In the Garden of Discontent

by Lily White

  “Whatever happened to those letters she sent me, Peter? Mr. Cooper gave them to you. Surely, at some point in all these years, I was stable enough to handle them.”

  He shook his head.

  “Ensley, I was only trying to protect you. You’re not well. It’s why you can’t function without keeping a tight schedule. You know that. We’ve discussed it.”

  Fucker.

  It was too bad for him that Noah escaped and blew that schedule all to hell.

  “Well, beyond the fact that you’ve been keeping letters from me, I discovered you’ve been keeping secrets as well. Do you remember Mrs. Marks? The neighbor who lived next door to me. Didn’t Mr. Cooper pass along the message that someone else had run from my house that night?”

  A bead of sweat dripped down his temple, his eyes searching my face from behind wire-framed glasses. He was still the awkward, timid man he’d always been since the day I first met him, but for the first time I saw just how calculating he was as well.

  His body bumped up against his desk, and his hand fumbled out to his side in search of the phone. I locked him in my stare and smiled.

  “I wouldn’t do that. Not after what I learned. Calling the police or anybody else for help would only give me an audience to listen to what I know about you.”

  Truthfully, I didn’t know a damn thing. But I suspected. I hoped he couldn’t see the doubts I still had. Hoped he wasn’t a good enough liar to convince me I was wrong.

  I grinned. “How disgusting am I now?”

  He flinched at the reminder.

  “Ensley. You need to stop and listen to yourself. I don’t know what you think you know but-“

  “Oh, I think you can take a good guess,” I crooned, my voice dangerously soft for how angry I was.

  This man hadn’t just hurt me, he’d hurt one of my siblings as well. He’d hurt Noah and let the only person who ever loved me sit in a prison cell while he’d escaped to keep living his life.

  As I stepped forward, Peter backed off, his ass sliding against the side of his desk as he moved to the other side of the room. The backs of his legs bumped against the couch I’d sat on for far too many years believing everything he had to say.

  I tapped my fingers over his phone when I reached the desk, my eyes lifting to his to see fear written across his face.

  “Which one was it?”

  Beside me, a cup held a myriad of pencils and pens, a jumble of colors and thicknesses of highlighters and other odds and ends. Above it all, a silver letter opener stuck out, my fingers sliding along the cool metal to wrap around it. Sliding it from the cup with my eyes still locked on Peter, I waited for him to answer.

  He didn’t miss what I was doing.

  “Put that down.”

  There was authority in his voice that I found comical.

  “What’s wrong? Can’t handle a conversation with an adult? Is that why you prey on children?”

  When he didn’t respond, I yelled, “Which one did she sell you?”

  He flinched back, his feet stumbling over one another until he fell on the couch with his hands out in front of him.

  “I don’t know-“

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  I rushed forward, and he attempted to stand, but the cushions of the couch were too deep, his retreat impossible when I was only feet from him. My fingers gripped the letter opener so hard that it felt like the metal was cutting into my skin.

  “Which one?”

  “Does it matter?” he shouted back, his voice shaking because he wasn’t sure just how crazy I was.

  I winced at the truth, my thoughts racing now that I knew I was right. “It does to me.”

  Shaking his head, he kept his hands out as if to protect himself. But he was older now, scrawny. Still bigger than me, but not by much. It wouldn’t be easy to fight me off, and he knew it.

  “Tell me what happened that night. Tell me the fucking truth.”

  Pure panic raced across his features, but a sneer still curled his lips.

  Several seconds passed where I assumed he was deciding whether to be honest or lie, but then anger flashed in his eyes, his mouth opening to hit me with a confession that ripped my heart straight from my chest.

  “I didn’t want to kill them. It was never my intent, but I had to shut them up.”

  “Why? Why the fuck would you have to kill children?”

  Inching across the couch to put more distance between us, Peter refused to take his eyes off me.

  “How was I supposed to know your father would come home? We had everything worked out. I didn’t even park at your house anymore, just took a path through the woods that your mother showed me. She sold me time with all of them. I hid while your father came in the house. They tried to leave the bedroom. They tried to run out and tell him I would have left if those brats hadn’t started screaming. I wouldn’t have hurt them to shut them up. I could have left while your parents were screaming at each other in another room, but then one of your brat sisters started to cry.”

  Stretching my neck, I blinked my eyes to keep the tears from falling.

  “Did you kill my father too? Did he catch you and that’s why you had to shoot him?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “No. That was your mother. They walked out just as I was running for the back door. She was the one with a gun. I don’t know what happened after that, Ensley.”

  A bark of laughter shook my shoulders.

  “You know, all those years ago, I believed you when you called me disgusting. But now? Now I know you’re the disgusting one. Now I know just how fucked up you really are.”

  I lunged forward, not quite sure what I was planning to do until my arm was swinging down and the letter opener stabbed him. Blood sprayed over the cushion of his couch, and his mouth opened on a scream that ended just as quickly as it began.

