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“What happened?” I ask.
“I… I went upstairs and when I came back down to get a drink, I heard a noise, and when I turned around, he was just standing on the balcony, staring at me.”
My hands quiver as I hold the man in place, wishing I could yank his arms up so hard that I break them both to compliment his nose. “Did he try to get inside?”
“I think so. His hand was on the handle, but it was locked.”
I resist the urge to slam his face into the earth.
“As soon as I screamed, he ran down the steps. I couldn’t see him on the beach, so I looked out the front door window and saw someone running. I… thought it was you for a minute. I was too scared to open the door at first.”
“You did the right thing.”
As the blare of some siren approaches, she stands up, running down the lane as if to find the vehicle it’s coming from.
* * *
Indigo
Greyson’s hand envelopes mine tightly as we sit in the small featureless room on the mainland, ten kilometers away. As they loaded the man into one ambulance, I and the EMT’s finally managed to persuade Grey to go to the hospital, and I sat with him as they tended to his wounds. None are deep, but the sight of the cruel jagged lines incised into his flesh feels as if I’m being cut myself.
I swear to God, I always feel the ache on my skin.
I wanted to clean the wounds, but instead watched as the nurse did, blood mixing with the gauze she used to gently wipe his golden skin. Our eyes met as she performed her clinical dance of sorts and I couldn’t help but shout at myself internally for the text messages I sent him earlier in light of the way he chased after that man as if possessed by ghouls.
Only now, all thoughts of those messages are gone, as we listen to the stubby middle-aged police officer as he holds out the man’s phone, comparing the messages I got on mine, and taking this case from what I was praying was just some clumsy attempt at opportunistic burglary to something else.
“He’s the one who sent the texts from this number.”
“But not the other one?” I ask about the second number whose texts felt altogether more insidious and sophisticated than the first.
I shouldn’t really have to ask. Deep down, I know it’s not sent by the same person. I can feel it.
“As soon as the judge grants the search warrant which should be in a couple of hours, we’ll see if he has a second phone in his room, if he doesn’t grant us permission himself.”
“You know where he’s staying?”
“Yeah. A motel about five kilometers from you.”
“God…”
I glance at Grey whose face is hardened as it has been since he first saw the text messages.
If I hadn’t still been so shaken up, I’d have died of mortification at all the times he read someone calling me a whore. Slut. Waste of life.
For a second, my mother’s face floats into view. She frequently and very kindly told me she shouldn’t have kept me, that she should have aborted. If I didn’t know better, whoever this scumbag that my ex has paid or pressured to do this is has a hotline to her inner thoughts, especially because she was so incensed at me for leaving in the first place. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d side with the man abusing her daughter, but I guess I always have this fantasy that one day she’ll turn into something resembling a mother. The hollow ache of knowing that will never happen eats into me some days, leaving me so cold that I barely find the strength to locate some form of inner warmth to keep myself going.
“I want him locked up,” growls Grey.
“Oh, he’s going straight from the hospital to jail. I’ll hand-deliver him myself.”
I exhale in relief, not used to police being so amiable. I mean, I guess they do have bigger and more pressing crimes to deal with in DC than at this small police station on the southern tip of coastal Georgia.
It makes me want to move away from the city forever. I should do. I don’t speak to my mother who lives there anymore. My step-father did his own special brand of damage to me, and is her chief flying monkey and one of several people she enjoys getting to harass me so that I talk to her.
I feel trauma just at seeing his name, never mind going to visit him there. My brother and I have never been that close, not since my mother made it a point to triangulate us our entire childhoods, favoring him in every single interaction we had with her as children because he happened to born male and that woman only wanted sons. I don’t really blame him for reaping the rewards of her abuse towards me. I guess he was just trying to survive.
“And I want the link to her ex established,” says Grey.
