The Contradiction of Solitude (11 page)

This was about blending. About claiming. I wanted to slip inside the blood and bones of the town to find belonging. For however long I could have it.

I could pretend that I had grown up in the small town with the state championship winning football team. That I skinned my knees on the streets of a make believe childhood filled with parents who had normal jobs and friends I had known since infancy.

I could dip my toes in an imaginary past and live a few moments in content delusions.

I read about Mrs. Gardner’s upcoming yard sale to benefit the homeless shelter. I went over the obituaries, pretending that I was sad for the loss of Mr. Davis Cooper, who had been a volunteer firefighter for forty years and was survived by his three children and ten grandchildren.

For a brief period of time, these people, these citizens of Brecken Forest, Virginia, were my home. My family. Strangers that were more important to me than the people I knew.

“Family is the most important thing in your life, Lay. Wherever you go in this world, no matter what you do, family is in your blood. You can’t ever forget about the people that made you.”

My mother hadn’t meant for her words to tighten like a noose around my neck. She hadn’t meant for her love-filled sentiment to drag me into purgatory and keep me there.

Without conscious movement, I tucked my hand into the waistband of my panties, touching the once tender skin that had been altered forever only days before. The bandages were gone, and it was healing nicely.

Family made me. It shaped me.

Family
owned
me.

I folded up the newspaper and set it aside, turning to the computer. My compulsion taking over once again.

I clicked open the bookmarked site on my browser. Another newspaper from another town popped up and the tendrils of ease disappeared. The Norton Hill Gazette was filled with stories so much like the ones I had just read in Brecken Forest’s local paper.

Filled with people from another life. A thread that I could never sever.

My chest started to feel tight and my hands started to tingle. My face flushed hot as I clicked through the pages, reading…reading.

When I couldn’t bear it any longer, I opened another tab, closing that door for another day. Turning to a different fixation. A different driving need.

I searched.

I spent the next hour flitting from one newspaper to the next. Making notes on scraps of paper and then balling them up and throwing them away when they didn’t seem to fit. I couldn’t find them.

I knew they were out there.

He had left me a trail…somewhere. Secrets safe for me to find. Between us. Only us.

Stars that needed their stories.

And I wanted to tell them.

I had been collecting them for him since I left home. Since my mother died and Matthew was taken away.

I had been lost and adrift, nothing tying me to the life I once had.

But the stories my father had told me once upon a time kept me company during the loneliest days.

It was hard to hate the man when he had given me something to hold me together.

His stars.

His stories.

They weren’t all told.

I became obsessed with finishing them. For him. For my father.

For the man that had ruined me.

And there it was. A small article at the bottom of the front page of the Vanleer Observer, the source of news for a tiny town in the middle of Texas. A story from their archives, nineteen years earlier.

I didn’t recognize the name on the headline but I felt the flutter in my belly. Vicious birds taking flight. My fingers tingled as I scrolled down, reading. Reading.

Maybe…

Janurary 16
th
, 1998 Grisly Murder Unsolved

Police are still looking for leads in the murder of a young Abilene girl who was found just outside of Vanleer on June 10
th
, 1997. The victim whose body was discovered by two local schoolboys on their way home, had been stabbed multiple times. Her throat was slashed and her hands were removed. Officials searching the area were never able to recover the missing limbs.

Sheriff Carter confirmed shortly after the discovery that the victim was sixteen-year-old Tawny Reaves of Abilene, Texas and a junior at Middlebeck High School. Tawny had been missing for seventy-two hours before her body was found in a ravine off Back Road sometime between ten and eleven p.m. on June 9th.

It is unclear how Tawny, who resided thirty miles away, came to be in Vanleer. Mr. and Mrs. Reaves contacted their local police department when Tawny failed to come home after school on June 7
th
.

The Reaves family admits that Tawny had been going through a “rough” period after the death of a close friend. An autopsy confirmed that Tawny had both THC and opiates in her system at the time of death.

The lack of forensic evidence in this case has led to a standstill in the investigation, intensifying the sense of fear and disquiet in the small town of Vanleer. Locals vocalized their concerns during a town meeting last week where Sheriff Carter was the focus of increasing hostilities. Sheriff Carter assured the unhappy crowd that solving the brutal murder on their doorstep was the department’s top priority.

In the meantime, Tawny Reave’s family has offered a substantial reward for any information that leads to an arrest.

I ran my finger along my bottom lip, re-reading the article several more times. Then I hit the print icon. A bit more research showed that the case had never been solved.

I bit the inside of my cheek, feeling something akin to excitement.

I have a new story to tell you, Daddy. I think you know this one.

It’s about a girl named Tawny. She was sad because her friend died. She didn’t want to live. She did things she shouldn’t because she wanted the pain to go away. But it never did.

