6. Drowning Hornets
Drowning Hornets
Audrey’s sunshine hair is braided today, trapped between her purple backpack and her back as we walk down the sidewalk that will soon turn to a narrow, unkept road. It’s not too far removed from the rest of the small town, but far enough to be an annoyingly long walk from town.
Her wide hazel eyes meet mine before her head hangs again. “We’ll be late.”
“And?” She breathes deeply, clenching the straps of her backpack tightly as I quicken my stride until I’m beside her. “Only by a few minutes.”
Her fists tighten. The muscles in her jaw clenching. Audrey is particular about most everything, especially being late. Like the cute way she knocks three times on the front door of my house, even if nobody hears her, she won’t knock again.
Not once or twice but three times. Every single time.
Or how she wears her hair in a braid every Friday, her bangs poofed up bigger than seems reasonable.
Nearly every week showing me what she dubbed her battle scars, where she touched the hot iron to her forehead.
She uses her mom’s curler even though she hates the smell of the tacky, burned hairspray coating it.
“Hang out at my house tonight. We’ll go straight downstairs.” Can’t be upset about the time if you never see the clock.
She peeks up at me again, and her irises swallow me whole. My brain fuzzes as I fixate on the lines of golden brown, green, and blue. If she never had to blink, I’d count them. I know everything about Audrey Emma Fisher; the lines in her eyes should be no different.
I almost miss the bike tires barreling toward us until they skid to a stop. “Audrey! Wanna hang out at the park?”
I take a deep breath, like Dad taught me, hoping it’ll lessen the burning feeling in my chest; it sometimes does.
Not this time.
Harry Tamerlane hops off his bike, his bomber jacket making a scratchy sound as he moves. “You can ride. I’ll walk.” He gestures to his bike, urging her to climb on.
For a second, I think she’ll say yes. For a second, I can tell she wants to.
I don’t have the right words for how that makes me feel, only that I don’t like it, and my vision is tunneling again.
That same swathing, consuming itch that only two things seem to scratch.
Dad is out of town on business, so Audrey it is.
My hand grips her wrist, pulling her down the road away from Harry before she can say anything that will make me lose my cool.
“Gideon!” she chastises, but I don’t care.
She’s tiny; we both know she couldn’t wiggle free, not even if she wanted to.
I take comfort in that, knowing if push came to shove, she simply couldn’t.
“We can hang out tomorrow, Harry!” she calls back, and the itch sinks past my skin, into the bone.
I can feel sweat beading at my hairline despite the cool air.
So many words and none at all clogging my throat as I jerk her through the doorway of my house, Mom’s eyes widen on me for a moment before she’s forced to refocus on the grieving family in the lounge room, assuring them their loved one is in good hands.
A little boy this time. We got the call a few hours before school this morning.
I can’t seem to find the excitement to work on him that I felt then.
He’s going to be my first client without Dad.
I already know the mixture I’ll use to hide the unearthly blue tinge to his skin.
His grandma stepped away to answer a call.
Just a single call, a few rings of the telephone.
It only took a moment for him to stand up, slip, and knock his head on the edge of the bathtub.
Only a few minutes more for him to drown beneath his bobbing toys and soapy bubbles.
“You know I don’t like going down here!” Audrey hisses as I pull her down the stairs to the basement.
I turn left away from the morgue, but it unsettles her all the same.
My breath comes easier now that we’re here, away from anyone else.
Dead people rarely aggravate me, one of their finer qualities. So long as you can forgive the smell.
She grimaces, letting her backpack drop loudly to the floor, soon collapsing beside it on the carpet before jerking her colored pencils and sketchbook from her bag.
She doesn’t speak as I follow her to the floor, scooting until just our legs touch.
I just focus on my breathing, watching her as she draws, because there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing, not even past the double doors.
Whatever is right in Audrey always finds a way to fix whatever is wrong in me. Today I’m grateful for it.
Audrey, Present Day, 1994
When I burst through the doors of the alterations shop, I wait for the you’re fifteen minutes late to your first appointment of the day, to which I’ll follow up with I am very hungover, and my truck only made it here out of spite.
The chastising never comes, though; the shop, even in its small size, is buzzing with activity instead.
Mr. Johnson and his unofficial coffee club buddies are gathered around the tall Coca-Cola table off to the side.
Their warm, boisterous voices damn near shaking the windows, easing the anxiety of being late from me little by little.
“…glad they got someone in. I’ll be dammed if I’m shipped off to the next county to be worked on once I go.”
“Ah, hell, what will it matter to you? You’ll be dead!”
Mr. Johnson bristles. “I was born in this city, and I’ll be burned and buried here too. So help me, I’ll come back and haunt every one of you old bastards.”
I shoot a warm smile at Mrs. Johnson as she rolls her eyes from behind the counter. “Lord, let's give him whatever he wants. Heaven knows he already haunts me.”
The men at the table laugh at their friend’s expense, making Mrs. Johnson’s next words harder to hear. “Audrey, love, you’re lucky your ten o'clock was running late as well. He just headed back to change.”
I duck my head, letting my blonde hair fall into my face. “Sorry, Mrs. Johnson.”
She just shakes her head in that disapproving, yet motherly way older women do before grimacing at my truck through the storefront windows.
Dark smoke is still leaking from under the hood.
That truck, as flawed as it is, is the reason I’m here and not tucked in my warm bed drooling all over the pillow.
Being an artist doesn’t pay for much of anything, and with Mom thousands of miles away with her replacement family and Dad gone…
that leaves little ole me to manage the house and bills.
My head is already pounding as I straighten my work blouse just as the Kessler boy heads out from the back rooms, the suit his fiancée picked out the month prior hanging off him comically, like a kid that snuck into his dad’s closet. Apparently, I don’t hide my smile well enough.
“Laugh all you want. This thing looks ridiculous.”
I snicker, biting my bottom lip. “Nothing a little tailoring can’t fix. That’s why I’m here.” I give him a little wink before shifting through the cluttered wicker basket beside the dressing rooms, pulling out a tangled measuring tape.
“That kid always gave me the damn creeps,” one of Mr. Johnson's friends pipes in loudly, bringing me back to the conversation I’d largely tuned out.
“It was that mom of his, that woman was never quite right.” My stomach drops, just an inch.
“Ouch!” Jim flinches, frowning down at where I’d just stuck him.
“God, I’m sorry!”
He laughs, dusting off the spot on his ankle before straightening again.
My brows knit together, my mind fully on the conversation at the table in the corner of the room, a freshly brewed pot of coffee making my mouth water.
“He and our Audrey were tighter than thieves!” Mr. Johnson calls out, making my head snap up.
My heart pounds in my chest. “Who?” We all know who, nevertheless, I play dumb. Play dumb like we hadn’t spent a good portion of our childhood in this very shop. Like it hadn’t been Mrs. Johnson who’d taught him to sew all those years before I arrived.
Another man chimes in, “The Bell boy, Gideon was his name, wasn’t it? You were about the only kid that paid attention to him before his mom went and—"
“What about him?” I breathe out that uneasy feeling pooling in my gut.
“He’s in town, settling the family business, apparently. Maybe you two can catch up.”
Just like that, my pounding headache is forgotten, my world tilts on its axis.
Gideon…