by A J Rivers
Pamela looks at me strangely, then shrugs.
“I guess it wouldn't be the first time a designer would change a feature in a house,” she offers. “Especially if your grandparents didn't want it for some reason. The contractors might have just not built it but not bothered to change the plans.”
I wouldn't have thought I would, but when we finish walking through the house and finally step back out into the cold, I feel relieved. Even though I already knew what happened, actually coming face to face with the empty house and seeing for myself how Sarah and Kevin managed to pull off what they did puts my mind more at ease.
For weeks, the world around me thought I lost grip on reality and questioned my sanity. I'd be lying if I didn't admit there were moments when I started wondering about it myself. In those moments, I knew what I was seeing and experiencing, but everything around me told me I was wrong. It was hard not to hear dozens of other people contradict me and hang on to the resolute belief in what was really happening.
Now would be the time for me to be grateful I'm stubborn as hell.
I call Sam as soon as I get back to the house.
"Everything okay at the station?" I ask when he answers.
"Yeah. Just a drunk causing trouble," he tells me.
I kick off my shoes and head toward the kitchen.
"Steven?" I ask.
Sam laughs. "This time, he stripped down to a pair of long underwear and started reciting a Christmas carol in the middle of the Square."
I pull open the refrigerator and pull out a container of last night's leftovers. Holding the phone between my shoulder and my ear, I grab out a bottle of flavored water and pop the door closed with my hip.
"Mark Twain or Muppets?" I ask.
"Neither, actually. Not A Christmas Carol the story. It was more a spoken word version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. He got all the way to the French hens before Savannah got to him."
"Got to give it to him for his dedication. So, why did they need you? Steven is usually pretty docile once you get a hold of him."
"The holiday season is bothering him, and he was a bit on the challenging side today. But we've got him nestled all snug in his bed… in the drunk tank," Sam explains. "How about you? How was the house tour? I have to admit; I'm still working on wrapping my head around you and Pamela not being at each other's throats."
"Me, too, a little bit."
Pamela and I have always had somewhat of a contentious relationship, even since high school. At least, she had a contentious relationship with me right up until I came back to Sherwood last summer. I didn’t even give her a second thought. Then I found out she was fertilizing the grapevine with talks of me going fruit loops after a series of brutal cases. That's when I got in on the contention. But it turns out being dragged along by a sociopathic killer has a bonding effect.
I tell him about the house and the room in the attic. He brushes it off just as Pamela did, and I will myself to put it out of my mind. There's enough to think about without adding phantom rooms to the mix.
Chapter Eight
Lamb
Maybe he wouldn’t survive this.
It wasn’t a worry or even something to be afraid of. Just a thought. Just coming to terms with the reality.
That possibility didn’t go through his mind in the first few days. Of course, then he didn’t know what was actually happening. They made sure of that. Everyone around him played a game. Some didn’t even know they were playing it. To them, it was life, their choice, and yet not. They didn’t realize they were being orchestrated and being used to orchestrate others.
The way they were intertwined with each other was intentional, crafting a net of control around them. Whether they knew it or not, each was responsible for others, and others were responsible for them. The real weight hung on those who understood the manipulation because they knew they could never trust anyone around them. There was no way to know who was watching.
In those first days, he didn’t know about any of it. But that was all the same control. It was the way it was devised. He wasn’t taken or dragged away. Lotan convinced him to simply leave. With only the belief in a masked identity and a hidden name, he walked away. It didn’t take long for him to learn the name Lotan or to understand what it meant, but it would take much longer, far longer than he would ever want to admit, to know the man behind it.
Lamb was a creature of habit. He always had been. From the time he was a very young boy, a schedule and consistent rituals controlled his every action. It took away questions and ambiguity, freeing him from the thousands of tiny choices and decisions put in front of other people every day of their lives. He didn’t have to make those choices. They were already made for him.
Before his eyes even opened every day, he knew the time he would wake and the food he would eat. He knew what he would wear and the route he would drive. He knew where things were placed and what days he would take care of tasks like grocery shopping. In some situations, he even knew exactly what he would say.
These moments were already crafted for him, so he didn’t have to come up with them. For some, that type of life would be restrictive and uncomfortable. To him, it was freeing. While he wasn’t thinking about those things or making those choices, his thoughts could venture to other places and focus on other things. The only times he deviated were when duty and responsibility stood in the way. Doing what he was called to do would always come first.
And Lotan knew that. Somehow, he learned Lamb’s ways. He used that knowledge to create a trap so invisible it took weeks for him to even know it was there at all.
At first, Lamb was honored to have been chosen and eager to do whatever he could to help with the mission. He had never heard of Leviathan, but confidentiality and classified projects were nothing new to him. He didn’t know simply because he hadn’t been told. As soon as he had, he was committed to it. He learned the name Lotan, a title that placed the man at the pinnacle of the project. Lotan was to be respected. Lamb already did. Before he ever looked into his eyes. Before he drove away with him. Before he performed his first task, he was already devoted because of the stories he was told.