Until the day came that she could be a star forever…and then she was finally free…

I gathered the printed papers and put them in a file that I kept in a drawer in the kitchen. After putting the article away I became angry. Violent. The usual tide of emotions erupting without notice. I picked up my tea mug I had left on the counter and threw it against the wall.

It gave a satisfying thump as it collided with the wall. Shattering. Falling. Pieces on the floor. I didn’t bother to clean it up. I left the mess where it lay. Destroyed.

Why couldn’t I just let it go?

And what was wrong with me that I didn’t
want
to?

Why did I let this morbidity consume me?

Because I couldn’t let him go.

I was drowning. I was suffocating. I couldn’t see because of the shadows in front of my eyes.

Because it was dark…so dark. I didn’t think I’d ever see the sun.

The alarm on my phone went off, and I took a deep breath. I ran my hands down my face, tucking hair behind my ears, smoothing wrinkles from clothing.

Fix, tidy, collect. Get myself together and move on.

Until I could afford the time to dwell.

Right now I needed to go. I had places to be.

People to become.

Lies sounded like a heartbeat. The rushing of deceit through my veins. It sustained me. It emboldened me.

It was my existence.

“I thought you might be here.”

I closed my book and pushed it to the edge of the table. Our ritual becoming a song. Familiar. Beautiful.

“Hi,” I murmured, glancing up at Dancing Green Eyes as he slid into the booth across from me.

Without speaking, we had given up the pretense of being there for anyone but each other. Elian sat with me as though he had been doing it for years.

It had been two days since our designed meeting in the park. The evening had passed simply. Holding hands and listening to music I hated but Elian enjoyed. And when the band was finished I gathered my things and left.

He didn’t follow.

He didn’t chase.

But I knew he wanted to. He was a man, in many ways, like all the others. He
desired.
But he had games to play. Pretenses to keep.

He bided his time until he couldn’t control the urge any longer.

And in that way we were one and the same.

Something had changed between us in those hours at the park. Our roles had been decided. And I was giddy with the anticipation of it.

He would never know how I planned.

“You really like that book, huh?” he asked, sliding my copy of
Swann’s Way
toward him. I itched to stop him. To snatch it back. To hold it to my chest and keep it close.

But I didn’t. I let him pick it up and thumb through the worn pages. Paper smudged with my dirt and tears.

“I’ve never been a big fan of Proust. He’s a little maudlin, too self-indulgent for my tastes.” Elian continued to skim through the book, not realizing how he sliced through me with such trivial actions.

I cleared my throat, finding words that he could understand. “It’s not the words that interest me,” I explained but didn’t explain.

Elian frowned, stopping at the front of the book. The page with the inscription. He looked up at me, thinking he understood now. His face soft and empathetic. To him this was a piece of my puzzle.

He had no idea.

He handed the book back to me. “It’s from your dad,” he stated. It wasn’t a question. He knew the answer. He had seen the words that he thought meant something that they didn’t.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

“Is he still around? Your dad?” Elian asked. Had we come to this point where we were comfortable in asking these kinds of questions?

Yes.

For Elian Beyer, we were approaching an intimate space where we could fall together.

We were strangers. Searching, searching strangers. Looking for each other.

It was sad and perfect.

“No, he isn’t. I don’t know the man that gave me this. He has no place in my life,” I admitted. I covered my mouth to stop the flow of words that came out unbidden.

Elian was dangerous. He made it easy to give him things I had always kept.

Elian nodded, sucking me in, holding me close.

“My dad’s gone too. He died not long after…” His voice trailed off and his jaw tightened. I was fascinated by the minute changes in his appearance as he too found himself sharing things he hadn’t meant to.

We had quite the effect on each other.

“He’s gone,” Elian finished, picking up a menu, although I knew he didn’t need it. He’d order the same thing I did.

We were in tandem. In synch. Symbiotic.

“Elian!” The waitress named Nancy smiled and beamed. She liked him. A lot of people liked him.

But they didn’t know him.

But I would know him. He wanted me to. With every discreet glance and every subtle touch, he pulled me closer.

I drew him in.

We were falling…falling…collapsing into each other.

“Hi Nancy. I’ll have my usual,” he ordered, bestowing a smile to end all smiles. Nancy preened and became a little flustered in the spotlight of his grin.

She began to walk away, not taking my order. “Excuse me, but I’ll have the same,” I said, stopping her with my short tone.

Nancy blinked, as if confused, only just now noticing my presence. Her face soured and her mouth turned down. She didn’t like me. Not many did.

Elian was the chosen exception.

I smiled. A smile to end all smiles. I gave them rarely. But I gave one to Nancy.

The bitch.

“Okay,” Nancy said, turning abruptly.

Elian was looking at me and I knew he was examining me in a way I often examined others. It was strange being on the receiving end of that sort of inspection. I felt exposed.

“I want to go somewhere with you,” Elian said, his eyes never leaving my face.

My empty chest tightened with something that felt like…
giddiness?