17. 16
“We have a hit,” Chester yells in my ear after I accept his call. It’s early, I think, because I’m still in bed, and I have no idea what is going on. After yesterday, after Lola’s murder and our fruitless search through the city, after hoarding all their clothes, I was put to bed like a small kid, and I slept. He must have shut off my alarm, because it didn’t go off and when I glance at the clock and find out it’s almost midday.
“A hit on what?” I ask, rolling around in my bed, trying to find Remy, who was definitely here when I went to bed but is nowhere to be found now.
“On the aunt. She just went into a drugstore in Salem. There was a baby in a stroller, and I think it’s the girl.”
This news speeds up my waking up process.
I sit up, rub my eyes and try to gather my thoughts.
“Now what?”
“Now nothing,” Cheser answers. “Well, not really nothing. The hit was a little delayed, because the program takes some time to run and it’s not strictly legal to tap into security feeds. So we’ve lost her for now. But I suggest we get someone to stake out the store, see if she comes back again, and then follow her to where she’s hiding out when we can.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, thinking of the best course of action.
“Call Beckett and ask him for someone to stake out the store. Tell him some bullshit about him owning us and if that doesn’t work call Winny and tell her it’s for a baby. She’ll be hormonal enough to go for it.”
Chester snickers.
“How the hell did you manage to get a hit in Salem?”
“I broadened our search range.”
“Isn’t that a humongous pile of data to sort through?”
“Yeah, but I made a smarter program and then I updated the servers. I might have used some of the FBI resources without their knowledge.”
The corners of my mouth turn up unwillingly. “I love you and that big fat brain of yours.”
“Well, I love your ass.”
I laugh out loud. “That’s so beside the point.”
“True nonetheless.”
He disconnects the call before we can really get into it. I guess he has other phone calls to make to get the ball rolling. I drop my phone somewhere on the duvet and let myself fall back in bed, rubbing my eyes some more.
For some reason, I have slept amazingly, better than I have in a long while. Which shows by the fact that I slept in on a work day.
“Finally awake?” Remy says, standing in the doorway with a toothbrush in his mouth. His hair is wet and slicked back, and all he’s wearing is a big towel around his waist.
“I had no idea I was so tired,” I tell him.
“Figured that much.”
“Guess I’ll go get dressed to go to work then,” I say. This sleeping-in is messing with my rhythm.
“Chester told everyone you’d come in later today and he said you can use his office and work here if you want to as well.”
Remy hops on the bed, and I turn onto my side so that I’m facing him.
“You take really good care of me.”
His smile is so wide it practically splits his face in two. “You deserve it.”
I beg to differ, but I don’t tell him that. “Why didn’t Chester sleep in as well?”
Remy wrinkles his nose. “Said he had work to do.”
I sigh. I’m a little worried about Chester. We all have a lot going on, but Chester keeps on soldering on. I’m not even sure what he’s working on exactly. We know it’s Wayne we’re looking for. He’s already doing everything he can to find him. He just got a hit on Darla and the other hackers are picking up everything in that department. What is he doing that’s keeping him busy at all hours of every day?
I understand the urge to keep yourself busy so you don’t have to deal with everyday life,so maybe this makes me a hypocrite, but I worry about Chester anyway.
Remy bends down and kisses me between my eyes, where obvious worry wrinkles have formed.
“Get dressed, stop worrying, and everything will be fine.”
I sigh, and try my hardest to trust his word.
I don’t even pretend to act normal because I feel awful, so I skip the couch and sit down on the comfy rug in front of it. Robin smiles at me, and I already feel some of my worries become lighter than they were. I’m not ready to just start blurting out everything that’s bothering me when I enter her office, but I owe her to at least show her that I appreciate what she does for me by acting like I actually want to be here. Which I do.
“You look like you’ve had a rough week,” she says.
“That’s a very compassionate way of saying I look like crap.”
She chuckles, removes her glasses and puts down her notepad and pen. Guess we’re all acting out of character today. She’s right though. I did have a rough week. I’ve had a rough few months. And it’s showing. The way Wayne is picking up his pace isn’t helping.
“You’re a beautiful woman, but even beautiful people can show on the outside how they’re actually feeling deep within.”
I nod, trying to pick some lint off the rug. “I’ve been told that I have a really good poker face.”
