In the Garden of Discontent

by Lily White

  She jumped at the sound of my voice, not having noticed I was awake.

  Without turning to look at me she asked, “Is there somewhere you can go, Noah? Somewhere safe?”

  My thoughts went to Melinda’s house, but it wasn’t my first choice. Not after the way she’d been all over me the first few days I was out of prison. That woman didn’t like being told no. I thought she’d hoped to take advantage of man who hadn’t had sex in so long, but after I reminded her this was about Ensley, she’d backed off.

  The only woman I’d ever slept with was Ensley, and maybe Josie whatever the fuck her name was, but I tried not to count that because it had been Ensley in my bed immediately after.

  “Why?”

  Fidgeting, she toyed with her fingers in her lap. “I need to go back to Florida.”

  Fuck...

  Scrubbing a hand down my face, I asked, “What did he tell you?”

  Florida was the last place I needed to be. But if that’s where Ensley needed to go, then I’d take her. I hoped those bastards were still looking for me farther south in the state, or maybe they’d given up and assumed I’d hopped a boat to go to another country.

  She peered over at me, her wild hair a mess around her face.

  “I need to talk to my shrink. I think he might have the answers I need.”

  I had one of them. Maybe not the ones that mattered, but I definitely had one.

  Going to Florida was risky. But a man has to die eventually, right?

  Maybe they wouldn’t catch me. Maybe we would luck out for once in our lives and actually solve this problem without creating another.

  I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel. “You really need to do this?”

  She nodded. “Peter always kept me marching forward. I wasn’t allowed to think of the past when I was with him. Wasn’t allowed to talk about it. But I know he interviewed me to prepare for the trial, so there has to be something in his notes.”

  Shoving the hair from her face, she asked, “There’s something I’m forgetting, right?”

  A deep sigh deflated my chest.

  “Maybe you need to stop marching forward so quickly and take a minute to think about the past. There has to be a lot of things you’ve forgotten over the years. But there’s no promise that it will mean anything, Ens. Your mom had people in and out of that house to rape you. Who’s to say it wasn’t one of them?”

  I knew who killed Ensley’s mom. And I had a feeling about who killed her dad. But those kids...I wanted to mangle whoever hurt those kids.

  “Then you drive, and I’ll think. But it won’t be easy. Not with Peter. Anytime I try to bring up the past, he redirects me. I think it’s because he doesn’t like to think about how we slept together.”

  My hand gripped the wheel. “He fucked you?”

  Ens winced, and I didn’t mean to yell or scare her, but son of a bitch. Was there any person in her life who didn’t take advantage?

  She peered over at me. “Are you mad?”

  “No. Just as long as it’s not still happening.”

  She shook her head, chewed on her lip. “No. It was just once. And I came on to him. I was spiraling then. Just like you said. I don’t think he even wanted to do it.”

  I let out another breath and started the car. We were both quiet as we left the facility and found our way back to the highway. I would need to stop for gas again and make a phone call to let Melinda know I was returning, but I was willing to do whatever it took to help Ensley figure this out.

  I wasn’t sure she would ever find the answer, but we had to try, even if that meant risking myself in the end.

  Miles passed in silence, the sun setting before she spoke again, her haunted eyes drifting over the landscape.

  “We know from what Margaret said that my mom had hurt one of the kids. What we don’t know is which one, why she hurt them or how. It could have been something stupid. She had a habit of whacking people upside the head.”

  Rather than adding my thoughts, I let her follow her train of logic instead. There was something buried there she needed to get out, if not to solve this mess but to fix something in herself. I just hoped whatever she learned or remembered wouldn’t destroy her. I hoped she wouldn’t retreat back into that dark part of herself, but if she did, I’d damn well be going in after her.

  I glanced at my hands and chuckled at the scratches. This girl had a world of hurt she needed to unleash, and I was willing to be the poor bastard who took it.

  “Maybe it’s in one of those jars,” she finally said. “Maybe if we dig them up, one of the memories will be in there. Something I may have forgotten.”

  Keeping my eyes trained on the road, I swallowed hard. There was a secret that hadn’t been buried in the garden, one that I carried since a few days before her family was killed.

  As if intuiting that, her head snapped my direction. Sometimes I loved how well we knew each other, but other times it was seriously fucking annoying.

  “What are you not saying?”

  Groaning, I wrung my hand over the steering wheel, the crunch of leather almost too loud against the pregnant silence. “The jars aren’t there anymore,” I admitted.

  Ensley’s eyes were burning holes into the side of my head, and I could hear every thought racing through her mind, mostly anger for the promise I’d broken never to do what I did.

  But I was desperate. You have to understand. She was spinning out of control there in the end, and even though she was still sleeping in my bed every night, still fucking me when she was hurt or angry, and still writing those secrets to bury in our garden, she wasn’t talking to me about anything or acting like herself.

  At that time we were nearing graduation and I had a choice to make: Would I stay with her because she loved me, or would I let her go to attend college?

  Most people would think she’d make the choice to go with me. But not Ens. She was too far gone in her own bullshit, plus she would have never left those kids. Not for an extended period of time, at least. For a night or a week, sure. She’d done that already. But she wouldn’t have left for longer.

