The Contradiction of Solitude (22 page)

“Y
ou want to go for a drive, sweetheart?”

He smelled like spearmint. And tobacco. My favorite smells in the whole, wide world.

“Yes, Daddy!” I squealed and jumped into his open arms. He hadn’t been away on a fishing trip in over six months. It had been nice having him home. I loved his attention. I knew he liked being with me more than Matty.

Matty cried a lot. He was a whiner. Mommy was always telling my brother that superheroes don’t cry. That would just make him cry harder.

Sometimes when she wasn’t looking, I’d pinch him on the arm. Then he’d scream. I liked that better than the crying.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Daddy didn’t answer me. That was okay. Sometimes he was quiet, and I knew he was thinking. I didn’t bother him when he was thinking. Mommy would get upset when he didn’t talk to her. Matty would throw things to get his attention.

But not me. I knew that the things in his head were more important.

“You’re the only one that will ever understand, Lay,” Daddy would always tell me. He was right. I understood. I thought about things too. Lots of things.

Awful things.

Things that made Mommy mad when I told her.

“Don’t you dare say those horrible things in this house ever again! Your brother might hear you! And don’t you go to school and say them either. They stay inside your head. Where they belong.”

She didn’t like my stories. I would whisper them to myself when I was alone. I liked to say them at night. In the dark. When the monsters were under the bed ready to eat me.

Daddy loaded me up in the car. I buckled the seat belt. I hated sitting in the booster seat but Mommy said I was still too young to get rid of it.

I was eight years old and in the third grade. I was way past needing a booster seat.

Daddy took it out of his car. He agreed with me.

“Where are we going, Daddy? Will we be gone long?” I asked. Mommy and Matty were at the store. I didn’t know if Daddy left them a note.

“I’m not sure, Lay. Let’s make a new star story. What do you say?”

I kicked my legs up and down in excitement.

A new story!

“Please, Daddy! I want to find a new star!”

Daddy looked at me in the rearview mirror. His eyes, the only thing I could ever remember about him looking back at me. Coal black. A monster’s eyes.

My monster.

“I’ll get a star just for you, Layna.”

Just for you.

I noticed things about Elian.

He was focused. Driven. Fixated and obsessed.

He spent countless hours toiling over his craft. His guitars. Cutting and sanding wood. Carefully putting the pieces together. Lining them up and making sure they were perfect.

He handled them lovingly. They were important to him. His great passion.

He made guitars but would never play them.

I knew he was a musician. I could tell by the way his fingers drummed along to the beat of a song as we drove in his car. I heard the melodies he hummed when he thought I wasn’t listening.

But when I suggested he play the guitar I had purchased, the one he had made, he refused.

Then he became angry. Livid. He slammed the lid of the case shut and shoved the instrument back to where I kept it behind the couch. Out of sight. Far, far away.

“Don’t ask me that, Layna! Just leave it alone!”

I wondered about Elian and his rage that quietly simmered. The haunted expression that he wore at the best of times and the anguished scowl at the worst.

I picked him apart, looking for what he wouldn’t tell me.

But I knew parts of it already.

The day would come when he would too.

He’d put it together. Like our two stars. The same. Connected.

He was running. So far and so long away from the things he was scared of. He had no idea that what he thought he had left behind was right here. In front of him.

Kissing him with practiced dishonesty.

Loving him with open armed treachery.

He sucked the lies from my tongue like candy. Their seduction tasted sweet but shredded like razor blades when swallowed.

Guilt.

It was there.

It could change me.

Alter what was meant to happen.

Could it?

I hoped so. I fought so hard against the very nature of who I was. But Elian…my choice—he was making it easy to fight.

Matt, my brother, my link to a girl I had once been…he had been my call to Jesus. He had always been my grip on a slowly disappearing morality.

But Elian…

He could help me hold onto that thing that I had been so ready to lose.

Myself.

The nature of who we are, as people, as individuals, was determined in the womb. Our personalities were formed in those months before breath. It was unchanging. Who we became. It was so much more than nurture. It was in the blood and guts—at the root of who we were meant to be.

Loving and knowing my father had shown me the inescapable hold of family. Of their dominion over who we were to become.

I knew I had inherited the monster. I was so sure of it.

But with Elian…there was now a
maybe.

If only the shadows unremembered didn’t lay in wait ready to strike. Ready to destroy. Ready to maim.

Ready to eat me whole.

“Hi Lieutenant Orwell, my name is Kaitlyn Sandburg and I work at the Dentonville Chronicle. I’m looking to start a new piece on cold case files. I was told by a colleague about the unsolved murder of Janette Winters. I was wondering if you had a moment to answer a few of my questions.”

I chewed on the end of my pen and hoped I was talking to a gossiper. Someone not interested in protocols but wanting to dish about the stain on their small town.

Sometimes reading the newspaper articles weren’t enough. I needed
more.
It wasn’t enough for me to be sure. To
know…

“What questions do you have, sugar?”

I didn’t even bristle at the condescending endearment from a complete stranger. He was open to giving me answers.

“I heard she was seventeen. Was she from Dentonville?”

I heard the squeak of a chair as though Lieutenant Orwell was leaning back and getting comfortable. “No. She was from Jackson, which as you know, is about an hour away. I’m going off the top of my head here, just from what I remember. I wasn’t on the force the time. Hell, I was still in high school.” Obnoxious laughter. “How old are you Miss Sandburg? It is Miss, right?”

“Yes it is. There’s no Mr. At least not yet.” I oozed charm. When necessary I was capable of it. “When was the murder?”

“Uh, ‘96, I think.”

“Oh, well I was just wearing a training bra then,” I chuckled. Lieutenant Orwell laughed too. He liked that.

“Huh…well I’m guessing you’re all filled out now.”

Time to get the information I had called for. “So about the murder. My colleague told me that her throat was slit? Anything else you remember about the body that was unusual?”

I started tapping my pen on the table. My head felt thick. The closer I came to
him
the harder it was to hold onto
me.

But I had to
know…

“Hmm. Hang on a sec.” I heard muffled voices and knew that he had covered the phone with his hand.

“Yeah, I just asked another officer, and he said her hands were cut off. It was really grisly stuff. And that where she was found was not where she was killed. She had been dumped.”

Buzz…

“Okay, thank you so much,” I said weakly. I hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

Janette Winters. I pulled up her picture on my laptop. Shoulder length hair, dark. Curly. Far away eyes. I couldn’t tell their color. That didn’t really matter anyway. It was the way she looked
through
them that I cared about.

She was pretty. They all were. Pretty but lost. Looking and looking.

Nothing to tether them.

Drifting.

Daddy’s stars.

The words came fluidly. I wrote them down.

Janette was older than her years. Her eyes told the story of a world that had deserted her. She had no home. No family. No one to notice when she was gone. But she could sing. Janette had the voice of an angel. Lifting her up. Up. Up. Into the heavens.

Forever. Where she finally belonged.

With the stars.

I continued to go to work every day but the necessity of it didn’t seem as immediate as when I had first moved to Brecken Forest. Time was dwindling. Tick tock went the clock.

Pretenses were still important. I had a face to wear.

“I’ve noticed that boy from the guitar studio in here a bunch over the last couple of weeks. Are you two dating?”

Diana, Diana, Diana. It was looking like she’d never learn.

“Not really,” I answered truthfully.

What we were doing was so much more…
intricate
…than dating.

“Oh.” Diana looked confused. I enjoyed that.

“He’s just here so much. But just friends then?”

“No, we’re not friends.” I shouldn’t get so much pleasure from her discomfort. But I did.