“Well, that’s because you don’t know what you’re feeling, so you can’t show it. But it’s taken me years for you to be comfortable enough to show me how you really feel, even when you can’t put it into words.”
I actually don’t have anything to say against that, so I just shut up. I rake my lip over my bottom teeth, staring at the notepad she put down.
“Aren’t you going to take any notes today?”
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even really understand what use the notes are.”
“They’re to help me.”
“I thought we were here to help me.”
She laughs. “They help me help you. And you’ve been spending too much time with Chester.”
Silence returns.
“How’s that going?” she asks.
“What?”
“Things with Chester.”
My face lights up. “I never knew it could be like this.”
She points in my direction. “That, what’s happening right there. That’s showing how you feel on the inside as well. It’s a good thing.”
“It feels good,” I mutter. “I have no idea how to be a girlfriend. Last night I hoarded their clothes like some dragon collecting its trove and wore it all.”
She doesn’t respond to that.
“That’s weird, right?”
She cocks her head. “Was it a hard night?”
I swallow, looking away again. “It was a god awful day. But then Remy showed me that you have to dance in the rain sometimes and that was actually a really nice moment and something I needed to learn. But overall, it was just another bad day to top off the awful days before that.”
“So you came home, and you wanted to literally wrap yourself in comfort, and you picked up the clothes from the people who make you feel good.”
“I guess.”
“How’s that weird? I’d rather have you wear their clothes and seek their company than drink yourself into a stupor.”
I squint my eyes. “You’re trying to convince me this is healthy behavior?”
“I’d even go so far as to say that it’s very cute.”
I scowl at her. I’ll accept a lot of compliments, especially when they’re true, but I’m so far from cute it’s laughable.
“That,” she continues while she points at my face again, “is showing me how you feel as well.”
I ignore her, because she’s been right too many times today already.
“So, now tell me why you look like you’ve had a rough week. Tell me what’s happening on the inside.”
My head falls back against the couch, and I automatically start counting the ceiling tiles even if I know that there won’t magically be more than last time.
“I’m used to being in control,” I tell her, knowing perfectly well that I shouldn”t have to. She’s the one who taught me after all. “And when I’m in control, I don’t feel all these emotions. They’re neatly tucked away behind a huge wall of control. But right now, that wall is being torn down, and all these feelings come through.”
“I know,” she says.
Really helpful. I’m tempted to say that I’m going to find another therapist if this is the advice she’s going to give me. She reads my looks and gives me a crooked smile.
“I’ll save you all the scientific talk, but what you’re experiencing is perfectly normal. We’ve all got different ways to act in different situations to make us be the most happy and safe version of ourselves. Tell me, are you just feeling angry and sad, or are you feeling happy as well?”
I take a second to let that sink in. Right now, everything that’s going on with Wayne is mostly anger and sadness. It’s because things at work aren’t going as I want them to go, with all the murders and threats to my life and that of my family as well and I feel out of control. But outside of work, I’m actually happier than I’ve been in years. Maybe in forever.
“There’s some good moments as well.”
She nods, gets up, and walks to her desk. She opens a drawer and grabs a key, which she proceeds to take to a filing cabinet. She opens one of the cabinet”s drawers and takes out a folder, which she lays in her lap after she sits back down again.
“When you came here for therapy, you were so sad you wouldn’t have been able to breathe if you’d have admitted it. So you hid the sadness behind a layer of anger. You became angry at the world and all its injustice. But you didn’t know how to handle the anger. Which is understandable. There was a lot of sadness to hide, so you had to be angry. Then you built a wall around all those emotions. As long as you were in control, you felt right. Or actually, you didn’t feel anything, so everything seemed right.”
She’s making a very accurate assessment of me, and while I know it’s true, I’ve never heard her explain it to me like this.
“The moments that the control wasn’t enough, you soothed yourself. You found someone to hook up with, drank a few glasses of whiskey, buried yourself in work and took care of everyone around you, just so you didn’t have to take care of yourself.”
She holds out the file to me.
“It’s all here. You can read it.”
I grab the file, giving it a hesitant look. I’d say I’ve got a big set of lady balls, but right now, I’m afraid to open it. Robin just keeps looking at me with a calmness that I don’t feel right then.
