Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Climbing the stairs to her apartment, Sway huddled into herself. She didn’t have the heart to go inside the shop and tell the others that Tesh was gone. She didn’t want to see their friends cry. She didn’t want to feel the need to make them feel better. She just wanted to go to sleep and wake to the whole situation being a bad dream.
She’d called Lottie when she left the hospital and cried all the way to the funeral home. When Lottie offered to come to the apartment, Sway had politely declined. She wasn’t ready to hear how sorry anyone was that Tesh was gone. Not ready for it to be true.
Sliding the key into the lock, she let the door open and stood at the threshold, afraid to step inside. Afraid to be alone with her grief. Until Tesh moved into it, the apartment had not been used since Sway was a teenager. She and her parents had lived a few miles away, and her parents had used the apartment as a parts room for years. When her father died, Tesh cleared out the upstairs and put it back to being an apartment. Sway had used it as a place to run to when their mother became abusive toward her. Alcohol and drugs had become the woman’s life until the day she died.
Sway wished she could say she missed her parents, but the truth was, she didn’t. Both her parents were abusive. Tesh had been her family, her whole life, and now, she had no one.
When she finally took that step into the apartment, Sway held her grief tight to her chest until the door clicked shut and the lock engaged. Over the past week, the apartment had become her safe haven, her place to hide when things got too real. Two weeks ago, she would have said she was tired of the damn place. Now, she wouldn’t give it up for anything.
Standing in the living room, she looked around, thinking about how it looked when Tesh moved out and let her have it as her own place. Beyond the furniture and decorations, it was still the same place it had always been. The walls were old brick, and some places had been plastered over. In others, it seemed they were whitewashed. The ceilings were at least ten, if not twelve, feet high with exposed rafters. It had a small-to-medium kitchen space with a breakfast counter that separated it from the living room area. She loved the open feel to it.
A small hallway led to a large bedroom with much of the same brick and open ceiling. The electric candelabra hanging over the bed bathed the room in soft light. A jumble of throw pillows adorned the bed, and the floor was wood with a large cowhide rug covering most of it. The bathroom was not huge, but it wasn’t small either. It had a large clawfoot tub that Sway loved .
Even being tired of living above the auto shop, she still loved everything about the place. Over time, it had become her home. Smiling, she remembered how she had started out with wooden crates as her entertainment centre, now having a beautiful oak stand. Lawn furniture used as living room furniture had been replaced with a suede sofa and a set of vintage cigar chairs. She’d come a long way from that seventeen-year-old na?ve girl into a twenty-seven-year-old woman who had seen too much of the seedy side of the world.
Slipping off her coat, she tossed it on the chair and did what she always did when something slapped her in the face—she cleaned. She changed clothes and everything from the walls to the baseboards got wiped down. When she stuck her head in the oven to clean it, she actually thought about turning on the gas. She could hear her brother’s voice. Don’t be a coward, Sway.
At midnight, she stood in the middle of her kitchen, exhausted. Everything was spotless, and there wasn’t a speck of dust or a crumb of anything. Her grumbling stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten, but the thought of food wasn’t appealing. She’d get a shower, and tomorrow, she might think about cooking.
Around four a.m., Sway lay awake as sleep eluded her. Rolling over, she flipped her pillow to the cooler side and punched it a couple times, trying to make it somewhat more comfortable. The image of Tesh lying in the hospital bed haunted her thoughts. Not being able to take it any longer, she threw off the covers and got out of bed.
Thankfully, it was Sunday, so she didn’t have to work. She wasn’t ready to face the few employees they had. She had Sway corrected. Walking into the kitchen, Sway hit the on button for the coffeepot and leaned against the counter. Her mind was restless, and she needed a distraction.
Walking over to her bookshelves, she skimmed over the books. Nothing jumped out at her, but she thought something was better than nothing. Grabbing her worn copy of Wuthering Heights , Sway quoted one of her favourite lines from the story as she held the book. “I have not broken your heart. You have broken it. And in breaking it, you have broken mine.”The words struck a chord with her. Swiping a stray tear away, she walked back into the kitchen to get her coffee.
