32. Chapter 32
“How’s it feel?” Melanie asked, handing him the ice pack again. They were on hour four of this routine. She wasn’t sure how much longer he would keep playing along, but she hoped to get one more cycle out of it before he told her to stop getting it. The swelling had gone down all the way, she just wanted to be sure it wouldn’t come back.
“It’s fine, Mel. I really don’t think I need to do this anymore.”
“This time and one more. For me, please?” It was low of her, but sometimes that’s how it had to be.
He chuckled and put it on his head. “Ok, just for you.”
“Thank you.” She leaned down and pressed their lips together quickly.
They’d spent the day watching TV, mostly. She’d done some work on her laptop until it started getting on her nerves. The new girl, Mia, had seriously screwed up three of her spreadsheets. If she hadn’t quit when she did, she probably would’ve lost her shit and gone to HQ to fire her. Now it was too late in the day because everyone in the office would be leaving soon.
Settling back in her spot on the couch, what she really wanted to do was bust out the heating pads and down a few shots of vodka. Neither of which she was going to do. The first would lead to a conversation she didn’t want to have. The second would also lead to a talk about how alcohol wasn’t the answer. There was a list a mile long that Ann had given her of tools to use. None of them were what she wanted. Ann would also tell her that her psychological pain was manifesting as physical pain. The doctors had told her there was no lasting damage other than the sprain in her left ankle. Everything else was mostly superficial and healed completely.
“Hey,” Levi said, reaching out a hand to rub her shoulder. When she looked at him, he looked concerned with his brows squished together and his eyes searching. “You looked a little far away.”
“Sorry.” She leaned over against him.
“We haven’t talked about what today is. You’ve had my head to fuss over and distract you, but we should talk about it don’t you think?”
“How about we talk about that look you had when Allie asked you when we were having kids.” Anything to not talk about that.
“What look?”
She looked up at him. “The look that said you wanted me to respond and that your answer depended on mine.”
“Mel, we agreed I wouldn’t bring up trying for a kid. That when you were ready, you would tell me.” He took the ice pack off and threw it on the coffee table. “So, yeah, my answer depends on yours.”
“It’s not that I don’t want children with you, Levi. I just—”
“Need to get over what happened first,” he finished for her, sitting up and in turn making her sit up too. “I know. You’ve told me four times. It’s why we made the agreement, and I thought you were doing better and processing through everything. Then this week you’ve been moody. Last night, you were out here in pain. You pushed me away.” He leaned forward and put his head in his hands, only to pull back because it obviously caused him pain to touch the injured place. Instead, he got up and walked away to the window. Her heart was racing listening to him. “I know you’re in pain right now too. When your legs hurt you flex your ankles more and you spin your wedding rings.” She looked down and stopped spinning it when she saw that she was. It annoyed her he knew that. “If you can’t talk to me and your therapist isn’t helping, then you need to figure out what’s going to. I hate seeing you like this and to be honest, it makes me feel like I’m failing you. Like I’m a bad husband because I can’t fix this or figure out a way to help you.”
There was nothing worse than seeing him hurting because of her own fucked up shit. “I need to make a call and go somewhere,” she said, standing up.
He turned away from the window to look at her. “Where are you going?”
“Somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a while. When I get back, we’ll talk about it.” She snatched her phone off the coffee table and went to the bedroom.
While she changed clothes, she dialed Andrea.
“Hello.”
“Hey, I’m sorry to bother you.” In the background she could hear people talking. Hopefully, it wasn’t important.
“You aren’t. I’m just picking the girls up at daycare. What’s wrong?”
“I was wondering if you could meet me?” Maybe now wasn’t the best time. But she really needed to do this.
“Sure. Where?” “Hold my hand, baby.”
“I can come to your house if you want since you have the girls.” She bent down and tied her shoes while Andrea said something muffled that she couldn’t hear.
“Ok, come to the house, Melanie. I’ll see you in a few.”
She hung up the phone and looked in the mirror. This was as good as it was going to get tonight with her appearance. Behind her, Levi shifted into view by the door.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
Whether or not he had figured out where she was going, the answer was still the same. “No. I need to do this alone.”
“Ok.”
On her way out, she paused to kiss him goodbye. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Love you.”
“Love you too.” His hands caressed her hips before squeezing. “Be safe,” he whispered against her lips. That was usually her line.
“I will.”
Pulling up at Andrea’s she parked in the driveway, over at the side to not block the way. With a last look in the mirror, she said to herself, “You can do this.” Then she hopped out and walked to the side door.
Valerie opened it for her before she could even knock. “Hey, how are you?”
That was a dangerous question. “I’m ok. How’re you?”
“Good. Come on in, she’s in the living room feeding Addy.”
