In the Garden of Discontent

by Lily White

  “Are you too good to fuck me since you’re becoming something and I’m not? Because you’re leaving me here while you move on?”

  My hand fisted at my sides. It wasn’t that I wanted to hurt her, wasn’t that my anger had risen to the same level as hers. It was that it was painful not to shove her down and show her how much I loved her.

  And damn if my eyes didn’t wander again because Ensley truly was beautiful.

  “What did you do to yourself?”

  My stare locked on her lap, on the absence of hair between her legs. She was completely bald down there, a razor shave that left her looking like a child would before hitting puberty.

  Her hands moved to cover the area, face beaming red.

  “It’s nothing. I did this because-“

  But she didn’t finish the thought. Instead, she jumped up from my bed like she couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Grabbing her clothes from the floor, she quickly pulled them on while I watched her, that wild hair of hers hiding her face as she yanked her clothes into place.

  I tried grabbing her, but she jerked from my hold, eyes wild where I could see them behind the curtain of her hair.

  “I need to go.”

  “No, stop. Talk to me. I’m sorry.”

  “I need to leave,” she yelled, her eyes snapping to mine for only a brief second before she flinched back, my fingers just barely skimming her arm in my failed attempt to stop her.

  She ran from my room and out the front door, the walls of my house shaking with the force of her slamming it.

  I just sat on the edge of my bed, so fucking confused that I buried my face in my hands and fought not to punch something.

  Fighting the urge to chase after her, hold her down and demand she tell me what the hell was going on inside her fucked up head, I made another decision I didn’t like.

  It would break a promise we’d kept for years, but I couldn’t worry about that now.

  Ensley needed help. And if she wouldn’t tell me how I could pull her out of whatever spiral was dragging her down, I’d dig up the evidence of it to find out.

  It was the only thing I knew to do, the last chance I had to rescue her from herself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Ensley

  Present

  It took us six hours to drive to Melinda’s house in the Florida Panhandle. Noah went straight through, only stopping once to get gas and let me use the bathroom, his focus intent on the road as we returned to the one state he shouldn’t have been in.

  There was no doubt his name and face had been all over the news, the prison from which he’d escaped only a few hours southwest from our destination.

  Still, I needed to know what could be trapped in my head. And regardless of the risk, he took me back to the only place I could make that discovery.

  We spoke the entire way, my memories colliding against his, and where I was blank, Noah was able to fill in some of the missing pieces. It only helped paint more of my memories onto the canvas we were creating, the picture of a life I’d fought not to remember.

  Noah didn’t know when one of his memories had triggered one of my own. He didn’t realize the importance of what he’d said. More than ever, I knew that I had to trace my steps back, but I hated risking him in the process.

  Tucked away in a tiny town that was as forgettable as where Noah and I grew up, Melinda’s home was surprisingly beautiful. The last time I’d been to this place, I was blindfolded, so I hadn’t taken the time to admire the wildflowers that grew around her house, a field of color that reminded me of the garden Noah had created between our houses.

  He pulled the car into her driveway, and I stared at those flowers and allowed them to drag me back to the last few weeks before my family died.

  It was as if blinders were being removed from my eyes, and I could see a truth I’d avoided.

  Warm and strong, Noah’s hand covered mine, a quiet question lingering between us that he didn’t need to ask.

  “I’m coming back,” I promised him. “They can’t hold me anywhere. I haven’t done anything wrong. They only assume you abducted me because I didn’t show up for counseling.”

  Like I have almost every day for the past twenty-two years, I didn’t add.

  I’d never stopped to think why Peter was still counseling me. Always marching forward because the past only brings depression, I’d never wondered during my finely tuned increments of time why a doctor would continue focusing on a patient who wasn’t improving. Why he continued providing free sessions to a woman who couldn’t work or pay him and who lived on disability. Two hours a day. He must have been losing money.

  But I was thinking about it now...and remembering.

  You disgust me...why would I want something like this? Groom yourself if you want money.

  A chill ran down my spine, Peter’s admonishment when he bent me over his desk and shoved a hand between my legs. He was the person who’d demanded I shave it bare, that I groom myself to become what he liked.

  The shame I’d felt that day was unbearable.

  The asshole wasn’t interested in my tits, not after that first time he pulled my shirt down in the classroom. All he cared about was what could be found between my legs, and even that had been disgusting.

  It broke me even more, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because, for the first time, somebody admitted what I was.

  A worthless whore.

  A girl that was no better than the mother who’d raised her.

  I’d shattered when he refused to fuck me even after I did what he wanted.

  Peter never had sex with me, yet in the confusion of that time period, I’d somehow forgotten what had occurred.

  “We can leave,” Noah reminded me. “We can go, Ensley. Find a new life somewhere else. Wouldn’t it be better if we just let all of this go?”

  Melinda stepped out of the house as we sat in her driveway, just as pretty as I remembered her. I almost laughed to think she was missing her jug of sweet tea. Wrapping a sweater around her body, she stared out at the car, her eyes brushing over me to lock on Noah.