  One hit and I’d nailed my target, my hand shaking as I pulled away to leave the letter opener sticking out of his eye.

  Peter’s body slumped down on the couch, and only then did I realize what I’d done.

  I stood in place for several minutes, my mind catching up to the truth that I’d just killed a man without any evidence of the reason why.

  Quickly running to the bathroom, I washed my hands and looked up into the mirror to see the terror in my eyes.

  What had I done?

  Staring in the mirror, I could feel the panic take over.

  My skin was sallow, and my eyes were vacant. The fear of what I’d done was taking over.

  Where the hell could I go from here?

  I didn’t know, and I was afraid to find out.

  All I knew was that, for the first time, that monster inside me had rattled and roared, and I’d allowed it to come to life.

  Not just that…

  …I’d allowed it to take over.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Noah

  Present

  It felt like being in prison again.

  From the second Ensley left, and through the five hours she was gone, I had paced Melinda’s house like a tiger caged.

  Poor Melinda was beside herself, not knowing what to do or how to talk to me. She just flitted in and out of the room, offering me something to eat or something to drink. I refused everything, my muscles too rigid and my stomach turning cartwheels while I waited for Ensley to return.

  The worst part was I didn’t know what Ens was thinking when she pulled away. She was hiding something, and I knew it, but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was.

  I worried that she was lying to me to get away.

  Yeah, we’d worked out our issues and were going strong all the way to New Orleans, but something had switched inside her on the drive back to Florida. It was like she’d shut down again, the vibrancy of the days before fading off into a dull edge that dragged her under.

  Was she leaving me again?

  That was the question that ran through my head the most.

  Was she able to make me be
lieve she still loved me when all she wanted to do was escape?

  Slippery as a fish, that woman.

  But while I swore I still knew her better than she knew herself, I had my doubts.

  And those doubts were eating me alive.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

  I spun to face Melinda. She stared across the room at me with concern lining her face. After Ensley dropped me off early that day, I’d given her a little information but not the full story. She didn’t understand how precarious our position was.

  I had to do something to quiet my thoughts. I had to plan a way out whether that meant I was taking Ensley with me or not. Staying here wasn’t just dangerous for me, but also for the woman who had helped me escape. I couldn’t risk her life because it would be just one more person that Tammy destroyed from the grave.

  I couldn’t wait here forever, and the truth of it ripped me apart.

  “How serious were those other women about getting me out of here?”

  Melinda’s eyes lit up. I’d given her a job to do which made her feel less helpless.

  “Very serious. The Gulf of Mexico isn’t too far away, and we can get you on one boat before transferring you mid-water to another that will hide you away. We have a few thousand dollars saved up that we can give you, and connections in South America to help you with a new identity.”

  She must have seen the surprise on my face.

  Shrugging, she laughed softly.

  “We’ve had a lot of years to work it out, Noah. None of us think you deserve to be in prison. You didn’t kill anybody. Our justice system is a fucking joke, and we know it.”

  Anybody but Ensley’s mother, I thought.

  I didn’t kill anybody but that evil bitch for a woman.

  Not that she would have survived that long after losing half her face, but still. I’d been the one to drive the knife in and finish her off.

  I was back to thinking how ruthless women could be. Not that Melinda was trying to hurt anybody, but I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side. Not with connections like that.

  “How quickly can I leave?”

  “Right now if you want. All I have to do is make a phone call, and it can be arranged. The boat can leave in a few hours. One of the ladies who wants to help you has a cousin with a charter company. He’ll take you as far as possible, then we’ll get you on a shipping vessel that will take you the rest of the way.”

  I wasn’t prepared to move that fast. Not without knowing what happened to Ensley. She was either coming back or she wasn’t, but I wanted to give her as much time as possible to make up her mind.

  “Can it wait a few hours? I have to see if Ensley is coming back.”

  Melinda nodded, but sorrow crept across her face.

  “If she comes back. Did she tell you where she was going?”

  “To see her shrink.”

  Melinda’s eyes softened, her posture deflating a touch.

  “To a guy who can call the authorities and tell them where you are? Do you really want to take that chance?”

  What other choice did I have?

  I wanted to trust Ensley, wanted to believe she wouldn’t turn me in. I knew she loved me, knew she’d meant what she said every night we’d spent in that car reacquainting ourselves with each other’s bodies, but was she stable enough to speak to her shrink and then return to me?

  Hell, beyond that, Ensley was an abducted woman returned to the real world. What if the cops had been called and she was being interviewed right now? Even if she were lying to keep me hidden, how long would it take for her to return?

  I didn’t know what to do.

  “Tell you what: We can move you to another house for the time being. I can make some calls and arrange for the boat to leave early tomorrow morning before the sun comes up. But you need to wait somewhere else. If Ensley comes back, I’ll take her to you so that you can leave together, but if she sends the cops instead, you won’t be here, and I can lie through my teeth that I had nothing to do with this. The car she has isn’t traceable to anybody. The plate is registered to another car just like it, and that owner won’t have any idea of what’s going on. We removed all the VIN numbers as well. Ensley can’t prove I had anything to do with this.”

