Aiden runs his family like our businesses, with a kind of empathetic manipulation that is incredibly effective, as well as frighteningly powerful at times. From time to time, I can feel his strings on me.
Luke, on the other hand, needs ropes, maybe chains. And even then, containing him is a full-time fucking job.
“Keep an eye on her,” Aiden says. “We can follow other avenues as well.”
I nod.
Sounds like a perfect way to pass the time.
While Aiden follows up with police and manages the investigation on his level, and Luke goes off on a bender of one kind or another, I watch Ella.
I already know where Ella lives. I already know her favorite animal. And now, as I watch her, I discover how she deals with grief.
She dyes her hair.
The first time we saw her, she had a blonde bob. The next time I make contact with her, she’s dyed that same hair gothic black. It suits her. She has a cute face. I can see why Teddy liked her, if he did, in fact, like her. She has one little streak picked out near the front that is colored purple. She manages to find a gothic duck charm for her handbag, too. I’ve never seen someone accessorize grief quite as fiercely as she seems to.
The classic attire she was wearing on the day of the funeral is retired. Now she prefers black. Black leather boots and skirts. Black lace tops and frills. Black nail polish. Skull and web motifs when there is an opportunity to indulge them. A lot of people would conclude that she is being performative, but if she is, it is for an audience of one.
I watch her shop away much of her sadness. Though work demands she look traditionally professional, when she is off work, she wears clothing more appropriate for a young lady in her early twenties. Short skirts, stockings, and tights. Little tank tops under heavy coats.
If I’d first seen her looking this way, I’d have thought she was a completely different person. There’s something almost chameleon-like about her, but I don’t think it is intentional on her part. I think this is how she is trying to handle a pain that is too big to stay in her body.
Even when she has to pretend to be a normal workaday woman, she paints a cat’s eye on with eyeliner. But she still maintains a professional appearance through the magic of skirts and blazers during workdays. She has a cute black handbag sewed in a web pattern. A little yellow duck charm hangs from the zipper. I wonder if she knows just how distinctive she makes herself with these specific touches.
For the next several days, I trail her every move. She is the very picture of routine. Up at 7.30 a.m. Works out for forty-five minutes, then goes to work. Has a fruit salad for morning snack. Wrap for lunch. Celery, peanut butter, and raisins with carrot sticks for afternoon tea. Then, six p.m. every day, she’s in one of three fast food restaurants buying dinner. The girl loves herself a hamburger and fries, and soft serve ice cream. They’ve been telling us since the eighties that it’s not really ice cream, but I can’t think of what it actually is.
On the third day, she takes a milkshake bigger than her head to a tattoo place. It’s after work and it’s already dark when she goes in there. I look the place up online. It looks okay, not good, but decent. The sort of place where the line work will probably blow out, but you won’t get hepatitis.
I feel my jaw tightening seeing her go in there. I don’t like the idea of her being marked by someone else, for some reason. (That reason being I am already becoming both protective and possessive over her.) She probably has tattoos already. The idea of peeling that perpetual black uniform off her and discovering each and every one of them is appealing.
She leaves the salon fifteen minutes later. She must have been discussing a new piece. I watch her walk down a dark alley in a sort of mindless fashion. She should be more aware of her surroundings. She should be paying attention to what is going on around her.
Instead, she has earbuds in.
Her head is down.
Her phone is out.
And the predator lurking behind the dumpster thinks he has a clear shot at her.
Ella
How many ducky tattoos can you get before it becomes a problem? I don’t know, but I intend to find out. I need to do something to shake off the feeling I’ve had around me since the funeral that wasn’t really a funeral. There’s a heaviness I can’t shake. That’s not like me. Usually, terrible things happen and I move on almost immediately. I know grief is different and takes longer, but the sadness I feel, and the weirdness I feel is deeper than either of those things.
I take a shortcut on my way home. It saves me like two blocks of walking, and I do it all the time, so I don’t even think about it. Unfortunately, someone else has noticed that too, and they’re lying in wait.
I’m looking at the flash tattoos they offered on my phone, wondering if I should go for a custom one instead, when someone grabs me roughly. The music in my earbuds is a heavy metal screaming kind of vibe, so my screams blend in perfectly. I don’t expect them to be useful. In a city like this, people ignore screams. It’s just the way it is.
Then everything happens really fast.
I look up, drop my phone, and see a wild-looking dude coming out from behind the dumpster. He looks like he eats rats and likes it. There’s something feral and predatory about him, butnot in a sexy way. In a sort of pestilent way. He wants to hurt me. I feel my soul curdle at his touch.
Before I can do anything to defend myself, I am nudged out of the way, and a tall man in a suit is slamming dumpster guy’s head against the wall hard enough to knock him out. There’s a sick cracking sound that I think must be the sound a skull makes when it fractures. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but I don’t want to or get to check.
I can’t see who saved me. I’m not even entirely sure I was saved, because the next thing that happens is that I am pushed up against the wall face first. My hands are behind my back, both wrists clamped in place by one big grip.
Smack!
