by Jan Graham
“So my new neighbor isn’t arriving today then?”
“No, not today,” Barry replied. “I’m going back to the café now to get set for the lunch rush, and come back about three to start the assembly line.”
“Well, unless I’m called back to work, I’ll be home, so if you bring me something delicious to eat, I’ll be here with my screwdriver waiting to help out.”
“You’re a good man, Steve Jax.” Barry exhaled a sigh of relief. “I’ll see you at three.”
Barry drove away, looking slightly happier than when Steve first approached him. He liked Barry. He was a dedicated family man and a good friend. He’d helped out when Steve had been looking for Angel, and although Barry wasn’t keen on cops, he’d been happy to help Steve. In his youth, Barry associated with an outlaw motorcycle gang. When he met his wife, Meg, he had a history with the police, albeit a minor one. He’d been lucky enough to make a break from the gang before he got in too deep. Now that Barry was in his forties, he openly declared that his wife saved his life. Steve liked that kind of dedication. It demonstrated that Barry was a good and honorable man. The fact he now had four daughters, all teenagers that he protected like a lion leading its pack, also impressed Steve. He laughed to himself. The ex-penguin must have added more family pressure for this ever-protective male…poor guy.
When Barry arrived back at the house around three fifteen, Steve was sitting on the front step surrounded by boxes of electronics.
“What the fuck? This stuff wasn’t meant to be delivered till after four.” Barry was obviously less than impressed. “And no offense, mate, but you don’t look like the most trustworthy man to leave all this sort of stuff with.”
“I do when I flash my badge.” Steve stood up from the step and waited for Barry to unlock the door. “It all arrived about twenty minutes ago, so I let them unload it. She’s bought herself some nice stuff for a woman who used to live under a vow of poverty.”
“She didn’t buy it. Meg and I did. We’ve been bleeding money since she arrived. Not that I mind. She’s a good kid. And we’ll get paid back when her trust is sorted out.”
Steve wondered at the term ‘kid’ but assumed, if Meg’s sister had been a nun, Barry may just be referring to a naïve attitude. Either that or he had so many children he was confused about who was moving out.
Once they bought all the electronics inside, the place looked like a warehouse. As they organized boxes into the varying rooms in which the items would eventually be housed, Steve listened to Barry explain how worried he was about his sister-in-law. Rhia, as he called her, was having a difficult time adjusting. He was worried that her eyes would be permanently puffy from crying so often and didn’t know what to do to help. His frustration at her treatment by the church was evident, and when Steve heard the story of why she was no longer in God’s service, he wondered if he had underestimated his new neighbor’s character. Any woman who would blow the whistle on an organization as large as the Catholic Church had his admiration.
“Why the hell would a priest insist a battered woman go back to her abusive husband? It makes no sense. He should have offered her protection, not sent her back to a man who ended up murdering her and their two children.” Steve was incensed. “Rhia must have been devastated she couldn’t convince the woman to ignore the priest’s instructions.
“Yeah she was. You know she’d tried for years to get officials to change their mind about injustice in the church. This was the last straw though. She said, after years of being condescendingly patted on the head every time she questioned something, she finally decided to go to the media.” Barry scoffed in apparent disgust. “The priest gets moved to a new parish to continue spouting his message on preserving the sanctity of marriage while you get your head beaten in and Rhia gets labeled a heretic who ends up being booted out of the organization.”
“The world can be a bizarre and corrupt place Barry, and what happened to Rhia just proves it.”
Rhia obviously had a social conscience. She’d stood up for a battered woman who no longer had a voice and taken on the organization that had failed to protect both her and her children. That showed guts on Rhia’s behalf, and it raised Steve’s opinion of her immeasurably.
