Chapter 12
EMILY
She went fully little for the first time on a Thursday, and it wasn't dramatic at all, which somehow made it more so.
It started with Makenzie.
They'd gone into town in the morning. Makenzie, Savannah, Nicole and Emily, with Savage driving because Rampage had approved the trip on the condition that someone with a club cut was visible the entire time, and Savage had apparently drawn the short straw, which he'd accepted with the energy of a man serving a prison sentence…
and then a wink to let the girls know he was playing around.
Grand Ridge was small and warm and exactly the kind of town Emily hadn't known she needed. They parked on one end of main street. First, they made a quick stop into Trinity’s coffee shop, wine bar and bookstore all in one.
Trinity greeted her like an old friend and made each woman’s coffee by memory.
Even though she’d only been in once before, and it had been an entire week since then, Trinity even remembered what Emily had ordered.
She was impressed. But, of course, Chloe’s coffee shop was better.
She had to think that. Chloe was her best friend after all.
The girls walked down the street like old friends, and they took turns pointing out the different small businesses along the path.
They stopped into the veterinarian clinic that Mad Dog’s fiancé Kayla owned before sliding into a large booth in the back of The Rusty Crab.
She’d met the owner, Corky, when she’d had lunch with Rampage on the day she picked up the gym equipment.
After a delightful lunch, the girls, still trailed by Savage, stopped into a bakery on the corner.
“It’s relatively new. Only been open for just over a year,” Savannah told her.
Doris, the older woman who owned it, knew Makenzie by name and immediately pressed a cookie into Emily's hands before she'd said a single word.
"You're the one staying at The Watchmen’s compound," Doris said. Not unkindly. Matter-of-fact.
"News travels fast," Emily observed.
"Honey, in Grand Ridge it doesn't travel, it teleports." Doris handed her a second cookie. "We like The Watchmen here. You're safe with them."
Emily ate the cookies and thought about twenty-foot rules and response radii and someone doing the math to keep her close.
"Yeah," she said. "I’m definitely safe."
Then they stopped back into Trinity’s once again for coffee refills, against Savage’s better judgement. That’s where it started.
She hadn't meant to go to the children's section.
She'd followed Nicole toward where the romance shelves were and somehow had taken a wrong turn and ended up in the corner with the picture books and the stuffed animals and the little reading nook with the bean bag chairs shaped like animals, and she'd stopped.
There was a coloring book on the low shelf. Intricate botanical patterns, the kind that blurred the line between children's and adult, thick pages, good quality. Next to it, a set of colored pencils in a tin with a bird on the lid.
She stood there for a moment.
She looked over her shoulder. Makenzie was at the romance shelf. Nicole and Savannah were talking to Trinity. Savage was sitting on a bar stool pretending to look at his phone, while scanning the door every time it opened.
Emily picked up the coloring book. Flipped through it. Put it back.
Picked it up again.
She bought it. And the pencils. At a steep discount. Because Trinity had wanted to just give them to her and Emily would not have that. She stuffed them in her tote bag and didn't mention them.
"Good haul?" Makenzie asked her.
"Sure," Emily said.
They drank their coffee at the high top bar and Emily let herself just be there — swinging her legs in the warmth and the noise and the ordinary Thursday of it, and something in her unwound another inch.
She didn't think about Marcus Delling. She didn't think about the two missing women from Denver.
She thought about the botanical coloring book in her bag and the coffee and Nicole telling a story about Clover that involved a stray cat, a garden hose, and what she described as Irish having "a significant overreaction. "
She laughed until her eyes watered.
Savage, from his post by the window, appeared to fight a smile.
She set up at the kitchen table that afternoon.
Quietly. She'd waited until the common room emptied out, until Makenzie had gone upstairs to Irish’s apartment to take a nap and Nicole had gone home to her daughter and Savage and Savannah had disappeared.
She spread out the coloring book and opened the tin of pencils and sat there for a moment looking at the blank botanical page.
She felt stupid. She felt twelve. She felt like she was doing something that needed to be done very privately.
Women her age didn’t sit at a table and color when there was work to be done, right?
She should go wash her clothes or clean the kitchen or take out her laptop and find another freelance job to do.
She should pay her invoices for her shop and advertise for next week’s classes.
