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Rory
A HUMDRUM LIFE.
Iasked for this to be over.
I wanted life to go back to normal. To be able to bury my mom and go to school like an ordinary twenty-one-year-old could. I wanted to be able to walk to the corner store, or out to dinner if a man were so inclined to ask me out.
I wanted to visit the hospital, attend physical therapy, study in the Copeland City Library, and go back to my house.
I wanted normalcy.
Apart from attending apublicfuneral for my mom—the cops said no to that—and except for visiting the home she worked so hard to pay off and hand down to me—it’s still a crime scene—I’m given all the freedoms I wished for over the last few weeks.
I got to be in attendance as a priest blessed my mother and she was lowered into the ground, and I get to go for a walk anytime I like.
I can go to the store. Or the park. I can walk the grounds surrounding Malone’s mansion as I please—since going to my mom’s townhouse is a little too gaudy for a woman pretending to be dead—and I can sneak into the hospital to visit with Brenda as often as I want.
It’s like life was handed back to me,almostexactly how it was prior to witnessing Lorenzo Lombardo’s execution. But for now, for a few weeks, they say, a cop will walk close behind to make sure I’m not popped for the sake of it.
Officer Clay was released from the hospital after surgery that repaired his shoulder, and I’m released after they make sure the massive bruise forming on my chest doesn’t turn into a blood clot that’ll kill me anyway.
I was tossed off a cliff last year, and hit by a car the night of Lorenzo’s murder.
Getting shot by a high caliber rifle and thrown against the back of the elevator, losing consciousness, andalmostforgetting the soul-shattering, life-changing, heart-wrenching kiss Drake and I shared, is just part and parcel of being the woman Judy Jinx has dedicated her life and focus to.
Though perhaps, forgetting would be the best thing for my sanity, since Drake is never around anymore. He’s assignedotherpolice protection to my case now. He hasothercops tail me everywhere I go, and when I sleep at night,othercops walk the halls of Malone’s house and report back that I’m alive and in one piece.
He’s abandoned me butswearshe’s working the case and searching for Vallejo.
Loneliness swallows me up and makes the world dull. Colorless. It makes life hardly worth living. Because walking to the store is no fun unless I’m going there to buy groceries for a meal I want to share with him. Studying is boring when I’m still not entirely sure of the specialty I’ll choose once I hit medical school. And I can’t make a choice, because I have no one to talk to about it. Freedom isn’t freedom at all, notthisfreedom, at least. It’s just a longer leash, almost as though the guy holding it allows just enough slack to hope that I don’t notice it at all.
But when I walk the halls of a massive home, alone but for the shadows trailing twenty steps behind, and when I sit down to dinner at night, alone, I remember it still exists.
Or perhaps it’s not a leash at all. But rather, a cage.
It’s gilded and pretty and everyone pretends the doors are open and I can leave to explore.
But the world is colorless, remember? And whatever is outside holds no interest for me for as long as Drake is missing from my life.
Which is pretty lame, when I think about it.
This is Judy Jinx’s best work yet. Have me fall in love with a man, then take him away and leave me rotating in the fire of loneliness.
“Ms. Swanson?” Officer Spears,Aaron,isn’t a great deal older than me. He and Officer Clay were probably in the same graduating class together. But he doesn’t have the boyish charm Clay does. And he doesn’t possess the obsessive power Drake does.
He’s just… here. Not infringing on my space. Probably would step in front of a bullet if one came sailing my way.
He follows fifteen feet behind me as I wander the halls between the kitchen and my bedroom upstairs. I occupy this house the way a ghost occupies any other of the same age. Quiet. Cold. Lost in eternity.
He clears his throat when I don’t stop or turn to face him, repeating, “Ms. Swanson?”
“Yeah?” I cast a short look over my shoulder before continuing into the kitchen in search of a drink. Or a snack. Or maybe a cyanide pill. “Do you want a drink, too?”
“Uh…” he stops in the doorway and watches as I open the fridge to peruse my options. “No thanks.”
I take a soda and slam the door so glass bottles rattle inside, the sound echoing throughout the otherwise silent home. “Your loss. What’s up?”
“Um… Detective Banks would like to remind you that the pappardelle pasta with portobello wine sauce is available for your dinner tonight.” He clears his throat again, nervous about the message he’s been instructed to pass along. “He said to make sure you eat it.”