It was five by the time they had the furniture in the main bedroom assembled, and Steve knew reinforcements were needed. Christian and Daniel arrived not long after the distress call went out. Once everyone got to work, the furniture was assembled in no time flat, and by nine o’clock they were enjoying pizza and beer on Rhia’s new outdoor setting. Steve wasn’t convinced that an ex-nun would enjoy Barry’s favorite radio station, which he’d tuned into her new stereo. It was programmed as the preferred station, set to automatically load each time the system was turned on. Steve decided not to argue, after all Rhia might like a station that pumped out a variety of metal tracks from the sixties to present day.
Steve surveyed the rooms. For a group of men they’d made the place look pretty good. The beds had been made, towels were in the bathroom ready for use, and a decorative rug adorned the living room floor, adding a little warmth to the perfectly polished floorboards. The house was starting to look like a home. Apart from the floral design bed linen, Steve thought it looked like a place he would have designed. The furniture was all clean lines, and practicality. Nothing was bulky. It filled each room but didn’t clutter them. He liked it, and he was sure Rhia would be happy with what they’d achieved.
* * * *
Rhia waited nervously on the front veranda of her sister’s home. Angel, whom she had only met a few times since arriving home, was coming to pick her up. They’d then go and collect Meg from the mall. Today was the day she moved into her new home. Apparently, before she took up residence at her rental property, she needed to go shopping. Well, according to Angel and Meg she did. Rhia wasn’t keen about the shopping trip. She’d tried to convince the two women all she needed was groceries. Apparently that wasn’t correct.
Rhia hoped her new place was just as serene as it had been here. The home Angel agreed to rent her was lovely, but being located on a more suburbanized street, it might not be as tranquil as she’d become used to. Meg and Barry’s large home sat on twenty acres of land, surrounded by bushland, and was located a fair distance out of town. Still, the whole community and the area surrounding it seemed a quiet place, so she assumed it would be peaceful wherever she lived. The location of her soon to be new home had an added bonus, its proximity to Angel. She lived one street away, so if Rhia felt she needed some company, it would be a short walk to see her new friend.
Meg stood waiting outside the mall as Angel and Rhia drove into the car park, and she wasted no time getting into the car. Meg had been at the café since six, but that didn’t appear to dampen her enthusiasm for the shopping trip ahead. Rhia listened quietly as Meg and Angel discussed the stores they needed to visit. It appeared they’d be going to half a dozen fashion boutiques, a department store, shoe warehouse, and an electronics shop. Rhia sighed. Her sister’s insistence that she needed more clothes annoyed her. She was doing just nicely with the four outfits she owned. Besides, how could Rhia get anything new, when she didn’t even know what she liked to wear?
The fashions Meg dressed in, although nice enough, didn’t appeal to Rhia. She couldn’t see herself wearing long pants all the time. Meg’s twenty-one year old daughter, Bethany, wore the latest fashions. Clothing Rhia definitely wouldn’t feel comfortable in, she could never show that much flesh. Angel always dressed nicely. She appeared happy to show off her curves and wore dresses and skirts a lot. Still, Rhia would need more self-assurance before she’d feel comfortable in the styles Angel chose. Even though they were a similar age, Rhia didn’t have the body-confidence that Angel displayed.
Since arriving home, things had been more difficult than Rhia expected. She wasn’t adjusting very well, and she knew that Angel and Meg believed some new clothes would help lift her spirits. Rhia remained unconvinced shopping and new clothes would
be the answer to her problems. She spent a lot of time by herself these days and usually cried during those private times. True, it wasn’t a healthy way to be, but at the moment, it was all she seemed to be able to do with any consistency.
“Why are you being so quiet Rhia?” Angel’s question drew her out of her thoughts.
“She’s grumpy with me about the trust fund, doesn’t think she needs to go shopping and is having a hard time adjusting to life on the outside.” Meg turned to look into the back seat and smiled. “Am I right, baby sister?”
“I’m just overwhelmed. I didn’t realize setting up a new life would be so tiring.” Rhia sighed loudly. “And yes I’m annoyed about the trust fund. How could you not tell me about it? All this time I’ve had one hundred eighty thousand dollars in a bank account and I never knew.”