“It’s the reason I take notes. It’s so easy to forget where we’ve come from. It’s why I urge you to journal, even though I know that you’ve never written a single page. The girl that came in here all those years ago is still there, but she’s no longer the same. It’s the reason I don’t have to take notes today because I can see you on the outside as you are on the inside. I know you’ll use words to tell me how you feel.”
I wipe away a lone tear that makes its way down my cheek. I’m not sure why this touches me like it does, but maybe that’s the whole idea of it. I feel it, so it’s there.
“I’m so scared,” I whisper.
“What are you afraid of?”
I look up at her from beneath my wet lashes. “To lose it all again.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Really? You’re full of onliners today, aren’t you?”
She chuckles. “I could tell you a lot of things. Why it’s understandable that you feel this way. I could try to reason everything away. But I want you to feel. I want you to go through those emotions. The only way you’ll get the confidence that nobody is going anywhere is to give it time.”
I blow out an angry breath.
“I hate the word time.”
“Because that killer flipped your whole world upside down,” she states.
“He saw my aunt and uncle and their kids a few days ago…”
She remains quiet, not finishing my thoughts for me or asking me additional questions.
“I’m afraid he’ll hurt them.”
“That must be extremely frightening.”
Her eyes are kind, warm, and caring. And when I open my mouth to put words to everything it is I’m feeling, I break down and start sobbing. I stop trying to validate my feelings with rationality and simply feel. It’s cathartic.
The file I hold in my hands gets wet, and by the time I step out of her office, I hand it back to her without looking inside.
I can feel the changes without having to see them.
It’s incredible. The group of dancers that fly over the stage in front of me are incredible. They move fluently to the notes of the music and tell a story with their bodies that I can’t comprehend but feel inside my bones.
Remy is front and center; playing the role of Don Quixote is a big thing. Or so I’ve been told. I’m unfamiliar with both the book and the dance, but what I’m getting from watching this last bit of the rehearsal is that it’s glorious.
Orchestral music does something to me – I am so used to all the modern music produced in studios that has been polished until it’s shining and perfect. It is mindblowing to hear the different instruments so vividly and see the dancers take cue from it.
I take a seat in the back of the rehearsal space. It’s a small stage with few seats in front of it, but it’s home to many of these dancers. Remy has tried to explain his way of living to me, of finding a different family with every dance he’s ever been in. Home is not a building to him. It’s not even the same group of people. Home is a feeling of belonging and knowing it will always be there.
That’s what he feels when he’s on a stage.
And that’s what he feels when he’s with us, he’s confessed. It’s a foreign idea to him.
The song ends, and the director walks over to speak to the dancers before the group breaks up and starts making their way to the dressing rooms through the wings.
“Remy!”
He stops mid-stride, turns around, searches for who called his name, and lights up the second he finds me. He doesn’t walk towards me; he runs. The moment he reaches me, he holds me in his arms, spins me around, and dips me. He’s sweaty, sticky, and smells oh so fucking wonderfully masculine. Studies have shown that you fall in love with people who smell good to you – smell is the strongest sense there is after all. And it must be true, because all my men smell equally good to me. Studies have also shown that once the hormones that make you feel in love change, the way you smell your loved one changes as well. But that is something I refuse to admit. They’re never going to not smell good.
“What are you doing here, ma luciole?”
There’s a slight smile on my face before it disappears. “I need you.”
His eyes darkened, and his eyebrows were brought together. “Can I take a quick shower first, or do we need to go right this second?”
“Go shower, we’ll go after. I’ll wait here.”
See, one of the things I like about Remy is that he doesn’t ask questions. He blindly trusts me, and the fact that he can do that after what we’ve put him through speaks to his character.
I sit in one of the chairs and aimlessly scroll through my newsfeed for a while until two women walk up to me. They’re petite, and gorgeous, and still in their leotards.
“Excuse me?” a blond woman says. Her eyes are freaking huge, and she could be a doll.
“Yeah?”
“You’re Abby, right?”
“I am.”
“You’re Remy’s girlfriend?” the other girl asks. She has red hair and freckles all over her face. She wears a triangular Celtic knot around her neck, and the sight of it triggers me into thinking about Wayne again.
“Amongst others,” I answer mysteriously.
“Are you really in a polyamorous relationship with three men?” she blatantly asks.
I start laughing. “Yeah.”
The big eyes of the blond girl get even bigger. “You must come over sometime and tell us all about it.”