  “Where are they?” she asked, her voice far too careful. I knew that woman was one wrong word away from smacking me across the face.

  I thought it would be wise to pull over for this conversation, but there were no rest stops nearby and no exits within a few miles.

  She wouldn’t beat my ass while I was driving, would she?

  I flicked her a glance.

  Yeah, she would.

  “I dug them up,” I admitted.

  “Why?”

  “To read them. You weren’t yourself. Every time I turned around, you were doing weird shit. It was driving me fucking nuts, so I thought I would find something in those jars.”

  “When? When did you dig them up?”

  Rolling my head over my shoulders, I clenched my jaw and told her the truth. “A week before your family died.”

  She was silent for a few minutes, the gears grinding in her head. “What did you do with them?”

  “I burned them.”

  All but a few, all the ones I hated, but I kept the ones where she admitted what she felt for me. I’d kept those and buried them again. They needed to return to the ground, needed to stay in that garden.

  Our greatest discontent was how we’d loved each other despite our circumstances. Ours was a lifetime that wouldn’t allow us to stay together.

  There was a reason I was in her house that night and those secrets had everything to do with it. Every one of them had shredded my heart, had made me so fucking mad at her that I wanted to strike out. I needed to know why the girl kept running from me when it was obvious she loved me back.

  Fuck, the blood had been so thick that night, the stench of it climbing in your nostrils like iron nails being hammered up inside.

  Rather than reaching to claw my face off like I thought she might, Ensley relaxed back in her seat, her face turning to watch out the window at the trees passing
by. Several minutes passed before she sighed. “Well, there goes that idea. If they’re all gone, then they won’t solve this problem.”

  “Not all of them,” I confessed. “I kept the ones we wrote about how we felt for each other. I reburied those in the ground.”

  She glanced at me, eyes searching my face.

  Drumming my fingers again, I said, “You don’t need the notes, Ens. Just talk to me. Tell me all the things you couldn’t say back then. Be honest this time, and maybe you’ll find your answer.”

  She nodded her head and turned to me. “You want to know?”

  “I’ve been asking, haven’t I?”

  Slouching in her seat, she kicked her feet up on the dash.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the answer has been trapped in my head the entire time.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Ensley

  December 3, 1997

  Senior year was a fucking joke. I didn’t know how I passed my junior year given all the classes I’d missed and my hatred of Ms. Goldmire, but somehow I’d accomplished it.

  Most likely, it had everything to do with Noah forcing me to study for my exams, his blues eyes watching me like a damn hawk every time I wanted to tear up the notes I was taking or chuck the pencil across the room.

  If I threw a tantrum because none of my schoolwork really mattered, he would calmly walk me back from the edge and make me start over.

  Summer vacation was a pain in the ass. My mother kept raising the price of rent on me and making me work harder. I’d hated every minute of it.

  At first, at least.

  But then rather than walking into that shed like I’m sure she preferred, I called around to the boys from school and would meet them in random places.

  There comes a point when sex is just sex. Nothing surprises you anymore, nothing is special, it’s just a whole lot of dicking with idiot men who think there’s something special about sticking it in some random girl who could give two shits about what’s inside her.

  I thought about giving it up a few times and getting a real job now that I was eighteen, but I didn’t have a car, couldn’t meet the hours with the kids at home, and wouldn’t make as much as I did by lying on my back and spreading it for whatever nameless guy was willing to toss some cash in my face.

  I’d become the town whore. My mom was right about that. The bitch had retired her title to force it on me, and she couldn’t have been happier about it.

  There was only one person where the sex was special, and I couldn’t be sweet with him. Not when Noah would have taken that moment to ask me to run away or move in. He thought that our age meant we were grown enough to get away, but he didn’t understand I was still tied to the house because I had to protect the kids.

  It made me resent them in a way. Why had my life been so shitty, but they had been given a normal childhood? They got birthday gifts bought with my money. They were never beaten or made to whore their bodies. They had a different life than me. At times, I hated them, but I loved them all the same. They were angels, even if their existence made my life a living Hell.

  But they were still in danger. What would my mom do without my income? I was always afraid to guess. I just knew I couldn’t leave because of them.

  Still, I passed eleventh grade and had moved on to my final year.

  Being a senior was different, though. Mostly because Noah wasn’t around as much after becoming a star basketball player who was on his way to college. Plus, he was always mad at me. Not so mad that he stopped talking to me or tending our garden, but mad because he swore I wasn’t acting like myself. It caused a rift, an uncomfortable spread of months where we continued our normal patterns but were no longer friends.

  And maybe I wasn’t. I’d changed. He’d changed. And in many ways, we’d grown apart. But we still loved each other. There was nothing in the world that would stop that. But he had a future ahead of him that wouldn’t involve me. I refused to drag him down.

  In a way, I was still protecting him.

  His schedule gave me a lot of time to myself. And with the kids being older and able to fend for themselves, I didn’t have to be home as much.