“How could you not know?” Angel asked, clearly surprised.
“Mum and Dad set up the trust and stipulated in the will that I was to be the trustee of it until Rhia either retired or left the church,” Meg explained.
Her parent’s lack of trust annoyed Rhia nearly as much as Meg not telling her about the trust fund until she stepped off the plane. “They clearly realized Rhia would give it to the work of the Lord if they didn’t preserve it for her. They wanted Rhia to be looked after if God let her down.”
“I’m with Rhia, I’d be annoyed about the trust fund too,” Angel stated.
“Oh please, let’s just drop it. I know about it now, so being upset is probably redundant. Anyway, it’s not just that. It’s organizing everything else…dealing with banks, utility services, looking for work, getting my head around wireless connections, and social networks. I don’t want to be social, let alone networked to anyone and my life’s not interesting enough to need to constantly update its status or chirp about it.”
“Tweet, sweetie…birds chirp and people tweet,” Angel explained.
Rhia couldn’t help but laugh as Meg and Angel spontaneously burst into song. Tweet being the only word they could remember for their bizarre version of “Rockin’ Robin.”
By the time Rhia arrived at her new home exhaustion had set in. Shopping with Meg and Angel was like a running a marathon, with periodic breaks to drink cappuccino. Rhia took a deep breath and looked around, surprised by what she saw. Everything she told Meg she liked seemed to have materialized in the quaint little bungalow.
“Meg, what have you done? I asked for a few necessities to start with. Not everything from the furniture catalogue.”
“Oh, shut up and say thank you. You deserve to have a lovely home with all the mod cons. You would have bought them eventually anyway. Barry and I know you’ll reimburse us when the trust clears.” Rhia was left speechless, humbled at the gesture of love before her.
She flicked through the various manuals of the electronic devices purchased for her. There was a plasma TV, stereo a with DVD capacity, surround sound system, Blu-ray player, laptop, printer, and iPod. Rhia suddenly flushed with a strange sense of awkwardness and, before she knew it, tears were spilling down her cheeks.
“Rhia don’t cry. We’ll help you work out how to use it all.” Meg and Angel sat either side of her on the sofa, Angel stroking her arm and Meg rubbing her back as Rhia tried to stop the well of emotion bubbling inside her.
“It’s not that. I can figure them out, it’s just that…they’re really mine aren’t they?”
“Of course they’re yours, honey.” Meg looked confused. “Now tell us, why the tears?”
“It’s mine. I mean, the convent had a TV and stereo and stuff. As a nun, I didn’t live in a prehistoric vacuum. I just never owned any of it before and now this all belongs to me. For some reason it doesn’t seem real or right.”
* * * *
Meg and Angel left the house after helping to unpack groceries, and drinking yet more coffee. Rhia probably wouldn’t sleep for a week with the amount of caffeine charging through her system. So it was lucky she still had plenty of unpacking left to do. She upended bag after bag of clothing and underwear onto the bed. As the clothes piled high, Rhia began to laugh. If she lived to be one hundred, she would never wear all these things. She de-tagged, folded, and hung everything, putting it away in the appropriate wardrobes and drawers.
Why did I let you two talk me into all this?
She fingered the black lace underwear set and almost cried again. She would never wear this. It was so delicate and sexy. Rhia didn’t see herself as either of those things. A woman wore something like this for a man. The scant bra and panties, clearly designed to tease or arouse, enticed notions of sensual pleasure, of lust. She placed them at the bottom of her underwear drawer and piled the half a dozen practical stretch cotton underwear items on top. Rhia had never experienced lust. Sensual pleasure sounded like a lovely concept, but neither applied to her. At thirty-five she had only ever kissed a boy on the lips once, on her seventeenth birthday, and she pushed him away when he tried to put his tongue in her mouth.
She’d seen men she thought were good looking, but they hadn’t seen her. She had never been held by a man, never seen a man naked, she’d certainly never had sex, and she’d never been inclined to.