“Thanks.”
Following Valerie, she wiped her clammy palms on her jeans, praying that she didn’t look as fucked up as she felt. Judging by the way Andrea looked her up and down as they came into view, she wasn’t sure she had succeeded. Avrie was sitting on the floor coloring and looked up at her too, only to scramble up and launch herself at Melanie’s legs a second later.
“Aunt Mellie!”
“Hey, munchkin,” she said, kneeling down to hug her back. “What are you coloring?”
“A ladybug. Color wif me?”
“Maybe another time. I need to talk to your Mama, ok?”
“K.”
Avrie scurried back to her colors while Andrea handed Addy off to Valerie. She heard her whisper, “Be back, love.” Val kissed her and nodded. “Ok,” Andrea said, looking at Melanie. “Let’s go outside.”
They backtracked through the kitchen and out the side door. She was prepared to launch into an apology about interrupting her evening when Andrea stopped and looked at her in the driveway.
“I can guess why you’re here. We can go, but I want you to leave your phone here,” Andrea said.
“Let me put it in the car.”
As they passed by it, she stopped and emptied her pockets before going to get in the back of the Range Rover with the door that had been left open for her.
“Let’s go,” Andrea told Hutch.
Anna wasn’t with him tonight. The second car that usually rode with Andrea these days, also didn’t follow them. How she had known where Melanie wanted to go didn’t matter that much. Andrea was a clever woman, and she knew better than to question her.
When they turned up the plow road, Melanie stared out the window at the passing trees. The last time she’d been up this road, she had been unconscious. Coming back down bloody and bruised, she remembered counting trees while leaning against Levi. All she had been praying for then was to get to the hospital without having a total breakdown. She had felt ridiculous clutching Levi like somehow her life depended on it.
At the end of the road, Hutch turned into the gravel lot and stopped. Andrea looked around then opened the door. Following suit, Melanie trailed behind her to the edge of what had once been the salt mill. All that was left of it were the steel beams. The fire debris had been cleaned up and hauled away, but they hadn’t cut down the beams.
“When we got up here after finding you down by the road, Kenneth was next to his car. It looked like he had just made it back because he was winded and his arms were bleeding. He saw the cars and took off inside.” Andrea looked over at her, but Melanie was visualizing the scene. “We followed him inside. He tried to run to the far corner back where the office was, but I shot him in the leg and he fell hard against the concrete.”
They walked between the beams over to where she had pointed. It was nothing but an ashy, dusty slab now. “The boys wrestled him into a chair and handcuffed him while I looked around. That’s when I found the room he’d had you in. The bars were still locked across the door, but I saw the hole you’d made in the drywall.” Andrea touched her upper arm to get her to look at her. “I was proud of you for busting through that wall to escape. That’s when I knew that in the end you would be ok. You’re a fighter.”
She didn’t know what to say. Looking into those deep blue eyes, she realized she hadn’t stopped to think about how all this had affected Andrea too. The strength it took to do what she did on a daily basis was amazing. All Melanie had done was run away. Andrea stared people in the face and made them pay for what they’d done. In one form or another, that had to weigh on her. She cleared her throat and looked back toward where the room had been.
“There were pictures of me covering an entire wall and a camera was above the door. I knocked it off the wall with the lamp and because I was pissed, I threw it. There was an indentation from where it hit. That’s when I realized it wasn’t metal like the other walls.”
“So you used the lamp to bust out. I saw the blood on it and knew you had hurt yourself doing it, but you didn’t stop until you were free. Like I said, a fighter.” Andrea gave her a soft smile then moved over to where she’d talked about holding Kenneth. “I sent everyone out of here except for Hutch and sat down in a chair across from him.”
“What did he say?” She was dying to know.
“Nothing at first. He only laughed and said that I would never find your body. Clearly he didn’t know I’d already found you.” She smirked and shook her head. “When I corrected his mistake by informing him, he was livid. He called me every name in the book and screamed that you belonged with him. That when he got out of jail, you would be together. At that point he didn’t realize he wasn’t going to jail. Hutch hit him to get him to shut up.”
“Then what happened,” she prompted when Andrea stopped. Their eyes met again.
“I asked him why he did it, but he never answered me. I knew we couldn’t stay up here all day, and it was too risky to bring him down the mountain to get him in the tunnels.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “So I asked Hutch to release him. I made him kneel on the floor. Before I shot him, I made sure he understood why he was dying.” That sounded terrifying. Whatever she had done to him didn’t matter though. What mattered to Melanie was that he knew he died because of her and that she was alive.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Andrea turned to look out at the forest. “It’s a miracle that I saw you in those trees, even more so that you had made it that far down.”