Some of her regulars had been emailing asking when she’d be back.
She could text The Naughty Girl’s Book Club or take out her kindle and read the next chapter… but she didn’t do any of it.
She picked up a pencil.
Twenty minutes in, she was completely somewhere else.
Not asleep, not checked out but somewhere quiet.
The particular quality of quiet that came when there was one task, one simple sensory thing, the scratch of pencil on paper and the decision about which shade of green for this leaf and whether the flower should be purple or blue, and nothing else, nothing pressing, nothing required.
She hadn't felt this relaxed in she didn't know. A long time.
She was so deep into her coloring she didn't hear him come in.
"That's a good picture," Rampage said.
She startled hard enough to smudge a line. Slapped the coloring book shut.
Then he was behind her, over her. His arms came around to her side and he opened it back to the page.
“Baby girl, slamming your book shut was the action of someone with something to hide,” he told her. “You have absolutely nothing to hide from me. Not now, not ever.”
She looked up at him.
He was looking at her with an expression that was, well nothing. Not amusement. Not judgment. Just neutral, the same way he looked at everything.
"Sorry," she said, even though she wasn't sure what she was apologizing for.
"Don't apologize." He backed up and stood beside her and bent down just close enough to see the page. "Botanical?"
"Yeah. I just—" She stopped. "I saw it in the bookstore. I find it calming."
"I’m glad you got it.”
She waited for more. For the knowing look or the leading question or the thing that would make her feel seen in the uncomfortable way. He pulled out the chair next to her and sat down with his coffee and his phone and started going through messages.
She stared at him.
"What?" he said, not looking up.
"You're not going to say anything?"
"About what?"
"About the—" She gestured at the coloring book. "This."
He looked at her then. Directly. "Should I?"
"I thought—"
"Emily." His voice was even. "You found something that calms you down. You bought it. You're using it." He looked at her quizzically."What exactly did you want me to say about that?"
She looked at the botanical page. At the flower that was half purple now, the pencil lines slightly unsteady at the edges.
"Nothing," she said.
"Then color." He went back to his phone.
She picked up the purple pencil.
Three minutes passed. Maybe five. The kitchen was quiet in a good way. Outside, Clover was barking at something in the yard, otherwise it was quiet. Not in an eerie way, in a nice way.
"What shade is that?" Rampage asked.
She looked at the pencil. "Wisteria."
"Hm." He looked at the page. "I like the way you are staying in the lines, baby. It’s a beautiful picture.”
She was aware, in the careful quiet way she'd been aware of things all week, that this was what it felt like.
The thing she'd read about and highlighted and come back to in the dark.
A DDlg relationship could be something as simple as your Daddy sitting beside you while you colored in your kitchen in the middle of the afternoon, telling you how good your picture looked.
"Rampage," she said.
"Yeah."
She kept her eyes on the page. "Thank you. For not making it weird."
He was quiet for a moment.
"It's not weird for a little girl to sit at the table with her Daddy and color a picture," he said. “It’s normal.”
She nodded. Kept coloring.
His phone buzzed. He answered it and she tried not to eavesdrop although he was sitting right next to her.
He answered briefly and when he hung up his posture had changed slightly, the almost imperceptible shift she was learning to read.
Like when the tik appeared in his jaw or when he widened his stance.
"What?" she said.
He looked at her. "Lucky has something on Delling. I need to go to the garage."
"Is it bad?"
"Don't know yet." He stood. "You stay inside."
"I know."
"Emily." He waited until she looked up at him fully. "When I know, you'll know. I told you that."
"Okay."
"Keep coloring." He told her. “You’re doing a great job. I hope you’ll give it to me so I can hang it up on the fridge.”
"Okay," she said again.
He left.
She looked at the half-finished flower on the page, and at the door he'd just walked out of. Down the hall, she could hear the low rumble of his voice and the answering voices of Irish and Savage, who’d come down to meet him.
Then the silence as they left the building and headed towards the garage.
Her heart beat faster in her chest with anxiety.
What news could they have found out? Then she thought about Rampage and how he would protect her, no matter the news.
She looked back at her page.
She picked up the pencil.
She colored.
She wanted to have an especially beautiful picture for her Daddy to hang up on the fridge.