Chapter 97 #2
I felt her remorseful gaze. A gaze I knew it from the past few weeks, when she had tried to talk to me.
“She was too young for you.”
Now I turned my head toward her after all.
“She was perfect just the way she was.”
Her damn age had never played a smaller role than it did now, and if Monica didn’t understand that, it was her problem.
She looked at me helplessly, but I looked away again, resting my head against the bedframe behind me.
“Are you going to testify against Joseph?”
By now, Monica knew everything. Everything. The illegal identity, that Quill was Joseph’s daughter… And the worst part was that she’d found out through the media.
Monica had cut off contact with Joseph, had thrown accusations at me the very first day she had found out, and I had swallowed them all.
Now I also knew that she was blaming herself, that she believed she could have helped Quill if she’d known about her connection to the Richters.
“For whom? For someone who’s now in a better place?”
“Quill deserves to have someone fight for her rights. Even if she’s no longer with us.”
Her voice broke and she looked away. A glance at her told me that the tears had gotten the better of her.
“Quill suggested nominating you as director.”
Monica looked up, stared at me as if I had slapped her. And I knew that her feelings of guilt weighed even heavier now.
She was currently in an election race with Joseph Richter, and things were looking better for her than expected. However, I feared the votes wouldn’t be enough, because Maplecrest was infested with conservative voices, and Arnold was known to slip people a lot of money to get them on his side.
He had probably already infiltrated the Ethics Committee.
A ringing tore through the silence, and Monica, who had been staring at me just a moment ago, looked toward the door.
Meghan’s Theme
David Buckley, Luke Richards
We both listened as Lara opened the door.
Suddenly, Monica stood up and left Quill’s room, only to return a few minutes later.
“A lawyer…”
It took me a moment to process her words.
What the hell did these people want from me? I had made it clear to the police that I wouldn’t get involved in the case any further, because I knew whose side the authorities were on.
With growing frustration, I stood up, ran a hand through my hair as if there were anything I could do to fix my rumpled appearance, and headed downstairs to the front door.
When I spotted the young woman with shoulder-length black hair, viridian eyes, and a tailored black three-piece luxury suit – who immediately smiled at me warmly and extended one of her hands, covered in black gloves – memories of the cemetery came flooding back.
She was about to introduce herself, but I cut her off with a wary look.
“Your colleague announced you.”
Where did I know her from? From one of the many Maplecrest galas?
She closed her mouth, shook my hand with a firmness unusual for a woman, and seemed confused for a moment.
“I don’t have a colleague involved in this case.”
Now I had to rummage through my memory.
Hadn’t the man said something about ninety days? But what if it had actually been a different lawyer, or they had replaced him?
“Strange, there was this man…”
“Which man?”
“Something like… Bellrose.”
She hesitated for a moment, but didn’t seem to know anyone by that name. Then her calm smile returned.
“Whoever that was, I’m the official representative of Quillon Veritas. My first big case.” She nodded, pressing her lips together. “And first, I’d like to express my condolences.”
A look of sympathy crossed her face.
Those words… I couldn’t stand to hear them anymore.
“Thank you,” I said anyway, ready to shut this conversation down before it had a chance to begin. “But I won’t…” I faltered. “What did you just say?”
For a moment, the woman seemed confused.
“I… That I’m representing Miss Veritas and…”
“Veritas.”
Since when were they using her fake name?
Realization filled the woman’s face.
“A petition has been filed demanding that the side defending her refers to her by the name she chose for herself.”
What the…
I should be thrilled, should be grateful, but there was only inner emptiness. And exhaustion.
“Listen, I thank you for doing this.” I slowly shook my head. “But I can’t do this.”
“Mr. Rydell…”
“No.”
She stared at me, hesitated, then reached into the inside pocket of her suit jacket, pulled out a matte black business card, and held it out to me.
“In case you change your mind. Here’s my number.”
I took the card, but didn’t read it, just nodded and waited until the woman had wished me a “pleasant day” and disappeared into her black sports car.
I had never met a lawyer like her before.
Whatever…
In The Stars
Benson Boone
I went back inside and headed upstairs.
