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Ellie
“Dammit! That makes no sense,” I growled at my laptop before I slammed it shut. The last part of my latest mystery novel wasn’t coming together at all, and I knew it was because the real-life mystery I was dealing with kept getting in the way. It wasn’t the first time over the past few years that my creative juices have been blocked, but this was the longest period—two whole months—I’d gone without writing one useable word. Though this time it wasn’t just my sister’s disappearance that was getting to me. When the first rose arrived, I’d been puzzled, but had put it in a vase and forgotten about it. Then a few days later there was a note in my mailbox saying, ‘it was good to see you smile’. After a week with nothing else I’d put it to the back of my mind thinking it was neighborhood kids having a prank.
Then it started with a vengeance, and rather than finding it sweet, I was starting to get nervous. I’d considered going to the cops, but after seeing how they’d brushed off my concerns after Stacy left, I could just imagine the laughter at the precinct. Hey, we got some chick who’s getting freaked about a few sweet love letters.
I stared at the piece of paper in my hand, ‘the green of your shirt brings out your eyes, you should wear it more often’, that had arrived yesterday, and on the porch this morning there was a toy truck. That’s what had sent me over the edge, it was bad enough that someone was stalking me, but to target my son.
“Momma, look!” Leo shouted to get my attention, running over to me with all the enthusiasm a four-year-old can muster. When I looked up, he was smiling brightly with a big, hairy caterpillar dangling gently between his thumb and forefinger. “A fat, hairy snake!”
I scrunched the letter into a ball, then tried to force a laugh. Hearing him refer to me as his mom never failed to get me deep in my feelings because I wasn’t his mother, at least not biologically. I’d never planned to have a kid to look after at the age of twenty-two, but when his birth mother—my sister—disappeared three and a half years ago, I’d become Leo’s mother in every other sense of the word. “That’s not a snake, buddy. It’s a caterpillar.” I over-pronounced the word so that he could repeat it easily.
His nose wrinkled adorably and the sight of it made my heart squeeze. “What’s a caternipper?”
“A caterpillar is what butterflies and moths start out as.” At just four years old, Leo was the most curious kid I’d ever met, and I did my best to always satisfy his curiosity, as long as it was appropriate.
His blue eyes went wide and round. “Really? Wow.”
“It’s pretty amazing,” I agreed.
“Can I keep him, Momma?” The big blue eyes he must have inherited from his father implored me to say yes, as if I could deny him something so small.
The truth was I rarely denied him much, except for excess sugar, because I couldn’t give him the one thing he didn’t know he needed yet. His mother. I’d stopped waiting tables when it became clear that my sister wasn’t coming back, when Leo wasn’t even a year old yet. Before his second birthday rolled around, I decided to pursue my dream of becoming a professional writer and self-published my first mystery novel. It made more than enough money to take care of me and Leo, so I wrote another. And then another before I got a book deal. I was desperate to make it work so that I could stay home and be with Leo. With our cursed family history, there was no way I’d be able to rest easily at an office all day not knowing if Leo was safe or not. That’s why these letters and gifts were getting to me, my home was my fortress. The place where Leo and I could hide away from all the bad things in the world, and now it was being invaded.
“Momma?”
“Sorry, baby.” I blinked and flashed a smile so my sensitive boy wouldn’t worry. “Yes, you can keep him, but we need to find out what he needs to survive first. Okay?”
“Okay, Momma.” With a toothy grin he rushed across the yard and settled against the storage shed that provided a small amount of shade.
I watched Leo for a few minutes, constantly searching for signs that he wasn’t all right without his mother. I looked for any indication that he was missing something in his life or in his little heart, but he seemed like a happy little boy.
Where are you? I still asked that question at least fifty times a day and my sister never answered.
“Knock, knock!” The sound of my friend Ryan Murphy’s voice pulled me from my morose thoughts, and I went to the side gate to open it for him. “Ellie, good morning.”
“Morning,” I grumbled in reply. Not that I wasn’t happy to see Ryan, I was, but between my writers’ block, the ever-present thoughts about my sister, and trying not to have a meltdown over what had arrived earlier, I was in no mood for company.
“That happy to see me, huh?” He laughed at my guilty expression. “Maybe this will help.” He shoved a box into my arms, and I was immediately hit with the scent of warm sugar and butter.
I inhaled deeply and gifted him with a smile. “It doesn’t hurt.” I waved him inside and locked the gate. “What brings you by?” Ryan was a nice guy, but I couldn’t quite figure him out. We’d been friends for a few years, he never made a move, but sometimes he looked at me like he wanted to, and it was those times that made me uncomfortable. Maybe he realized I wasn’t interested, and was doing the right thing by not bringing it up?
I didn’t date at all, not since I became mother to Leo at just over eighteen years old. Men were complicated and most of them couldn’t be trusted to stick around when things got tough, so I kept to myself, working and taking care of Leo.
“I just came by to check on you two. And to see if you’ve made any new friends.” He flashed his charming boy-next-door smile as he brought up my least favorite topic in the world.
“Not yet. Then again, I haven’t really been trying. Sorry, not sorry.” Ryan was on a mission to get me friends and I didn’t know why. “What about you, how are you, Ryan?”
He shrugged. “Good. Busy. My dad’s got me overseeing a bunch of new projects, so that’s my life for the next six months.” His father was something to do with construction in Vegas and Ryan worked logistics. I had no idea what that involved, despite him trying to explain his job to me numerous times, it sounded complicated.
“Do you need a coffee refill?”
He held out his travel mug with a smile. “Thanks, Ellie. You’re too good to me.”
“What are friends for?” The truth was, Ryan was my only friend, but he wasn’t really a close friend because we didn’t know a lot about one another, and we never really talked about anything significant. Maybe that’s why I liked being around him, it was a way to distract myself from thinking about my sister.
I went inside and poured the rest of the coffee pot into his mug, adding a splash of cream and sugar because that’s how he ordered it at the diner where I used to work.
“Two sugars you remembered.”