  I didn’t blame her. He was a beautiful man despite the mud I’d dragged him through. Perhaps it had helped shape him into who he was now, but I wondered what could have been for him if I hadn’t fucked up his life right along with mine.

  And still, I was lying to him.

  “It’s no big deal, Noah. I’m sure I’ll go there and they’ll see you haven’t abducted me, and then I’ll talk to him about the past and find nothing. What could he possibly know?”

  Our eyes met, and I knew he could see right through me. Noah could read the words embedded on my soul, and he knew there was a reason I couldn’t just tuck tail and run. But he was a good man. Despite prison, despite my lies and everything that shredded us apart on a daily basis, Noah was still a good person.

  “Drive carefully. And I swear to God, Ens, if you don’t come back, I will find you.”

  I moved to step out of the car so I could walk around and get behind the wheel, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  He didn’t have to lean far to drag me into a kiss that felt more like goodbye. His lips moved over mine with such tenderness, I wanted to cry, his tongue sweeping inside my mouth with desperation.

  Don’t go, he didn’t say.

  Stay with me, he silently pleaded.

  Don’t take the risk of losing us again.

  When he broke the kiss, I smiled.

  “You should get going. I’m sure Melinda has some sweet tea for you and a warm bed. She won’t mind keeping you busy while I’m gone.”

  Noah growled and snapped his teeth at my face.

  “I should spank your ass for that comment.”

  I worried it would be the last time we laughed together.

  The car rocked as he climbed out of it. Walking up the driveway to Melinda’s house, he turned to watch me as I moved to the driver’s seat.

  “You sure about this, Ensley?”

/>   I wasn’t sure about anything.

  “I’ll come back. So, save some of that tea for me.”

  Noah chuckled, and Melinda beamed proudly behind him. She didn’t get the joke, which made it funnier, but not many people understood what Noah and I said. We had our own language we’d developed and written in that garden so many years ago.

  He stood in place watching me climb in the car. I knew he wouldn’t move until I’d pulled away and driven off. I had to break the spell calling me back, and it took everything I had to force myself out of there.

  When I pulled off Melinda’s road and navigated to the main highway, the doubts I had about leaving Noah behind were overshadowed by the memories that were coming back.

  Noah and I had gone back and forth on the drive to Florida, his recollections, his pain, his trauma completing mine until I knew the truth...or at least suspected it.

  How it all fit together, I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to explore the suspicion, had to dig into that garden and pull the secrets out that had been buried for so long. Not the physical ones we’d written and placed in the ground, but the secrets inside my head.

  Our wildflowers had stopped growing on the day Noah and I were torn apart, but the garden of discontent remained. It was inside me now, within a fractured mind, buried so damn deep that I hadn’t been able to dig free and see what was right in front of me.

  I saw it now.

  Using the two hour drive to put as many pieces together as I could, I pulled into the parking lot of Peter’s office building and sat outside for another thirty minutes before gathering the nerve to step out of the car and stare up at his windows on the third floor.

  It was four thirty-five on a Tuesday. The sun was inching down to the horizon, so close that it looked like its heat was a blaze of fire across the city that stretched out beneath it. Squirrels chattered as they chased each other up one small tree and down another. Birds sang and flew overhead, some returning to their nests while others weren’t ready to bed down for the night.

  And there I stood among them, a woman having broken free of her carefully timed cage.

  If I were still trapped, I would be returning home from the mall, angry at myself for not having the ability to talk and laugh and live my life like all the people around me. I almost laughed at the thought of it, almost cursed myself for having run so diligently and so fast that the only option I had left was to keep running.

  As usual, it had been Noah’s hand to tug me back.

  People thought he was a monster - I’d thought of him as a monster - but perhaps the monster had been staring me in the face all along, disguised as something good for me.

  I walked up to the building and stepped inside. My clothes were a wrinkled mess, my hair in tangles. I was sweaty and dirty from days on the road - disgusting as Peter had once called me.

  Inside this place, everything was the same.

  A small seating area was set off to my right, the glass enclosure of the help desk was to my left, unmanned, the light from above reflecting off its pristine surface.

  In front of me, an indoor fountain loomed large, streams of water shooting up to break apart and fall like rain back down to the pool base.

  There were no people wandering around, most likely a result of the time of day, and I stepped up to a directory I’d once perused when Peter moved his office to this place five years before.

  Running my finger along the listings, I stopped, for the first time seeing a title that should have been clear and in my face, but had never struck me as odd until now.

  Dr. Peter Daniels, Ph.D. - Certified Child Psychologist

  I wasn’t a child, hadn’t really been one when he’d counseled me in high school. I wondered if that was what made me disgusting, wondered if his interests ran younger, and if those interests had been focused on somebody in my family besides me.

  Why was it he’d continued to counsel me into my late thirties?

  My fingers curled into my palms, and I wondered if my mother would have been so cruel as to lock my brother or one of my sisters in that shed.

  According to Mrs. Marks, she had. But which one and for what purpose, I wasn’t sure.

  Maybe Peter had the answer to that question.