This time, however, I stopped in the hallway outside her door and stood there, remembering that I still kept some of her things in the bottom drawer of my desk.
Although I wasn’t ready to break down on that floor again, I wanted to have every last memento of her close to me.
When I entered the study with all the chaos I had left behind here three months ago, and my gaze fell on the antidepressant pills that I had scattered on the floor here in my delirium two weeks ago, I wanted to turn back immediately, but I overcame my cowardice and hurried to my desk.
I spotted the small midnight-blue box on the tabletop, froze in my tracks, stared at it until my knees threatened to give way, and reached for the mini velvet box with tingling fingertips.
To this day, I hadn’t opened it again. And I was still afraid of what was inside.
It wasn’t like with the necklace with the dip pen nib pendant that I wore around my neck since her funeral and never even took off while showering.
This piece of jewelry here would remind me of something I had never had and would never have.
My breathtaking wife.
I slid the clasp open and lifted the lid.
First came the sob, then the salt water, which was making my eyes hurt by now.
Set in the delicate silver setting of the ring was a beautiful ink-blue glass stone with tiny bubbles and crystal-like structures.
A few days after I had collected her tears, I had driven to an experimental glass artist in Baltimore, who had dried them and then incorporated them into the glass, before a jeweler had set the stone into an intricately and subtly decorated silver setting.
The piece of jewelry bore the name Ink Tear.
She had loved blue. She would have loved this ring.
I would have asked her…
But life had denied me that chance.
I grimaced, let all the tears come, and sank against the wall without letting go of the box.
She had been my inner peace. But now she was gone.
I waited until the tears showed me mercy and allowed me to catch my breath before I could no longer bear to look at the ring and closed the box.
I slid back onto my knees and pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk.
There were so many things in there that I had wanted to use to decorate my shelves. Dried blue tulips she had filled every corner of this house with. The copy of Batteries of Ink she had annotated for me. The hand-sized box…
I paused, pulled out the box in which Quill had once packed my key charm, and opened it.
I had completely forgotten that I had even kept this packaging.
I was just about to close it again when something caught my eye.
The lid… There was something… handwriting. Her handwriting.
How could I not have seen that back then?
Hey hopeless author,
you know that as an author myself, I feel obligated to bring back another author who has strayed from the path, which unfortunately means for you that I’ll be besieging you until you finally start writing again.
You can cry about it, curse me... I don’t care.
Thank me when you hold your first book in your hands and feel like yourself again. And don’t forget to dedicate one of your books to the girl who saved you from this mess ((:
Happy Birthday,
Quill
It was just like when I had read her blood letter for the first time.
My vision blurred again, and something in my chest tore, as if there were still pieces of my old heart left in there. The heart that had been buried along with her.
“That’s not fair, Feather,” I whimpered, my voice breaking. “What you’re expecting of me isn’t fair.”
Yet it was the least I could do for her.
She had spent months trying to make me understand that without writing, I wasn’t myself. And she had succeeded.
I had written a full third of the second book, and just thinking about that duet robbed me of my sanity, made my fingers tingle.
It was as if Atrianima inside me was reacting to her, screaming for her, trying to claw into the last traces she had left in my life.
He loathed Davian, wanted him dead for all the suffering he had inflicted on him. For all the torture of years of withdrawal.
He was the only part of me that still wanted to live. For her. He wanted to make sure she never died. That she would never be forgotten.
And he used this moment of my misery to fight his way to the surface.
Blindly, I fumbled for the business card I had just placed on the desk, pulled myself up weakly, and finally managed to grasp it before I sat down in the chair and, with a pained expression, reached for the phone to dial the lawyer’s number.
Camille DeLoughrey
Whoever this woman was, fate had sent her.
I refused to believe that it had even anything good left in store for me, but if I was going to go down anyway, then I would take Joseph Richter and Arnold Fitzek with me. I would let them burn.
And I would write this book.
For my Feather.
Eternity
Alex Warren
TWO MONTHS LATER
I will write about you,
trying to capture the essence of your being in words.
Even though this will never be enough
to even begin to convey how I saw you,
and never how you truly were.
– Leaking Batteries Diary