  Idle time was dangerous when it came to me. I spent too much of it in a fog of drinking and drugs and parties.

  I had so many secrets by that time that our garden was a sea of flowers. Every color, just like Noah had promised.

  The bell rang dismissing us from third period and while the other students gathered their things to rush along to the next one, I was taking my time, not really interested in where I was headed.

  After seeing that my grades for the first semester weren’t high enough to graduate, the school had entered me into a forgiveness program that would allow me to make up the work. The only catch was that I had to go to therapy once a day with some college student who was earning his Ph.D. by counseling kids.

  Today was my first day, and I wasn’t looking forward to having some guy ask me questions and try to peek inside my head. But I was going. Only because I’d promised Noah.

  Shouldering my bag, I waltzed past Mr. Maroney where he stood behind his desk. His eyes were always on me, partly because I was a mouthy teen, but mostly because my clothes were always too tight or too short. It wasn’t that I tried to dress like a tramp, but I couldn’t afford to buy stuff that fit. I’d considered working harder in order to buy new clothes, but knew that if my mother saw them she would only raise my rent higher.

  As I passed the teacher, I dropped a pen on purpose and bent over to pick it up. Straightening, I glanced at him from over my shoulder and didn’t miss the way he reached down to straighten himself beneath his pants. A quirk of my lip let him know I caught him. It was probably why I managed to keep a passing grade in this class. He was hopeful I’d stay late one day for extra credit.

  After all the things I’d done, I’d never screwed a teacher. Something seemed wrong about it, like it was a line I shouldn’t cross. Maybe it was because it wouldn’t just be about the money anymore after that. Maybe I was afraid that by crossing the line, I would have accepted that being a slut was all I was worth.

  It didn’t mean the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Just that I hadn’t acted on it.

  The bell rang while I was still walking down the hall, a few stragglers still running into their classrooms, their bags bouncing on the backs and their expressions frazzled. But I took my time, not really interested in where I was going.

  Reaching a classroom in C-Hall reserved for these meetings, I blew out a breath to dislodge a hair stuck to my lips before opening the door to walk in. Glancing up, I saw the top of a head with dirty blond hair, the counselor hunched over the desk not paying attention to anything but what he was writing.

  I wound my way around a desk and walked up the center aisle. Only the sound of his pencil scraping over paper could be heard, a low shoosh of frenetic scribbles.

  Not interested in staring at him writing for the rest of the hour, I dropped my bag on a desk, the bang causing his head to rise, his eyes wide behind wire framed glasses.

  “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  A grin stretched my lips. “I know.”

  He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. His blond hair was styled back with hairspray or some kind of gel, and he wore a blue striped button-up shirt with a pair of jeans.

  Surprised by the casual attire, I relaxed some and thought that the guy couldn’t be that bad, not as bad as I’d imagined, at least. He was good looking in a timid way. Not as strong and beautiful as Noah, but then nobody compared to him.

  He stepped around the desk and offered his hand in introduction.

  “I’m Peter Daniels. I’ll be your counselor for the next few months. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Peter was a lot on the nerdy side, but in a way, it worked for him. It was cute how he stumbled over his feet as he walked to me, how his eyes dropped down to my chest for just a second before his cheeks tinged pink and he glanced back up.

 
; I almost wanted to pat the guy on the back and tell him I was used to it.

  Shaking his hand, I answered, “I’m Ensley.”

  “I know.” He chuckled and pointed to his open notebook on the desk. “I had you marked down and was expecting you.”

  The coloring in his cheeks deepened, and I thought that maybe these sessions could be fun. If for no other reason than to mess with this guy because I had nothing better to do.

  “Take a seat,” he said and pointed to a desk before moving back to sit at the front of the classroom. Choosing to sit in front of him, I leaned forward and twirled a strand of hair around my finger just like all the other idiot girls I hated. In truth, I wasn’t a twirler, but it was funny how this guy’s eyes followed the movement, his throat moving with how hard he swallowed.

  While I’d been scared the counselor would be a hardass who would strip away all my secrets, what I faced instead was a skittish mouse, charming for being awkward.

  He cleared his throat.

  “So, your record says that you’re having trouble with keeping up your grades.” Looking up, he asked, “Is there a reason for the problem, or do you just have senioritis like a bunch of the other kids?”

  I blinked my eyes, curled my lips and wondered what this man would say if he knew the truth about my life. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it. I was eighteen now. I could do what I wanted.

  “Can I ask you a question, Dr. Daniels?”

  His cheek pinked again. “Peter.”

  My brows pushed up. “What?”

  He grinned, the expression wobbly.

  “Just call me Peter. Technically, I’m not a doctor yet and I think Mr. Daniels is so formal. We should be on equal footing, so Peter is fine.”

  “Peter,” I responded, smiling as I stared at him. “How confidential is this information?”

  He scratched his head.

  “Well, I mean, part of this is for my thesis, but no specific details will be shared. More like facts and figures, commonalities, patterns, stuff like that. It’s a broad spectrum, not just high school, but middle school and elementary as well. So, you’re free to speak without worry that what you tell me will leave this room.”