The sound of wind beating against the windows made her shiver. Thunder clapped outside, and the sound of rain followed shortly after. Walking to the window, she pulled back the curtains and peered out. “Perfect day to hide inside,” she said out loud.
Instead of closing the curtains as she normally did, she pulled them back so she could watch the storm. Moving back to the kitchen, she finished fixing her coffee. Picking up the book, she carried it along with her coffee to the sofa. The room was not huge in floor space, but it appeared larger due to the high ceiling and open rafters. Setting down the cup and book, she reached for a blanket and snuggled in.
An hour later, she’d tired of trying to read. She tried losing herself in the pages of the tumultuous relationships of the story, but it hadn’t worked. Closing the book, she sat watching the rain as it slapped at the windows. She watched as lightning lit up the still dark skies, followed by loud claps of thunder. Holding the book in her lap, she thought about all the things she’d put on hold so she could help Tesh keep the business afloat. Reaching for her coffee, she realized it had gone cold.
As she sat staring at the rain, tears welled in her eyes. She fought hard for them to go away. Her brother was dead, and she was sitting there thinking about what she had missed. The unshed tears tumbled over her lashes, and the sob she had been shoving down finally bubbled up. Between the tears and the sobs, her whole body shook from grief.
Grabbing her phone, she called Lottie. Lottie was her best friend and her confidante. It took two rings before she heard the sultry voice come across the line.
“Sway, baby, you okay?”
“No.” Sway’s voice cracked. “Tesh is gone,” she reminded her best friend.
“I’m on my way.”
“Okay.” Sway hung up and let her emotions take over. The feeling of loneliness threatened to choke her. Instead, she curled up in a ball on the sofa, sobbing, and pulled the blanket over her head, trying to hide from the grief. She cried until Lottie arrived, then she cried some more when Lottie crawled onto the sofa with her.
Lottie sat with her best friend’s head resting in her lap. Candles burned bright on the side table as the heavy navy blue curtains hung open across the room. She hated that Sway was hurting. Hated that Tesh had died, leaving her struggling on many levels. Everything in the apartment screamed Sway lived there, but Lottie could still find remnants from when Tesh had lived there. Small things like a hat of Tesh’s still hung on the coat rack by the front door. The tea kettle on the stove had been his. The bedframe in Sway’s bedroom had been his. The damn thing was so heavy, Tesh had left it for Sway instead of trying to move it.
“Sway, I know you’re scared and at a loss with Tesh gone, but he taught you everything you need to know to succeed. He taught you how to be strong, smart, and, above all else, to never show fear.”
Lottie stroked Sway’s hair as she lay in her lap. “What was it that Tesh told us all the time?”
Sway wiped away tears as she answered Lottie. “He said to always look like we’re in control or that we know something no one else in the room does.”
“He also said it would give us the upper hand,” Lottie reminded Sway, hoping her brother’s words would help her somehow.
They sat there, both thinking, both silent, as the candles burned until the wicks flickered and lost the fight to remain lit. “It’s gonna take some time, Sway, but you’re gonna be fine.”
Sway lay there, finding the same comfort that Lottie always gave her, but her mind kept going back to Jerome Michel. Tesh had said he was going to a poker game at the Royal Bastards clubhouse. She’d gone over the days and nights leading up to that night, and what she recalled was that Jerome had been calling Tesh. He’d also started coming around the shop daily, aggravating her brother. Everything pointed to the asshole being involved in what happened to Tesh. If not involved in the actual attack, involved in the reason her brother was wherever he had been harmed. She’d bet her life on Jerome having the answers she wanted. “Lottie, there’s something I need.”
“What’s that?”
“Can Dawson get me information on Jerome Michel?” If anyone could get her the information she wanted, it was Dawson. Dawson Franks had his hands in many pots, from what Sway heard. It was rumoured he was affiliated with some powerful people. Most seemed sketchy, and some were scary, plain and simple, but she’d take the chance to find out what happened to Tesh. How dangerous could it be? Lottie dated Dawson, and if her best friend trusted the guy, so would Sway.