It’s quiet today, as it usually is. While occasionally there’s the added sound of children’s feet pattering all over the place or hushed conversation among the guests who are building cherished connections, the staff take very seriously their roles in creating a chaos-free, tranquil environment to foster growth and healing.
I press my finger to the buzzer and wait for Wanda’s voice to flow from the speaker.
“It’s Chlo,” I tell her. “And Detective Colin Mills is with me today.”
“Wonderful,” she returns. The gate buzzes and unlatches, and I open the door for him, letting him cross the threshold first and ensuring the gate closes securely behind me.
I’d called Wanda ahead of time from my bedroom, asking if it would be okay that Colin volunteered with me today. She said she’d never turn downextra help—at least from someone whose integrity is easily verifiable like Colin’s.
Wanda teaches science at the high school and is the volunteer coordinator at Hope House. She’s shared on more than one occasion that finding people you can trust to volunteer at a domestic violence shelter is difficult, and I know, because I’ve been doing it for years.
I lead Colin through the courtyard to the main office, past the quiet fountain with the Japanese Maple blooming from the middle of the water.
The rooms that face the courtyard are mostly offices, the actual living quarters situated toward the back of the property, away from the busyness of the day-to-day. I don’t spend a lot of time back there these days, but I’d come with my mother once as a teenager, and we stayed in one of the apartments.
Each unit has a stellar view of Four Peaks. I remember the day after we arrived, sitting on the balcony with my mother while she drank her coffee, staring at the massive bluffs, wondering if we’d simply imagined the last seventeen months of what our life had become.
It was not long before Husband Number One died.
I bet every woman who has passed through these walls in the last decade has felt the same thing. The hope that it indeed has all been a dream. That this is their actual life; safe, and peaceful, and calm.
At least temporarily.
“Have you been here before?” I ask Colin who’s eyeing the area quietly.
“A few times for work,” he says. “Have you?”
I nod, pulling the door to the office open. “I’ve been volunteering here since high school. Stay here.” I leave him by the chairs inside the office door and cross to the desk Wanda’s sitting behind. She greets me with a smile.
“How’s school been?” I ask her quietly.
“A dream,” she says, reaching up to squeeze my hand in hers.
“And Lily?”
“Home.”
“Safe,” I confirm.
“Exactly.”
I nod a few times, the gravity of the situation weighing down on me again.
When she’d first shown up to the shelter, Lily had a fresh black eye and welts on her neck. The kids had handprint shaped bruises on their arms. All three of them were visibly shaken, but Lily had her armor on for her children, her head held high and kids tucked under her arms. I distracted them with toys and snacks while the intake coordinator helped Lily complete her intake forms in another room, walking through the events from the last few days.
Pure terror it had been for all of them. Broken glass. Holes in the walls. Slaps, and punches, and kicks.
I slipped into the intake room later and looked over her forms. Each word on the page was another kick to my gut. Another stolen breath. Another tear dropped for another woman who deserved to be safe. Whose children deserved to know peace. Come to find out, his family were not the only people experiencing the terror that was Grayson Tyler. He and Richard Soffett knew each other well.
Stone made the first move for me, taking Grayson to some undisclosed location that only he and Stella knew about, until he dropped my mother’s car at the warehouse with him in the back, ready to face his maker. And Venus.
I angle toward Colin who’s eyeing me and Wanda from a distance, his expression ripe with scrutiny.
“Do you think the girls will be okay with him here?”
She’s already said as much, but I know what it’s like to deal with cops when you already have a hundred times before, all to walk away without a shred of protection in sight.
It’s not entirely their fault. They do what they can. Lock the husband up, separate them for a few nights, pool their money to get the family a safe place to stay until the storm blows over.
