Page 22 of Rent an Enforcer

Now it’s all here, in this small house on the edge of a compound belonging to a man who runs a crime family. My rabbit is in the living room. My paints are in the spare room. My toothbrush is in a cup next to Tristan’s toothbrush, which is the most intimate thing I’ve ever experienced. And yes, I’m including last night.

This is crazy. I’ve known this man for practically no time at all, and I’m living in his house. If any of my online friends told me they had done this, I would send approximately forty-five concerned messages in a row and probably google “signs you’re being kidnapped but like it.”

Funny how everything changes when you’re the one things are happening to. For once, I’m not reading about somebody else’s life, standing on the outside looking in. I’m in the middle of it, and it’s crazy and unpredictable, and it feels very right.

Here I am, standing in the morning light with a brush in my hand and Socks on a towel in the corner because he followed me in here the way he follows me everywhere, and I’m not afraid. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. There’s no fear. Not of the house or the property. Not of the men I sometimes see by the main gate or the fact that there was an ammunition box in here only a couple of hours ago. For the first time in as long as I can remember, the noise is off and the walls aren’t leaning in, and my chest isn’t tight. I’m just... here. Existing. Taking up space in the world and not apologizing for it.

I didn’t know it could feel like this. I didn’t know there was a version of me capable of living without constantly checking the wind velocity.

One by one, I squeeze paint onto the palette. Cadmium yellow. Titanium white. A touch of burned sienna, a bit of red ochre. I don’t have a plan. Sometimes the best paintings come from not having a plan, from just letting my hands move and seeing what shows up. The brush hits the canvas, and I start blocking in color. Warm tones, golds and ambers, something bright at the center.

My hand knows what it’s doing before I do. It always works that way. The conscious part of my brain is just along for the ride while the deeper part, the part that stores things I can’t access on purpose, does the actual work. The gold becomes sunlight. The amber becomes sand. All at once, I am no longer in Tristan’s spare room.

I’m at a beach.

The memory comes in pieces, the way memories do when you were too young to hold them properly. I’m small enough that the cooler my dad is carrying is almost the same height as I am. Mom walks ahead, sandals in one hand, her hair catching the wind. Red hair. Long, like mine, blowing sideways in the breeze. She’s laughing at something Dad said. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember the sound of her laugh the way you remember a song you haven’t heard in years. You can’t quite reproduce it, but you would know it anywhere.

The sand is warm under my feet. The ocean is loud and close. I remember being nervous about the waves—they seemed so big. Dad picked me up and carried me to where the water was shallow and calm. I remember his hands; how enormous they felt wrapped around my ribs. I remember feeling completely, entirely safe.

The brush keeps moving. I’m not controlling it anymore. The gold brightens. A shape is starting to form in the center of the canvas, something I’m not looking at directly because I’m afraid that if I look, it’ll disappear.

We’re in the car now. I’m in the back seat, strapped in. I have one of those juice boxes with the bendy straw. The straw keeps collapsing every time I suck on it, going flat and then popping back. I’m fighting with it, trying to get the last of the juice. The straw jabs the roof of my mouth in a sharp little stab. I remember pulling the straw out and looking at it as if it had betrayed me.

It was windy that day. The car kept getting pushed—not hard or dangerously, but enough that I could feel it, an invisible force shoving us sideways every few seconds. The trees along the highway were bending. Mom said something about the weather turning and about how glad she was that we decided to head home early. Dad said we’d be there before it got bad.

And then a bird came out of nowhere. Suddenly, there in the windshield, a dark shape, hitting the glass with a sound like a hand clapping.

Mom gasped. I dropped my juice box.

The boy was on a bike at the edge of the road where there shouldn’t have been a bike. Dad swerved to miss him. I remember the feeling of the car moving wrong. Not forward, not the way cars are supposed to move. Sideways. Tipping. The juice box was on the floor, and the straw was under my shoe, and outside the window, the world was spinning.

I don’t remember the impact. I’ve been told this is normal. The brain protects us from things it can’t process. Maybe that’s true. What I remember is after. The awful quiet. The wind, still blowing, pushing through the broken windshield. The bent, crushed straw on the floor. And the boy on the bike, who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. He had a mullet.

I’ve never put this together before. Not like this, all at once. The straw jabbing my mouth. The wind pushing the car. The bird hitting the glass. The boy with the mullet who made Dad swerve into the tree. They were always separate things, separate fears. Unconnected, stupid, like a broken alarm system going off for no reason. Grandma never talked about the details of the accident. She only talked about the lesson. I told them to be careful. They didn’t listen.

I never knew what set it off. I never knew why my body picked those things. Why straws, why wind, why birds, why mullets. They seemed random and crazy. I seemed crazy.

But they were never random. They were all there that day, in and around the car where my parents died and my life changed forever.

The brush has stopped moving. I don’t know when it happened. All I know is I’m standing in front of the canvas and my face is wet.

“Stella?”

Tristan’s voice makes me jump and spin on my heel. I don’t know how long he’s been standing in the doorway. I do know his voice is careful. He’s reading me, scanning my face.

“Hey,” I manage. My voice is thick, maybe a little snotty.

He doesn’t seem to mind as he takes a step into the room. “Who is that?” he asks, nodding at the canvas.

I turn and look at the painting. Really look at it for the first time, like I’m seeing it instead of making it.

It’s a woman. She’s standing in golden light. Her hair is long and red and blowing sideways. She’s laughing. The brushwork is loose—I can see where my hand moved fast, almost recklessly.

The face is clear, though. The eyes are clear. I know this face. “It’s my mom,” I whisper as he steps up beside me, and I lean into him. My mom is here. For once, the tears on my face aren’t because I’m afraid. They’re because I found something I thought I lost. “I haven’t seen her in so long. I don’t even have any pictures of her. I started to think... I mean, I was afraid that I...”

His hand cups my shoulder. “I understand. But there she is. And she’s beautiful. Just like you.”

I close my eyes, sending fresh tears rolling down my cheeks. But they’re happy tears, this much I know. They’re the tears that come after you’ve found something you didn’t know you were missing so desperately.