38. A United Front
A United Front
True to his word, Gideon handled everything.
And true to his word, Gideon showed me more than I ever wanted to see.
His eyes imploring, studying as if it would click and make sense to me too as I watched the tapes from the suitcase.
He hadn’t lied; they were for his work… only not in any professional setting.
I watched in numb abject horror as each woman was primed and groomed…
made into bizarre carbon copies of me or at least what he thought I would look like.
He was unsurprisingly accurate. I watched, holding my sick and sobs at bay, as each one failed to ask him his question, my memory of that day by the lake…
the car ride home horrific in new, unsettling ways.
It was less than an hour later when another call came, the movie playing now muted on the TV.
My flinches timed perfectly with each slash of the blade he used on this one.
We’d be receiving a family in an hour. I hardly felt ready.
Hardly reacted as he walked me home to pick out a long-sleeved dress, to hide my bandaged arm, of course, tights for the marks on my legs, and a high neck for the ones there.
Hardly spoke as I watched Gideon… slip into himself.
Unbothered and beautiful, strong. I was little more than a whisp as they walked in, but I smiled.
My shaky hands offering tissues and my chapped lips saying all the right things.
A united front.
Just like we were meant to be, his secrets tucked somewhere deep inside of me, and when they left, I asked what he’d done with Jessica’s remains. He told me as if I’d asked him about the forecast. His eyes doing what they did best… watching, waiting to see what I’d do.
I smiled and asked him to pass the orange juice.
He smiled back.
His approval was the first thing to break the surface of the numbness in hours, and when he pressed Krissy into my lap later, I held her tighter than I had in years.
My feet scuff across the worn rug in Gideon’s room, eyeing the space under the bed with nervous glances between stints of refusing to look, like by association the undescriptive outside of the suitcase might force the media inside it on me.
It’s been half an hour, twenty minutes tops, since he went downstairs to prepare Mr. Oliver, a carpenter who lost his fight to cancer.
A human body wasted away and reduced to legal forms and an empty canvas.
I stumble, tripping over nothing but my own two feet, but the strange, choked sound that leaves my mouth as my hands hit the place the suitcase had been has me scrambling up and rushing for the door.
My shoulder hits the frame with jarring force, but I burst into the hall, my palms clammy and heart racing for no reason at all.
Nothing is happening; there is no immediate threat, so far as I can see.
But the tightness in my chest won’t let up.
I’m halfway down the stairs searching for him, for Gideon, before I realize where I’m going.
Because honestly?
Where else can I go?
Who else is there left to turn to?
Mom? I’m not welcome at her new house a state away.
The Johnsons? What would I say? Hi, I need to hang out here because I think I’m losing my fucking mind, but I can’t explain to you why, only that it’s horrible…
maybe wonderful, and on second thought I’m going to head home because apparently I can’t stand to be apart from Gideon for longer than half an hour now.
My thoughts don’t make sense if there’s any to be had at all, and I just can’t breathe.
Gideon can fix that.
I pause outside the double doors to the embalming room, my stomach churning at the smells emanating from within there, wondering if I’ll have the courage to simply reach out and open it.
I knock instead. The sound of my pounding heart whooshing in my ears as I wait.
It’s not like me, not after getting used to having him around again, to feel so… shy.
Although shy seems like the perfect and worst word to describe the way I shift on my feet, barely having the courage to look at the doors.
I need Gideon.
He’ll fix this.
He fixes everything.
Right?
He’s my best friend in the entire world.
He… he scares—
I flinch as he swings the doors open, my eyes flicking to and then rapidly away from the man on the table.
“Everything okay, puppet?”
I force my eyes to his face, the handsome angles and wire-rimmed glasses, his black moppy hair groomed back, his eyes…
his cold, feverish eyes such a conundrum, so…
overwhelming it don’t think as I fling myself into his chest, tucking myself tightly there and curling into the warmth of him.
“Yeah, I just… I just wanted to be by you.”
He huffs out a chuckle, only separating from me long enough to remove the apron I’d scarcely noticed before he lifts me into his arms with ease, letting me cling to him so tightly I don’t make a peep as he walks us past the double doors.
There’s something new… different in the way I hold him, desperate and rough.
It’s not soft, not adoring, but desperate, and suddenly I’ve never been surer of anything in the entire world aside from the fact that if I let go of my Gideon now, everything will fall apart.
So, I clutch him harder, burying my face in his neck, inhaling eucalyptus and pepper and not thinking about clean linen.
Not missing anything or feeling anything but this hardened, sharp need to press myself so deep I never have to come up for air.
It’s not hard to let go of the knot in my stomach here.
My chest only rising and falling because Gideon is breathing for me.
Neither of us speaks as he settles me in a chair in the corner of the room, leaving me alone with the body and that budding knot of panic again until he returns, wrapping me in a blanket from upstairs.
When he presses my sketchbook and Krissy into my arms, I wince as he goes to move away, my hand snapping out to grip him so hard my nails score him above his wrist. “Please. I want to be by you.”
The smile he gives me almost looks genuinely warm, but it’s not as he reaches out, slipping his fingers into my unbound hair. “I’ve missed you so much. Missed you needing me.”
Strange, I hadn’t realized I’d ever stopped.
My eyes are as blank as the sketchpad as I curl up in the metal chair, staring forward at the lift attached to the wall as he gets back to work. Soon enough, when Gideon starts humming The World We Knew by Frank Sinatra, I let myself fall asleep.
So long as I’m close to him.