Chapter 4 Wheel of Misfortune
Tilly walked back home, her pocket heavier than before, and something uneasy in her soul.
She'd always been sensitive. As a child, her mother would scold her for her emotional outbursts.
She didn't learn until much later in life that those "outbursts" had simply been normal shows of emotions, but for two parents who lived just shy of deadpan, they had named and branded her in a way that she would carry always so uncomfortably as she grew.
She was scared of being too emotional. She learned early to hide her tears, even when they were warranted.
Like when she was nine years old and her older sister stole her bird, Helena, and set her free in a cruel joke.
She still thinks of that day; she had hopped off the bus, walked into her room, excited to see her colorful bird that chirped happily when she saw Tilly.
The bird would often sit on her metal mesh pen holder as she sat at her desk finishing her homework and reading assignments, or nestled on a pillow next to where she read great adventures on her bed.
The evening before, her sister had three friends over, and when they came down to the kitchen with teenage hunger, they found Tilly reading an old copy of Romeo and Juliette.
At nine years old, Shakespeare was a feat, even if it was the abridged version.
A laughing joke was made about the disparity between the sisters' intelligence, and when she caught the malevolent gleam in Fae's eye, she'd worried what it meant.
She learned young not to outshine her sister.
But she hadn't prepared for what she found in her room that next day; Helena's birdcage was wide open and the green and orange bird wasn't inside.
She looked and looked throughout the house for her.
Never did she leave Helena's cage open unless she was in her room.
When she popped into Fae's room to see if she had seen or heard her bird, Fae was sitting on her unkempt bed, lackadaisically flipping through a teen magazine with her bedroom window wide open and a smirk on her face.
She cried. But not until she got to her room and closed the door gently, the soft click of the latch marking her safety for letting the tears loose.
Similarly, she had learned early that her parents were not a place of advocacy, even against her sister's sometimes cruel actions.
When she was seventeen, her boyfriend told her while she was pulling a heavy chemistry book from her chipped, slate-blue locker that he had cheated on her.
And he liked the other girl, Stacey, and wanted to take her to homecoming.
She cried to her mother. Such a feminine thing, the tenderness of having a young heart split by betrayal, and she had hoped that her mother would have held and soothed her.
Instead, her mother told her to pull herself up, that boys would break her heart, and she could not give in to the pain or they would win.
She couldn't help but wonder, win what? What game was her heart a part of?
The feeling of confusion and stifled pain radiated along her breastbone those twenty-some years ago as she looked up at the sparkly silver stars dangling from the high school gymnasium, all while the youthful and intrusive beat of music poured around her.
She'd been forced to go to the dance with a broken heart.
They'd paid for the silver dress, after all.
Still, now, that feeling would beat through her as she looked up at the sparkling night sky, but as an adult, she'd found ways to breathe out the feeling of broken uncertainty, welcoming instead the magic the night sky offered.
She'd always found solace in the night sky, its sugar stars and milky moon.
It wasn't until her thirties that Tilly had freshly left a broken and abusive marriage, one that would also play with her heart in a game she could not possibly win, that she started questioning her own repressed need to feel.
And to feel out loud.
She had been made to feel small and inconvenient when she wasn't. Her mother had a penchant for making her feel like a monster if she ever inclined to stick up for herself. But when she was younger, she named it something else. She thought her mother was teaching her to be strong.
Strength, she had started learning later, was so much more than control.
She wondered if parents shouldn't teach their children to be strong. Perhaps they should teach them to fall apart a little first, and then rebuild. A child can learn a lot about themselves when they pick themselves up again. A parent can learn a lot about their child by letting them.
Tilly got the distinct feeling that her parents had never learned much about her.
Now, as she walked down the sidewalk toward her sad apartment, a horrible fortune in her pocket and a feeling of warning in her bones, she marveled at how much she had grown in the last decade.
That even as a card was telling her there may be trouble to come, she felt more prepared to face it now as someone who recognized her emotions than someone who once shoved them in a closet with a lock.
