“Ow.”
I look across the table at my mom’s freshly scrubbed face, her previously smooth brow now pleated like an accordion. “What incidents?” she asks.
“It’s no big deal.”
Lexie sends me an apologetic wince. It’s not her fault. I tell my mom almost everything. She couldn’t have known I’d left this out.
“Jordyn Clara!” my mother scolds me like I’m ten. “You better start talking right this instant.”
I’m going to need some more fuel. I help myself to a scone and smear it with strawberry jam and cream. “I didn’t want to worry you and Dad because it truly isn’t anything to worry about.” Then I proceed to tell her about the vandalism, all the security that’s been added to my place, and finally, the dead roses…putting the blame where it belongs, on Talon.
“I want you to come home.”
I knew she would. “No one is going to run me out of my house, Ma. I don’t believe for one minute that I’m in any danger, but I’m taking every safety precaution, anyway. That should give you peace of mind.”
“It doesn’t.”
I love my mom, but when she forgets I’m thirty-one, she’s not easy to manage. I think that’s part of the reason I’m so staunchly independent. I need to prove I can handle things on my own.
“I got this, Mom. Please stop freaking out.”
“I’ll stop freaking out when you’re not being stalked.”
Stalked? God, she’s so extra, but I feel my shoulders creeping up to my ears. By the time my massage appointment comes around, I’m in desperate need of one.
SHE’S COVERED IN RED.I’m sorry, Lilah. I try to stitch up her skin. I sew and sew, but the threads keep coming undone. Her cello smashes to the ground and splinters. She screams…and screams, but I can’t save her.I’m so sorry.The needle is a knife. The knife is my hand. Her blood is my blood. Her screams, my screams. Her pain, my pain.
I jerk awake—heaving. My eyes dart around the dark, unfamiliar room. I kick off the sheets and lumber to the bathroom. I flick on the switch, and fluorescent light scatters across the tiled room, bathing it in bright white. My hands haven’t stopped shaking. I look at my reflection and don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.
I splash cold water on my face to shock my system out of that dark place. As the effects of the horror start to recede, I go back to the bedroom. It’s not five o’clock yet, but I get my gym shorts and T-shirt from the duffle bag I hadn’t bothered to unpack last night.
Pops, with all his stubbornness and tough love, was dug in on his decision. When he wouldn’t budge, I called the twenty-four-hour service line to add on an extra nursing visit and found myself a short-term Airbnb rental. I know there’s a test in here for me, a maze of anguish I’m supposed to find my way through. But I don’t know where to start or even if I can.
With the dewiness of dawn falling around me, I point my Adventure north on the I-90 and ride to the dojo where I don’t have to think, where I can just beat the shit out of a punching bag.
* * *
The next morning, after another disruptive sleep, I get up early. I hadn’t dreamt of Lilah this time. My thoughts had been bombarded with Jordyn. She’s constantly there, tugging on my concentration—a fist at the back of my mind that punches to the front, especially at night when I lay there picturing her face, her smile, her joy for life.
Pops is the only person I’ve allowed in. I don’t have a relationship with my parents. I make the occasional obligatory call that amounts to a brief and strained conversation about work and the weather. The friends that Lilah and I shared rightfully stuck with her. My buddies from high school and the army tried to be there for me, but I’d shut them out. Eventually, they stopped trying.
I’m a thirty-four-year-old man on a one-person island, serving a life sentence of self-imposed exile. But sick of my woe-is-me bullshit, I snatch the phone off the dresser to call Tyler.
He yawns into the phone as if I’d gotten him out of bed.
“You got anything for me yet?”
“It’s five in the morning.”
“You’ve had a week.”
“It’s been four days, and you didn’t give me much to work with. None of the quick fixes I normally use have been successful. I’m trying another method. It’s a slow and tedious process. No guarantees, but I’ll keep at it.”
“When?”
“Give me another couple of days.”
That afternoon, I arrive in Brockville for a meeting with Mick Peters at the house he and Ms. Peters own. I see that the renovations are well underway as his Porsche pulls up behind my SUV.