Discovering the cracks was an accident. He wasn’t looking, and the truth wasn’t offered to him. Instead, it seemed to present itself. He couldn’t help but follow it. That’s when he first heard the name Lamb. It was when he first watched everything he thought he was fighting for crumble away. Then he saw Lotan for what he was. It was like being a child seeing his favorite superhero, only to watch him peel away a mask and drop the cape to the floor.
A choice was put before him. Be a part of Leviathan or an instrument of Leviathan. The choice was his, and so were the consequences.
Now he wondered if he would make it out alive.
In many ways, it didn’t matter. He made his choice. Neither.
It was incredibly risky what he was doing from within the control of Leviathan. Just like the crushing power of a maelstrom tumbling him around, the organization tried to swallow him, but he always managed to take that next breath. He wanted to escape, but Finn had a better chance. He did what he could, offering up the bits of information and telling him exactly how to leave them. It would unravel one day, and Leviathan would fall. Lotan would be forced to remove his mask and bow down.
But it took time. The process was extremely delicate and more dangerous with each passing day. As the foundation became less stable, the potential for disaster grew. He might not survive this. But he was willing to take that onto himself. What mattered was doing everything he could to protect Emma and to stop the destruction that could easily happen if Lotan was given the opportunity. One wrong move and many more would die.
All he could do was keep going and hope to slowly and carefully unravel the nets from the inside until there was nothing left to catch Lotan when he fell.
They called him Lamb. He had to prove he could also be the wolf.
Chapter Nine
Now
"Christmas doesn't stand muc
h of a chance around here, does it?" Sam comments as I push the lid of a green plastic tote into place and stack it on top of others in the corner.
"It's the second week of January. How much longer do you want me to keep the decorations up?" I ask.
He shrugs and reluctantly takes down a wreath he hung with clear fishing line from a hook in the ceiling just after our Thanksgiving. I think I remember that hook holding a potted plant when I was younger, but since I've been in the house, it's just been a random hook. Sam decided it needed a touch of holiday flair, and the strange floating wreath of festivity has been there since. But now it's time for that to get packed away with all the rest of the baubles and ornaments, tucked in the attic to wait for the next ten months or so.
"It was just nice to have you around for Christmas," he says. "It's been a long time."
I try not to let the guilt creep in. Now isn't the time for me to be thinking about the years that have passed. Everything we've missed together. I made the choice I did because it was what needed to be done, and I don't regret it. There are ways my life changed because of that choice, but it's the life I chose for myself. I would do it again.
Sure, I don't like to think about the time I spent without Sam, which is why I don't do it. If I let myself think about how life could have been different or where I might be now if I hadn't left him and Sherwood behind when I did, I might start questioning myself. And that's not something I'll let myself do.
The truth is, walking away from him all those years ago was painful as hell. It felt like tearing a piece of my soul out. But it was the pain that reassured me I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. If it hadn't hurt that much, it would mean it didn't matter, and I really didn't have to leave in the first place. The reason I had to cut him off and leave my life behind was so I could devote myself entirely to what was ahead. Sam could never really understand that. I don't want him to. In order for him to understand the decision I made, he would have to understand the questions and the torment I've gone through every day. That's not something I would ever wish on him.
Those same questions and that same torment continue to hang over me even still. It always digs into me deeper at this time of year. It's why for years, there was no Christmas tree in my house; and why I did everything I could to avoid anything that seemed even close to festive and joyful at this time of year. After all the warmth of Thanksgiving, Christmas just feels empty and hollow. It's hard to really be in the holiday spirit when I don't have either of my parents with me.
I've spent seventeen Christmases without my mother. It's not lost on me that that means there have been more holidays in my life without her than there were with her. That doesn't make it easier. If anything, every Christmas is a little harder because it's another tacked on, and I know the number will never stop growing. As long as there are Christmases for me to celebrate, the scrolling record of the years she's been gone will just keep ticking up higher.
And every year I lose more. I'm adding years and losing memories. My father and I kept up with some of the Russian traditions my mother taught me when I was little, but they dissipated over the years. Now the smell of the roasted pork and strong broths she always made is only faint in the back of my mind. I can barely hear her singing her favorite songs. My forehead has lost the chilly feeling of her Christmas morning kiss, made frosty by spending the morning decorating the outside of the house with spruce.
More is going to fade away. I can't stop it. No matter how much I try to hold on to those holidays with her, time is going to buff them away. It's already started to do the same to the memories with my father. There have been fewer Christmases without him, but still enough to leave me missing pieces of my memories with him.