  It was a long shot, I knew that, but like a puzzle, the pieces were snapping into place, the secrets pushing up from the garden to blaze within my head.

  Groom yourself he had once said.

  Back then I hadn’t understood, but now I saw the need he had for me to resemble a child. And even then, he couldn’t touch me. I’d taken that rejection into myself, had changed it in my mind to make the sting hurt less, and the entire time I’d missed the reason why he couldn’t stomach the thought of having sex with me.

  But he sure did stay a while for that home visit.

  Long enough for Noah and me to fight, long enough for me to run out of my best friend’s house angry and ashamed. His car had still been in my driveway when I’d run down the street to lick my wounds and find a way to numb myself, not returning until late that night to crawl into Noah’s bed and fall asleep.

  I was never home enough during that last week to notice a change in one of my siblings. I was too lost in my own misery to see if one of them had started down their own road to ruin.

  My head turned toward the elevators, and I dragged in a breath with the resolve I felt. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe I was wrong. But I wouldn’t find out by standing in place.

  I wouldn’t know if I kept running.

  And maybe that had been his plan all along.

  Setting one foot in front of other, I walked to the elevators, hit the button and waited for those polished silver doors to open.

  There was no guarantee he was in his office. This wasn’t my allotted two hours, and I didn’t know what he did with his afternoons, but I was determined to find out.

  The doors slid open and I stepped in the elevator, my hand shaking when I reached to hit the button for the proper floor.

  Would this be the answer I’d needed since the night my family died? And if it was, what would I do with it when I found out?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Noah

  December 17, 1997

  Sitting in my room, I glared down at a bunch of hastily scribbled notes on scraps of paper.

  On one side of my bed, I’d laid out the ones that hurt, the ones where Ensley had described the things being done to her, the truth she’d never been able to tell me.

  On the other side, I’d carefully ordered the notes that tore my heart out. Our confessions back and forth. A story about a boy and a girl who grew up in hardship but had somehow found love in one another.

  Those notes hurt just as bad, but they meant something more than the others.

  They were the truth wrapped up in sacrifice and scars.

  The yearning.

  The impossibility of our fate written in the darkened stars.

  They were everything that meant something. Wishes spoken into the wind. Truth revealed through the scratch of a pen. They were more infuriating to me than the confessions, only because they also meant nothing if I didn’t somehow change the situation.

  My coach swore I would be offered a scholarship soon. My grades were high enough for one. I would have a full ride to college in the next few months.

  I should have been ecstatic. Thrilled. I should have been running to my mom to tell her that her sacrifice and hard work had paid off for her child.

  But all I could feel was dread.

  How do you leave someone who had become a vital part of your soul?

  Tammy hadn’t been wrong that night on her porch. Ensley needed someone strong to help take care of her. Not for life. Not always. But for long enough that she could recover a part of herself and learn to be strong again.

  Ripped from the situation she was in, Ensley would eventually gain her footing. I had no doubt she would shine in life when the muck was scrubbed away and she could be herself. But what Tammy didn’t unders
tand was that Ensley didn’t need money or the best clothes.

  She needed someone who cared about her.

  She needed hope.

  She needed a place to lay her head at night where she could learn to dream again.

  I could give her those things and go to college at the same time. I just wasn’t sure that Ensley would follow if I left. The kids needed her, and after reading her secrets, I understood just how badly she needed to protect them. I considered calling the cops and leading them to that damn shed, but what would happen if Ensley didn’t admit the truth?

  The only evidence I had was a handful of notes that anybody could have written.

  Calling the cops wouldn’t help. I needed to do something to fix the situation on my own.

  My eyes caught the big, red letters of my alarm clock where it sat perched on a dresser across the room. It was eleven thirty, and I knew Ensley was off at a party or doing whatever the hell had kept her away from her house so often in the past week.

  It felt incredibly lonely not to have her around, not to know she was lying in one of the kids’ beds waiting for them to fall asleep. It was aggravating knowing she wouldn’t come stumbling back until later to curl up next to me and be gone again the next morning.

  I was sinking beneath my own dark lake, anger transitioning into desperation while I felt helpless and numb. The truth was that I was spiraling right along beside her in the opposite direction, both of us losing our minds.

  Despite it all, we were still connected.

  But while she played the victim, I let the anger take me, a rage so thorough I could feel the heat of it beneath my skin.

  Her fractures opened to reveal a vacancy inside her, but mine opened to reveal fire burning as incandescent waves, rolling and uncontrollable until it was lapping at the hatred consuming me and stoking the flames of a violence I could barely control.

  My hand fisted the secrets she couldn’t tell me, the truth of her beatings, of her rape, of the rent her mother charged her to stay in that house. I gathered them up and mashed them into a ball I needed to destroy as badly as I wanted to tear that shed down.

  Grabbing a jar, I stuffed our confessions of love inside it and left the house with one hand filled with what I hated and the other grasping that jar. Rounding my fence, I walked into the garden and buried the jar in the place where it belonged. Those thoughts were as beautiful as the flowers that grew above them, but the others I wouldn’t allow to exist any longer.