middle finger to the camera. Whoever had snapped the shot had caught him laughing, and I was astounded to see how young he looked. Even though the photos were taken before I was born, there was a strong resemblance between us. We both had the same piercing green eyes and straight nose. Matthias had dark brown hair, but, even so, we looked related all the same.
“Dad,” I murmured, running my hand over the page. “It’s you. I can’t believe it.” I turned the page and scanned through the photos with a grin on my face. The photos, even though they were old, looked like they’d been taken yesterday. The sky was blue and the trees were green and the leather on their jackets was shining black.
“Dad, you were awesome,” I said under my breath. My eyes filled with tears as I stared at the pictures. Something deep inside of me felt touched.
Dad and I hadn’t exactly been that close growing up, but I appreciated him so much more as an adult. He hadn’t approved of Troy, though, and that had made visits difficult. My blood curdled in anger as I remembered how Troy had tried over and over again to manipulate me away from spending time with my own damn family. I hated him. As much as I wanted to forgive him for treating me like shit, I couldn’t forgive him for squandering my life left with my father.
My eyes filled with tears and I closed my lids, letting hot tears leak down my face. I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry I didn’t have the strength to break up with him before you died.
Troy had even kept me from going to the funeral. We’d had a fight the night before over what I was planning to wear—a black dress that he deemed too revealing—and I’d stayed up crying for hours, locked in the bathroom. When Troy told me he didn’t have the energy to go the funeral, I’d known what was coming next.
“So that means you’re not going,” Troy had said with a smirk. “I don’t want men looking at you and trying to take advantage of you right now. You’re my girl,” he’d added. It hadn’t made me feel any better. I remembered that day vividly: I’d dried my tears, then made Troy a sandwich.
Later that night, after Troy had fallen asleep, I snuck out to see Dad’s grave. The soil was still fresh and all the bikers had set down bouquets of roses and trinkets and mementos that made them think of him. I hadn’t had anything to bring, so I left one of my earrings at the grave site.
When I got home, Troy had been raging and angry. He’d woken up to find me gone, and he was mad at me for leaving. He accused me of being with someone else. In desperation, I told him I’d been to see my father’s grave. He said he didn’t believe me, until I told him about the earring. We drove back out to the cemetery and Troy made me dig around in the grass until my knees were bleeding, looking for the earring.
“I hope you feel good about yourself,” Troy had sneered afterwards. “You ruined my sleep for the second night in a row, you cunt.”
Thinking about it now made me sad and angry. I wanted Troy to hurt. I wanted him to pay for everything he’d done to me. It wasn’t just the abuse that bothered me; the thing that hurt most now was knowing he’d effectively kept me from my father for years at a time. We could have had a good relationship.
I punched the bed. As tears streamed down my face, I reached over and slapped the album cover shut. Someday, another day, a day when I was feeling better about myself, maybe I’d be able to look at the pictures again. But right now, I had to find a way to distract myself as quickly as possible.
Standing up, I wiped my hands on my jeans and looked around the room. Jace’s bedroom was neatly kept, but I knew a man like Jace had a lot of secrets. As I gazed around, looking for a way to distract myself, I was aware of my heart beating faster and faster in my chest.
“Calm down, it’s just like when you were looking for photos,” I said under my breath. “It’s nothing worse than that.”
But I knew I was wrong. It wasn’t like that, not at all. This was Jace’s bedroom, and I was actually snooping.
“Shit,” I mumbled. But I couldn’t make myself stop. There was a moment where I wanted to walk out of the room, down the hall, and join Kenny in front of the TV. But I couldn’t do it.
I got on my hands and knees and cautiously tugged open the bottom drawer of Jace’s dresser. It was stuck, and I had to wiggle the wooden drawer in the frame to get it to pull out.
“Come on,” I mumbled, my tongue poking out of my lips. “Come on, that’s it.”
When it was open, I frowned. There wasn’t anything sordid in here, no love notes, no bloodstained clothing. There were some heavy metal objects wrapped in tissue paper. Narrowing my eyes, I reached down and pulled them out, gently unwrapping them and setting them on the carpet.
I stared at the objects. It was a tarnished silver-backed brush and mirror, both engraved with the name Margot.
I bit my lip. Who did these belong to? Suddenly, it seemed like a bad idea to go digging around in Jace’s room. I’d effectively distracted myself from Troy, but I wasn’t feeling much better than I had before. After looking around, I had more questions than answers, and my head was starting to hurt.
Who was Margot? What was she doing in Jace’s room? Picking up the brush, I noticed that a lot of tarnish had accumulated on the back. They’d been wrapped in tissue paper, which was supposed to stop that. That meant these things had been here for a long time.
I frowned. Was Margot Jace’s mother? Or maybe some dead aunt who had left heirlooms?
The strangest thing was that even though the brush and mirror had clearly been packed up ages ago, they both looked almost new aside from the tarnishing. All the bristles in the brush were there, and there were no hairs trapped inside.
“What exactly is going on here?” I asked to myself. Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine Margot, whoever she was. Was she a family member? An old girlfriend?
A chill passed over my body and I shuddered, like someone had
walked across my grave. “Who are you?” I asked, holding the mirror up and staring at my reflection. “And what are these doing here?”
Chapter 12
Jace
I left Rosa’s feeling even worse than when I’d arrived. Even though I knew she was trying to help me feel better, the champagne and pity didn’t really do it for me. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t like that with Katie, that my emotions no longer ruled me.
But I had a feeling she wouldn’t have listened. Rosa was one of those infuriating, smart women who always thought she knew best. Trying to argue with her was no better than trying to argue with a damned crocodile.
I couldn’t go home and face Katie like this. She’d know something was up, for better or worse. I called some of the guys and asked if they wanted to go out for a drink or ten.