Yeah. It really was. Adrenaline was a crazy thing. When she’d finally come down from it, it all seemed like it was impossible for it to have happened the way she remembered it.
“Some days are hard for me too, Melanie.” She was still looking out at the trees when she spoke and Melanie wondered if she’d ever admitted that out loud or not. “The past year has been especially trying for me. In different ways than it has been for you, but still. Letting people inside the bubble I spent decades creating both helped and made things worse somehow. I’m going to tell you something that no one outside of Allie and Valerie knows.”
Melanie stepped closer. Even though Andrea wasn’t looking at her, it felt like the right thing to do. She’d realized that she was one of those people allowed in the bubble, and she didn’t want to be on the outside ever again.
“Last year when Avrie was sick and Val was about to give birth, I started having panic attacks. That first time, I thought I was having a heart attack, but it was anxiety. Everything in my life had changed over the past couple of years. Then, seeing my daughter in the hospital, knowing Val was in pain, worrying about the business and how much I was missing because my focus was split, feeling like I had absolutely no power to fix any of it, pushed me to a place I had never been before. There was this irrational, soul-gripping fear that I had fucked everything up and that there was nothing I could do about it.”
She rubbed at her shoulder then straightened her blazer, glancing to the car where Hutch was waiting before looking back out at the trees.
“Even after Avrie was better and Addy was born, the attacks still snuck up on me. Only it was different. Not knowing if I was ruining Levi’s life by bringing him into DeLaney, every major decision I made with the business, knowing you were being stalked, the thought of not being able to stay in charge of The Council because internally I was falling apart, it was crazy. For the first time in my life, I felt crazy.” She chuckled and looked over at Melanie. Andrea was far from crazy. Anyone who said otherwise was an idiot.
All she could do was tilt her head and smile back. It didn’t feel like she needed to say anything. The story wasn’t over.
“Then, you were missing. I called every connection, I visited every contact, I put a bounty on Kenneth’s head to make the other organizations try harder to find you. I knew that if I lost you, if I let you and Levi down like that, I was going to break. My wife literally had to stop me from spiraling out of control more than once.” She paused and took several deep breaths. “My connections came through though, so I grabbed Levi and we came up here. The day I killed Kenneth Grand, is the day my panic attacks stopped. Knowing that I did something that no one else in this city could have done by finding and rescuing you within eighteen hours gave me a lifeline to latch onto and pull myself out of the hole I was in. That day proved to me that I still had what it takes to be Andrea de Laney. I have power that no one else in Berkland does. You helped me find that again.”
“Andrea—”
“No,” she shook her head, “Don’t thank me again. I’m telling you this for a reason.”
Melanie nodded and closed her mouth.
“Things happen in life. Some people get off easy with minimal challenge, others struggle through until they can’t anymore. That’s just how it is. But something I’ve always admired about you is your strength. The day I interviewed you, I could tell you were a woman who could handle her own. Nothing about that has changed.” Andrea smiled and put a hand on her shoulder. “This whole ordeal with Kenneth was terrible for you in ways I’ve never experienced, but if there’s something I feel I can speak to about it, it’s this. You came out the other side stronger and better for it. Right now, today at this moment, it might not feel that way, but what happened to you would have made some people cower in fear for the rest of their lives. People like you and me, we push through. We keep going. It doesn’t go away overnight, however, it gets less. Sometimes less is all we need until we can wake up one day and once again realize nothing can stop us from getting everything we want.”
Andrea squeezed her arm then pulled her hand back, looking back at the trees. Melanie had no idea what to say. She was right though. They were those people. They had always been those people. As soon as she was able, Melanie had gotten out of bed and went back to work. She kept going with Levi. They got married. They bought a house. In reality, her life was so much better than it had been a year ago. It was something she was grateful for, and maybe something she had needed to be reminded of. She was strong and able to survive. Maybe she was doing better than she thought she was.
“Take a minute if you need to, but when you’re ready, let’s go back to the house and have some dinner together. We’ll call Levi so he can bring his hurt butt over and have mashed potatoes with us. You can color with Avrie and chase Addy as she stumbles around the living room because they love you too and can provide you with some laughter. Then tomorrow,” Andrea turned to look at her again, “Tomorrow, you and I will get up, we’ll go to work and have our meeting, and we’ll keep pushing forward. How’s that sound?”
“That sounds like a great plan.” But she didn’t need a minute. There was nothing left for her to learn here. She knew all she needed to know about what had happened with Kenneth. More importantly, she knew she was going to be ok. She wasn’t alone anymore. Levi was there for her. Andrea and Valerie, her own family, they would all be there for her in the future. There was a lot of future left to have too. One year didn’t define her. There were so many more years to come. “Let’s go.”