“Yes,” the redhead says, “how does that work exactly?” She looks confused, and I think it’s hilarious. I guess Remy shares more about our personal lives than I knew, and I love the curiosity of these women. More power to them.
Remy walks out of the wings, hair wet and fresh clothes on. He has a jacket on already, ready to go outside. “Pia, Luna, leave Abby alone.”
“She’s going to tell us all,” the blond says conspiratorially.
“Soon there won’t be enough men in Portland because the women will be collecting them all,” the red says.
“You’ve created monsters,” Remy chastises me.
“Me? You were the one who put ideas in my head. I was perfectly fine not having a relationship whatsoever.”
“Well, I’m just that irresistible,” he answers. He kisses Pia and Luna on their cheeks, then grabs my arm and makes me leave. I wave at the women over my shoulder, both of them giving me giggling waves back.
When the cold fall air hits my cheeks, Remy pulls me against him and kisses me. “Where are we going?” he asks me.
“I need to go back to the lake, find a nice rock, and then take it to my parent’s grave, and I don’t want to do this alone.”
He once again doesn’t ask questions and just nods. I lead him to where I’ve parked my car, and before we know it we’re on the road. Remy grabs his phone and hooks it up to the car.
“What kind of music did your parents like?”
I take a moment to think about that, getting lost in memory for a while. “My mother loved musical theatre music. My father was more of the old school rock and roll. But deep down, they loved music in general.”
Remy smiles, liking the sound of that. He selects a song on his phone, and Good Morning Starshine from the musical Hair starts playing. It’s a beautiful, happy tune that makes me want to drive while feeling the wind blowing through my hair. I expected him to pick something sad, but as often is the case, Remy knows better what my emotional needs are than I do myself.
We sit in silence and drive while I get lost in thought. I think of the smell of library books on days when my father used to take me there. I always took more books than I could finish, but he never said anything about it. I liked the ritual of going there with him more than I liked actually reading the books. I’ve never been able to sit still long enough to read a book cover to cover. My father could. He could pick up a book and get lost in the world. You could say his name, start a fire right next to him, and he wouldn’t notice. You’d have to physically put your hands on him to take him out of his world made of words.
I think about the time I spent in the kitchen with my mother. She would make me read the recipes myself, and then whisper ideas in my ear of what would make the recipe even better. I remember the smell of her perfume, and the subtle shade of pink blush she’d put on every day. It would match the color of her lipstick, and she would put it on me on special occasions. I wore the blush and the lipstick to their funerals. Aunt Viv helped me apply it while tears streamed down her face the whole time.
It was the last time I ever wore it.
Before I knew it, we had reached the lake. A big part of the clearing is cordoned off by police tape. It’s still a crime scene after all. Remy makes sure I’m secure in his arms, and I suddenly realize that I crave the way I can be vulnerable with him. I don’t have to be the tough woman who can fix everything. I can just be me, flaws and all, with a heap load of baggage. I often think of Chester as the troubled one, and while that is most definitely true as well, I have had my fair share of trauma too. I’ve just hid it very well behind my wall of control if I have to believe Robin.
I scour the ground, searching for stones. Every now and again, I pick up a stone and put it in my pocket, but I’m holding out for a better one out there. I’m just not ready to make a decision yet.
Remy picks up stones as well. He has a good eye for it, finding really good ones that are partly hidden. He has an eye for it and is good at finding hidden treasures.
It’s that moment it hits me just how true that statement is.
Since we’ve known Remy, he’s been made privy to all the things Chester and I have shared over years of declaring treasure. Sure, he doesn’t know about my crush on my English teacher freshman year, but it’s not like I would keep that a secret if the topic ever came up.
I weigh the stones in my pocket, rolling them around in my hand, worrying about making the right choice. I want to pick the best stone I can find for them. They deserve that.
“You don’t have to pick just one, you know?” he says kindly.
I stroke my fingers over them, feeling the different structures. Smooth, bumpy, grainy. Not wanting to make a decision, I let them glide through my fingers and fall back into my pocket again.
He looks at what I’m doing, and I just nod before we make our way back to the car. I drive off, and Remy arranges the music again. On the way to the cemetery, he settles on a mix of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and AC/DC, honoring my father’s musical taste.