She lifted the bra and panties set back out of the draw and stared at them in disgust. Sex, the one thing Rhia knew would never happen. The reason she kept her virginity intact had nothing to do with being a nun…she was still a virgin because in all her thirty-five years of living, she had never met a man she wanted to have sex with.
Rhia shoved the underwear back in the draw and wandered to the intricately carved, full-length mirror in the corner of the bedroom. She stood before it and stared at a woman.
Her sister’s voice echoed in her head.
Get rid of the baggy shit you’re wearing and put on something that allows people to see you.
Meg insisted she change into one of the new outfits not long after she purchased it. She’d done so because it was easier to comply with Meg’s demand than argue.
Rhia continued to observe the reflection before her. The image was a stark contrast to the one reflected back at her as she’d traveled in the plane. Any sign of gray had disappeared. The vision before her exuded color and fit into her new surroundings.
Rhia wondered what people had actually seen today, as she walked around the huge shopping mall. She wore snug low rise jeans, and a T-shirt with a Celtic cross design printed on the front. It fit firmly over her breasts and rested comfortably on her hips. Her hair had been trimmed into long layers and rested around her shoulders before flowing to the middle of her back. She wore sneakers on her feet. For the first time since being a teenager, Rhia looked shapely.
She stared at the woman before her. How did others view her? She didn’t think she was attractive, at least no one had ever told her she was. She’d never been described as beautiful, or God forbid, sexy. She moved her hands over the curves, smoothing the T-shirt as she did. She looked like most of the other women she’d seen today. Her clothes were fashionable. They displayed her feminine form, similar to the way the pictures of the women in the magazine on the plane had. Still, the person before her was a stranger. Since the age of eighteen Rhia had walked around in anonymity, a mere entity, viewed but never seen. She lived all of her adult life under a shroud of black cloth. She’d been nameless, shapeless, a person who blended into shadows and never reflected an image that stood out in a crowd.
I have no idea who you are.
Chapter Four
“I’m fine, Meg,” Now the third phone call from her sister and Rhia tried to maintain her cool. How could she settle into her new home if Meg kept interrupting her?
“I’m worried you’re just sitting there crying. Please tell me you’re doing something enjoyable.”
“I am…I’m talking to you for the third time tonight.” Meg didn’t laugh at Rhia’s attempted humor. She was clearly more anxious about Rhia living alone than she’d first let on. “Actually, I was just looking at some books Angel loaned me. I thought I
might read.”
“What books?”
“She described them as romances. Angel gave me a little warning though, apparently, there are sex scenes in them. I’m trying to decide what one might be the best to start with.” Rhia heard her sister’s gasp of exclamation. The absurdity of her sister being shocked when she mentioned a book with sex scenes in it nearly made Rhia laugh. Meg’s overprotectiveness of her edged close to smothering and if Rhia didn’t know that her sister’s concern stemmed from love, she might be tempted to take offense at being treated like a child.
“Why did you just gasp?” Silence lingered between them, as Rhia patiently waited on Meg’s response.
“Should you be reading a book like that? I mean, I enjoy a good naughty novel, but is it something you should be reading?”
“Well, I guess I won’t know until I read it.” The answer snapped from her lips, as a spark of anger flared within her. Obviously it was the sex her sister was up in arms over, rather than reading. A book like that! How insulting. She wasn’t a complete innocent, and she shouldn’t be treated like one. Rhia decided a little shock treatment where her sister was concerned might be in order.
“Oh, I might start with this one. It’s about a nun and a mechanic, who meet when the nun’s car breaks down. I think Angel said they don’t even make it home before he strips her clothes off and—”
“I’m going to kill Angel Wylde. Why would she give you that? And I hate to think what sort of sex those books have in them. Angel doesn’t have normal sex you know. How can she, with two husbands and a dungeon in her…” Meg cursed quietly.
