Chapter 5 Jigsaw Pieces
Jigsaw Pieces
For a moment after I woke up, I lay still, eyes closed, listening for the sound of Tom’s breathing.
I wanted to believe that if I rolled my head to the side and opened my eyes, he would be there.
His lips slightly parted, his chest rising and falling, the soft glow of the morning light kissing his handsome face.
He would open his eyes, reach out, and pull my body to his.
He would murmur, “Good morning, beautiful.” He would kiss my lips, then my neck, and then he would nibble on my earlobe. I would shiver and sweep my fingers down the ridge of his back, trailing them over his hip. His groin would stir against mine.
A door slamming jerked me out of the fantasy. Reality, a cold slap to the bittersweet memories. That was the life I’d finally allowed myself to believe would be mine. The life that had been ripped away.
There’d be no happily ever after for me. I was deluding myself into thinking there would be. Not for a jigsaw piece that didn’t fit into anyone’s puzzle.
I dragged in a shuddering breath and knuckled the dregs of sleep from my tired eyes. A weak film of primordial light bled in through a crack in the curtains. I squinted at the alarm clock. It was 5:30 a.m.
I couldn’t keep running forever, but I couldn’t stay in the place I’d called home for so many years and have my heart ravaged every time I saw the love of my life and the girl who was supposed to be my best friend. Besides, I had nowhere to stay. No one to go to.
Yawning, I clambered out of bed and wandered, head down, in a sleepy daze to the bathroom.
I stopped abruptly inside the door. The bathroom looked exactly how it had in my dream last night.
A sheer veil hung over the window. Okay, I could see that from my bed.
But the shower . . . the shower was exactly as I’d pictured it.
It was in the far corner, over the top of a small bath, the white curtain yanked back. The showerhead drip, drip, dripped.
I knew why almost immediately. The motels I’d spent the last few nights crashing in all looked remarkably similar. The bathrooms were a near replica of this one. I turned on the shower taps and the pipes groaned in some kind of orchestrated protest, but the water pressure was strong and hot.
Eventually I climbed out and wiped the mist off the mirror with the side of my fist. The face staring back at me was pale and drawn.
My eyeballs were a latticework of red. The green irises lacked luster.
Wet brown hair hung limp on my head, as if it, too, had given up on life.
I ran a brush through the long, thick strands and brushed my teeth, grabbed a clean white T-shirt and denim jeans out of the duffle bag, and got dressed.
After slipping my ring on, I hoisted the duffle bag over my shoulder and left the room as a mantle of iridescent orange quivered over the mountaintop in the distance.
The morning air was crisp. Puffs, faint as wraiths, misted out of my mouth, then simply vanished.
Poof, gone without a trace. The words materialized inside my head, sending a cold chill down my spine.
I didn’t hold the conviction of those who claimed to prophesy the future, and I lacked any type of sixth-sense ability—the shock of catching Tom in bed with Kelly attested to it.
But for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom, the notion stirred something uncomfortable inside.
Like all passing thoughts, it flicked in and out at lightning speed, and it was dismissed so fast it barely registered.
I climbed into the car, my gaze snagging on my phone where it sat in the console. Hesitantly, I picked it up.
Amy, please, please call. I know I did the wrong thing. I know you’re hurt, angry, and you have every right to be. Don’t keep ignoring me—please just call me. I love you with all my heart.
Tom had tried to call three times last night. He’d tried to call numerous times every day since I’d left. He’d left long rambling messages about how much he loved me, about what an awful mistake he’d made.
“Sorry” was the most overused and overrated word in the entire world. “Sorry” couldn’t remove the image of his body thrusting into Kelly’s. It couldn’t delete their moans scorching my ears. And it certainly couldn’t fix a heart smashed into thousands of irretrievable pieces.
“Fuck you, you fucking ass,” I muttered, stabbing the back button.
The next message was from my sister, Nerida: Call me.
I would call her eventually, but not now.
After her initial, “Amy, where are you?” as opposed to how are you, the conversation would inevitably be all about her.
She was so wrapped up in her latest drama; she had no room for anyone else.
I sighed. Putting up with her self-indulgent chatter wasn’t something I could deal with right now.
Throwing the phone back into the console, I turned the key and pulled away with a renewed sense that today would be a better day.
It wasn’t like it could get much worse.
Long stretches of green wooded terrain streamed past my window. The road slithered through the forest like a gray serpent, winding steadily inland and upward.
The summer sun streamed through the windshield and glimmered against the emerald of my ring. It was a large oval stone, wrapped in exquisitely detailed antique-gold surrounds. It was a gift from my parents.
“It has special powers and it will protect you,” Mom had said.
“Never take it off.” She’d said the same thing about the necklace they’d given me not long after I’d first arrived, when the nightmares had woken me screaming, night after night.
“It’s a magic necklace, and it will always keep you safe.
” She’d cradled me to her chest as I’d sobbed.
I remembered the warmth of her body, the soft scent of vanilla perfume, and feeling safe in her arms.
“What about the monster in the dark?” I’d whispered.
She stroked my head. “Especially the monsters in the dark. They won’t dare come anywhere near you now.”
It had worked on my young mind like a placebo drug. The nightmares ceased. It was amazing what the power of belief could do.
Even when I realized it wasn’t magic at all, but a mother just trying to ease the mind of a traumatized child, I’d never taken it off.
Not to sleep, not to shower, not to train—never.
The clasp must had given out, because the necklace had fallen off when I was running one day and I lost it.
The ring had been a gift for my eighteenth birthday.
It was the last gift I ever received from my mother.
The lights of a police car flashing up ahead snapped my attention back to the road. The car sat sideways, blocking any further progression. I pulled over, and an officer—a squat man with dark hair and a friendly face—came over to the window.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but the road is blocked. There has been an accident up ahead.”
“Is everyone alright?” I asked.
“There’s been a fatality, and it will be blocked for some hours. You can turn around, go back an hour or so to the nearest town, Two Peaks, or take the road to Church Heights, off to your right. It’s about a forty-five minute drive.”
I stared at the heavily wooded area, huge pine trees with cascading branches standing tall like stealthy caretakers of the forest floor.
The roadside dropped sharply to the left.
To the right, the road wound up through the thick trees.
Crows flew through the canopy above, squawking as their midnight-blue wings sparkled against the sun’s rays.
My gaze drifted to the ancient yellow sign, the faint outline of the mountains sketched across its facade. The paint was peeled, and black leered out from beneath it like soulless eyes. At odds with the rest of the sign, the blue writing was clear and fresh.
Church Heights
Population 3561
A place where you can start again.
The words pinged something alive in my chest. Something that felt like hope. I headed toward the promise of a fresh start.