When we reach the cemetery, I get out of the car and inhale deeply, trying to find balance. I breathe for four, hold for four, breathe out for four and hold for four again. When Remy grabs my hand, I steer him toward my parent’s grave, and on the way there, I try to figure out why I’ve felt the need to come here and do this. Why now? I’m inconclusive about it. My best guess is that it has something to do with giving space to the sadness that Robin claims I’ve been putting away. Another part of me liked what Remy said about love being stronger than death. And maybe I should just stop overthinking this. Just give in and go with it.
Remy strokes the back of my hand with his thumb. His gesture is soothing. We reach the gray headstone that I’m all too familiar with. Nothing about it has changed, while everything feels different. Having been by the lake, twice now, has changed something. It has made me grateful that their bodies were found at all and that I have a grave to visit.
I let Remy go and shut myself off. I’m solely here for me, even if I really need him here with me. Sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the grave, I start digging through my pocket and grab the stones I’ve gathered. I’m nowhere near deciding which stones I should leave for them, and it feels like a Herculean task. So I remember what Remy said. I don’t have to pick.
I grab them all.
On the little ledge at the bottom of the headstone, I place all the stones in a neat line. I make sure there are equally as many stones beneath my father’s name as beneath my mother’s, and when everything looks nice and tidy, it feels like something lifts inside of me.
The sadness, the missing, will never truly disappear, but it starts feeling a little more manageable as time passes.
As resolutely as I came, I stand up and look Remy in the eye. His patience with me is admirable. I know I sure as fuck wouldn’t have it, even for myself. He gives me a soft crooked smile and holds out his hand for me. The moment I grab it, he lays his other hand on my parent’s gravestone as if he’s also saying goodbye to them.
“Can I take you somewhere now?” he softly asks.
I’m not sure I understand, but I’m willing to go to hell and back for him, so I nod and walk along. He navigates me through rows of graves, and I marvel at how different all the graves are. There is no right or wrong in death. Everyone deals with it in their own way.
He stops at a place where two white plaques are on the ground. Still confused, I read the inscriptions, only to find the names of one Mister and Miss Ashburn, telling me that these are his parents. Around the plaques are a few stones, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is Remy’s doing.
He lets go of my hand and places a stone with his father and with his mother, his eyes stuck down on the grass the whole time.
“Mother, father. I’d like to introduce you to Abigail Wilder. She’s the love of my life, and I’m sad you didn’t get to meet her while you were alive. You would have loved her success and hated her passion. And the way she never shuts up. She’d have given both of you a run for your money in an argument, and I would love to have seen that.”
My heart is beating so fast it feels like it’s going to jump out of my chest. I realize that his words make me happy. I could use many words for it, but it all comes down to this: In this moment, I’m happy.
He gets up from his crouch, grabs my hand, and without any further ado, leaves again. I’m curious, but I don’t want to pry. That moment felt private, but he took me with him. And I’m confused because I know he hadn’t been in his parents’ life for the last fifteen years before their deaths, but there were stones on their graves anyway, indicating that he visits.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Always, ma luciole.”
“Why come here? You didn’t have any contact with them when they were still alive.”
He squeezes my hand and looks around. “It’s complicated and a little conceited.”
“Try me.”
“For… For the first time in my life, I get to speak my mind to them without them talking back.”
I can’t help but laugh, and soon he joins me.
“It’s liberating. I get to be me around them, and they can’t do shit about it.”
We walk towards the exit.
“Why the stones then?” I ask.
He shrugs, looking away, staring at where the colored leaves of a chestnut tree light up the entrance of the cemetery. It’s that magical time of year where the leaves have changed, but are still hanging on to the trees.
“The stones are for me, I guess. Because no matter what happens in life, love is stronger than death. They may not have accepted me during their lives, but I was made out of love, and I can love people on my own terms. I will not let their short-sightedness take that from me. As long as I still have love to give, I will.”
I nod, thinking I understand what he’s trying to tell me, but the concept is a little foreign, so I’m not sure I really do.
“Do you ever talk to them?” he asks me in turn.
“Never.”
“Why not?”
Now it’s my turn to look away. “Honestly? Because I think it’s a little weird.”
He laughs, and the sound warms my insides.
“More honestly?” I continue with a soft voice. “It’s too hard to voice my thoughts, let alone my feelings. So I just don’t.”
He nods.
“But now you’ve got rocks,” he says resolutely.
“Now I’ve got rocks,” I agree.