But it's not the same with him. Not yet. I don't know where he is or why there have been twelve Christmases without him. But nothing has proven to me yet there won't be more. That's what keeps me going; it reminds me that a life with the Bureau was my strongest choice. My only choice. I gave myself over to digging into the darkest shadows and bringing down the slimiest of criminals in hopes that one day I would know what happened to my mother. That I would know why my father left when he did. Those answers are more important to me than anything.
I pick up two of the totes and carry them up the narrow set of steps to the attic. I've been gradually emptying out the space since coming back here last summer. When I first moved back in, I didn't expect there to be anything up here. After all, the house had been used as a rental property for more than one family over the years. I didn't think anything that belonged to my grandparents would have been left behind. But instead of those families moving into an empty house, they came into a home still containing remnants of the family who spent decades there. My family. It surprised me to learn the renters were expected to live alongside lingering reminders of my grandparents, my parents, and even me.
There was more in the house when I got here, too. Decorations and strange collectibles that had been collected by nobody. Derrick from Lionheart Property Management wanted to offer a house that was already furnished and had the appeal of a lived-in home but without the emotional baggage that came with it being actually lived in. So random generic art took the place of my grandmother's paintings. Knick-knacks settled into place on furniture I'd never seen. All the personality of the house just painted over, only showing through in faint hints.
That’s all gone now. Over the last few months, I've sifted those things out and replaced them with the old possessions out of the attic and the storage unit across town. The house is back to looking more like I remember from when I was younger. Right down to the Christmas decorations in the attic. And the smooth wall where Pamela says a door should be.
Sam comes up the steps behind me, and I move out of the way so he can stack the totes in the corner. He pauses beside me and looks at the wall where I'm staring. My home improvement projects haven't made it up here yet, so the walls are still slightly discolored from all the years of dust and age since the last time this place was freshened up.
"When I was really little, there was wallpaper up here," I tell Sam.
"Wallpaper?" he asks.
I nod. "It was never completely finished, but my grandmother put wallpaper up. I think it was used as a guest room. I don't remember it ever having beds in it or anything, but I used to come up here to read and play, and I remember there being wallpaper. There used to be a little table up against one of the walls that had a lamp on it too. I just figured it was being stored up here."
"So, your theory is your grandparents didn't want the extra little room built in the attic like was on the plans, but then they turned the entire attic into an extra room?" Sam asks.
His words are stretched out and thin, each one with a tenuous connection to the next. Like when you pull taffy and the pieces just barely stick together. He's trying to figure out the thoughts going through my mind, trying to follow along and unravel what I'm thinking. That's become a habit of his since we’ve started working cases together. When he thinks I've come up with something, he starts trying to chase it.
I shake my head. "I don't have a theory. It's just an observation."
He nods. "Well, come on. There's still plenty of joy to suck out of the house."
I laugh and start to follow him down the stairs, but just before the room dips out of sight, I turn back to look at it. This has always been my grandparents' house in my mind. For the first time, I wonder what it was like before I knew it. Before they were my grandparents.
Chapter Ten
When we've finished packing away all the Christmas decorations, Sam drops down on the couch and rests his head against the back. I sit beside him, and he glances over to the side, catching sight of my laptop on the table.
“Are you still watching those Mary Preston videos?” he asks.
I let out a sigh and pull my computer into my lap. Swiping my finger across the mousepad wakes up the screen, revealing Mary's face paused in mid-sentence.
&nb
sp; “I've watched them all at least a dozen times,” I tell him. “I'm getting to the point where I can recite almost everything she says.”
"And?" he raises his eyebrows with expectation.
"And I still don't care. I feel bad saying that considering what happened to her, but… I don’t know; I just don’t care about her opinions on winged eyeliner or her observations at the annual designer sample sale," I say.
"That's not what I was asking," Sam says.
"I know what you were asking." The cursor moves down to the comment section. "And my answer is still that I don't care. But that's the point. Why do you think these people do?"
The paused video disappears as I use the down arrow on my keyboard to scroll through the long list of comments.
"That's a lot of comments," he observes. I nod.
"And it just keeps going. There are hundreds of them. Some of her videos have thousands."
"Isn't that the point of being a social media influencer?"
"Yes, but what is she influencing? This isn't the Harvey Milk of our time we're talking about here. She's bubbly and can seemingly talk about anything endlessly. I'm sure there are plenty of boys in that teenager to early twenties demographic who enjoy looking at her," I tell him.
"I'm not following," he says.
"Interesting choice of words. That brings me to my next point. Mary was building up her platform. She hadn't quite made it to the big time yet, but she was definitely collecting followers. That's where most of her comments come from. Sometimes the same people would leave a dozen or more comments on the same video. They'll create threads with other people and try to engage with Mary. Look. You can see where she responds to some of them."
I point out several of the responses from Mary. "If you trace them from her very first video, you can see where some of her followers have really developed an attachment to her. Like they believe they are really her friends. Some of them can get really intense."