  My fingers curled into my palm. Anger began to course through my veins at the idea that Ensley would betray me, but Melinda wasn’t wrong.

  It only took an hour and a half to drive down to where Ensley lived. That’s three hours just for the drive. How long could it take for the conversation she wanted with her shrink? She had to be back before long.

  I looked at Melinda’s clock and realized we were going on six hours now.

  Where the fuck was she?

  I should never have let her leave.

  “Noah....”

  It was a gentle prodding. But she was right. My teeth ground together, my shoulders going rigid as I stretched my neck and cast a glance to the window looking out over the empty driveway.

  Outside, the sun had set, the sky now an inky black with only a few stars shining in the distance.

  “Fine,” I said, relenting to the fact that I couldn’t wait around forever. “But if she shows up-“

  “I’ll bring her to you. I promise.”

  A breath blew out of me, long and hard, indecision flooding every bone, every organ, every cell. But I couldn’t risk Melinda. Not after everything she had done.

  “Make the call,” I growled, not liking the decision I had to make, but not seeing any way around it.

  It wasn’t like I could never come back for her in a few years. We’d lasted longer than twenty-two apart when I was in prison. What were a few more while I created a new life for myself and waited for everything to calm down?

  She wouldn’t be hard to find. I had a group of women who were willing to help. I didn’t have to live the rest of my days without Ensley by my side.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want me. I knew that. But she could get so confused in her fucked up head that she may have been persuaded to forget what we were. There was no doubt in my mind that her shrink would have done anything to convince her to stay.

  And she still didn’t know the truth. She still didn’t know that her father had killed those kids and her mother had killed him in response.

  She didn’t know that I had helped kill her mother.

  I’d never had the chance to tell her.

  Melinda nodded her head, a woman on a mission, and stormed from the room to call up her merry gang of friends that apparently had no problem committing as many felonies as it would take to get me out of the country.

  Within another hour, Melinda was waving to me as I was packed into another car to be taken closer to the Gulf, my eyes scanning the roads along the way for any sign of Ensley.

  The woman driving me, Susan, I think was her name, was chattering a mile a minute about our crappy justice system and the amount of lives ruined by shitty cops and paid off judges.

  I barely heard a word she said, my head so full of noise that I wanted to jump from the car and run back to Melinda’s to keep waiting for a woman who meant everything to me.

  We were forty-five minutes south of where Melinda’s house was located and would wait another four hours before making the final journey to a marina where I would climb on a boat and sail away, with or without Ensley.

  Melinda had promised she would call if Ensley showed up, the minutes ticking by as if in slow motion.

  Eventually, it was time to leave again without a single word as to where Ensley was.

  “We have to go, Noah. It’s safest to leave in the early morning. The Coast Guard is a concern.”

  I turned to Susan...Sarah?...I still didn’t know her name, and nodded my head that I was ready.

  Everything inside me died a slow death as we made the journey farther south, the coastline sneaking up on us before I was ready, the smell of saltwater impacting my nose.

  It was the scent of freedom after so many years
locked in a cage, and also the scent of heartbreak so thorough I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength to grit my teeth and walk on that boat, to stomach the feel of the waves beneath us as we pulled away without Ensley by my side.

  Susan, or whatever the hell her name was, drove slowly down a long drive leading into a marina full of different boats, some large yachts for weekend getaways, and others fishing vessels with long nets rolled up into manageable bundles.

  She kept going until we were near the back of the marina, a boat in front of us lit up while a few people carried equipment on board. Fishing tools and crab traps mostly, a mix of different things that made it look like they were going out for usual business rather than sneaking a felon out to sea.

  When we pulled to a stop, one of the men turned to look at us.

  Older, he had a full head of silver hair, his body covered in a white T-shirt with large waders and boots. He nodded his head at our car before turning to carry a tool set onto the boat.

  “Well, this is it. Gary will take you the rest of the way.”

  She went silent, the lack of sound allowing my head to spin with every possibility of where Ensley could be.

  A hand touched my wrist. I almost jerked away because the only person I wanted touching me was the woman I’d grown up with.

  “I’m sorry she didn’t show up. We were hoping that whoever you two visited would make it clear to her that you didn’t hurt her family. I’m guessing that’s not the case, huh?”

  I shook my head, too numb to talk.

  All I could do was stare at that damn boat and hate it for what it would take away from me.

  Ensley was out there somewhere, doing what, I had no idea. Melinda never called to say the cops had shown up, so it was safe to assume Ensley hadn’t turned me in, but had she changed her mind after something her shrink said?

  Had it all been a ruse to get away from me?

  Fuck.

  What if she got into an accident with that car and they’d arrested her for driving it.

  What if somebody had hurt her and I wasn’t there to save her ass?

  What if she had finally done what she always threatened to do and taken her own life because she couldn’t handle the world she was living in anymore?