But something was eating at the edges of her mind. It felt familiar, and it incited a tickling of fear that she knew not to poke at or give too much attention to. And yet...she was finding it difficult to ignore.
Something was off.
Still, Tilly Nguyen had no idea what was to come.
But she would.
In about twelve minutes.
A man wearing unfortunately tight khaki shorts and a green polo the shade of limeade was crouching low on the cracked sidewalk in front of Tilly's apartment complex, snapping pictures with a camera. She frowned, that feeling of foreboding pulsing.
"Uh, excuse me," she called politely. Always politely.
He startled and turned, almost losing his balance. She didn't recognize him, but his awkward smile made her uneasy.
"Oh, hi there. I'm guessing you live here?"
"Good guess," she replied, keeping a few yards of distance between them. When he took a step toward her, she took one back and felt her smile wobble on one side while trying to keep it intact.
He recognized the gesture and stopped, holding up the hand that wasn't holding his expensive camera. "I'm just here taking pictures," he said in a placating voice.
"I could have guessed that," she replied with nervous laughter.
"Right," he said. "I was hired by your landlord. He asked me to take pictures of the place because he's putting it up for sale."
Her heart stopped. "What?"
"Uh, well, yeah. I don't know more than that," he got out, the words awkward and spinning, and then he turned, cutting off the conversation.
She let out a breath and made her way inside her apartment.
He was selling? Didn't he have to give residents advanced notice?
She went to the drawer where she kept her lease agreement.
A few loose items, a rubber band, scissors, a flashlight, black bobby pins, and a few batteries rolled around as she opened it.
And a perfectly folded lease agreement that she hadn't touched since the day she moved in.
She sat down heavily on her kitchen chair and read through it quickly.
Thirty days. That's all he needed to give them per this contract.
She sighed, closing her eyes.
Her breathing was uneven.
Her phone dinged, and she pulled it out to see a text from her boss asking her to come in early today.
Another feeling of dread filled her stomach.
She rarely talked to her boss. She couldn't remember the last time she had talked with the sport-jacket-wearing tycoon who cut planned meetings in half and rarely gave any feedback to his employees.
His brother owned the radio station, and this was where her boss could tell a few people what to do with what little power he had from a local radio station focusing on local news.
Thirty minutes later, she was walking into the station. The air felt sticky, like the air conditioning was on its last breath, and she was glad for her thick hair being up and off her neck.
A hot flash had taken hold of her as she got ready for the office. Her mind was racing, and she was overheated and overwhelmed.
Exactly eight minutes later, she was carrying a white cardboard box of the few things she had at her desk out of the station. Her shoulders were held up in a tension that had been building since she woke up that morning.
She looked around the quiet street. It was early afternoon, and most people were at work or tending their early summer gardens.
Ursula's sweet box truck, painted a sage green with the words Lost Souls Botanical scripted in white with flowers and lights, was parked across the street.
One of the teenagers working the truck for her during the summer was leaning on the open window ledge, reading a book, waiting for the next customer.
She could go home, but she thought of the dingy apartment holding nothing of comfort for her. She thought about heading to The Lost Souls House, but Ursula would be at the flower farm, and Eloise was most likely at the coffee shop.
Her heart was racing.
"Yo, hottie!"
She turned her head at the call and smiled.
She hoped she smiled. She couldn't discern if her muscles followed the weak command her brain made.
Jen was standing at the door of The Black Cat dressed in a crisp red pantsuit, her hair long and straight today, swinging by her waist. She nodded toward the coffee shop in question, and a look of concern.
Tilly felt a familiar lift of her spirit as she made her way toward her dearest friend.
"I say this with love," Jen started as she handed her a lavender honey latte with two extra shots, just the way she liked it. She'd pulled out a chair for Tilly, shooting her worried glances as she ordered at the counter.
"Hit me," Tilly said, wrapping her hands around the large black mug. She had taken the five minutes alone at the table to regulate herself.