"You lied to me, Alex." I sniffle and wipe a falling tear from my eye. "You promised me you'd never lie to me. You swore when I asked you, too. But you did it anyway."
I want to be angry at him and I want to keep yelling until I'm blue in the face, but I know why he did this. He's not cheating on me. He doesn't have a drinking problem or a gambling addiction. He's trying to keep us safe. How can I ridicule him for that? Everything he said about me worrying is true and valid. But, now I know.
"Baby, I'm sorry. You know how much I want to protect you and Sammy. You're my life and I'll do anything to make the crazy life we have seem as normal as possible. You can ask me anything, and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
"How were you getting coffee if your car was parked out front?" I ask.
He laughs and tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my ear. "I tell you to ask me anything, and that's your question?" He pulls my head in and kisses my forehead. "You see that cruiser right there?" he asks, pointing to the car behind us.
"Yes."
"That's mine." He smiles and straightens collar.
"So, what—am I supposed to call you officer from now on?" I grin despite myself.
"Hmm—I wouldn't mind that." He winks.
I slap him on the shoulder and he pulls me up against him, allowing me to feel metal and other miscellaneous objects strapped across his body. "I suddenly feel a lot safer," I say. Kind of.
He presses his lips against mine. "You are a lot safer. Trust me." As his thought ends, a new one arises. He wraps his hands around my waist and pushes me outward. "What were you doing here anyway?”
I pull the flashlight out of my back pocket and slap it into his hand. "It was dropped into my car when I was having coffee with Kiera today. I was sick of wondering what it was or where it was coming from, so I came here to see if I could get any information on the company name. Apparently, Ocnarf has been heard of at the station. Care to explain?" I raise my eyebrows.
"Why didn't you call me first?" He frowns.
"Why didn't you tell me you were working for the police?" I retort.
"Touché." He bows his head in defeat.
***
I can't believe he was hiding the police force from me. Yes, the thought behind it is nice and I feel fortunate to be so well protected. But if we're so protected, how did Celia get attacked? I don't think they have any idea what Ocnarf is, and I'm pretty sure whomever or whatever it is was the cause of Celia's accident. Alex told me we were safe here. Either he was very wrong and misjudged Franco’s abilities, or he was trying to keep me from the edge of insanity.
Alex unlocks the doors to our apartment and we watch as Celia struggles to push herself up from the couch. Alex runs over to her side and eases her arm around his shoulder. "How's it going, Mom? You seem worse than you were yesterday?"
"No, I'm just stiff. Sammy's taking a nap, so I figured I'd take a rest too. What are you doing home so early?"
"I ah—my boss gave me the afternoon off, so I called to see where Chloe was."
I know he wouldn't want Celia to know where he really works, so I play along. "Sammy's taking a nap? He hasn't taken a nap in over three months," I say.
"He went into your bedroom about an hour ago and told me he was taking a nap. I figured he was tired," she explains.
I walk down the hallway, unsure of what to expect. I don't think he's really taking a nap. I open the door that's never normally closed, and I find Sammy standing at the window, talking. The door creaks as I push it open and he grips his fingers around the window and slams it shut before spinning around to face me with a guilty look.
CHAPTER SIX:
A BAD PLAN
"WHO WERE YOU just speaking to?" I ask, running over to the window. "Are you talking to the tree?" I laugh, feeling relieved to see nothing but the tree outside.
"No," he replies simply with a squeaky voice. "I was telling Ocnarf to leave us alone. I was explaining to him that he was scaring you and Daddy and that he needed to stop."
"Alex," I yell into the other room. "Come here." He flies around the door, followed by Celia limping behind. "What's going on?"
"Sammy, tell Daddy who you were just speaking to," I say.
"I was telling Ocnarf to leave you and Mommy alone," he repeats.
Alex looks at me and kneels down before Sammy, pulling him over. "What does Ocnarf look like?" Alex asks him.
Sammy giggles as if Alex just asked him the most ridiculous question ever. "Daddy, you're silly. He looks like a bird." He laughs again, nodding his head at Alex.
Alex falls from his squatting legs on to his butt and pulls Sammy onto his lap. "Where did you hear the name Ocnarf?"
"Hmm—I don't remember," he replies, scratching his head, while appearing to try and remember this detail.
"Celia, can you stay here with him for a minute, and don't let him talk to any more birds?"
I pull Alex by the arm. I drag him outside and over to the pile of dead birds. “What the hell is this?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Franco is behind this. You know that. Don’t you?” I ask pointedly.
“There’s more to this than Franco.”
I squeeze Alex’s arm. “Tell me what you know.” I can’t stop my eyes from filling with tears. “We’ve been running from God knows what for four years now. I can’t keep doing this. We need this to stop.” I feel like we’ve hit a brick wall. Both of us just keep repeating that this needs to end, but we don’t have a solution. Or at least, I don’t.
He drops his head and squats up against the side of the apartment. “The only way this is going to stop is if you are able to clear your own mind.” Is this supposed to be some kind of insight? Is he giving me a hint?
“What? What do you mean? How am I supposed to clear my mind? How clear does it have to be?”
“Completely.”
“So what? Do I have to be hypnotized or something? What exactly do you mean by that? Can you give me some clarity?” My voice has elevated into a shout, and Alex pulls me to the side of the apartment building, away from the people sitting on the benches in front of the main entrance.
“You were hypnotized once, Chloe. Look what happened then.”
“I was a child.”
“A child with living nightmares. A child, whose happiness was stolen. Your mind was compromised. It’s still being kept hostage.
“What are you saying, Alex?” I cry. “Are you saying none of this is real? My life isn’t what I think it is?”
He shakes his head, but I can’t tell if it’s remorse for telling me this or my lack of understanding. He leans down and looks me in the eyes. “I am real. Sammy is real. This place we are in, is not.” Feels pretty real to me. Looks pretty real. What isn’t real?
“So, now what?” I snap.
“Now, we go do what we’ve been putting off for years.”
“What?”
“It’s time to face Franco.” He slides his hands into his pockets and shrugs his shoulders. “He needs to free the control over your mind. It’s the only way to really fix things. There’s no more room for temporary fixes. We’ve gone too far, and there’s no going back.”
I can’t understand where he’s going with his words except one thing, and that’s Franco. And facing him. “Fine.” I head toward the front door. “I’ll go. Alone. There’s no point in you going anyway. I’ll go get my mind back from him. I’ll tell him to snap his fingers and pull me out of the hypnosis, or whatever the hell he’s done to me.”
Alex bolts after me and grabs my arm to turn me around. “Chlo.” He loosens his grip and looks me straight in the eyes. “It’s not that easy. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he’s not going to free you. He’s holding your mind hostage.”
“So then, what? What, Alex? What are we supposed to do? Live our life in fear. Live being watched, followed, tormented? I don’t want that. I don’t.”
“No. That isn’t what I want.” I can see the frustration buil
ding within him. He looks up toward the sky, closes his eyes, and shakes his head. “I guess it’s time.”
“What? Time for what? And don’t say, nothing.”
“We’ll go to Franco. But we’re going together, and we’re not drifting there. We’re taking a plane.”
“What’s the difference anyway?” I shove my hands into my back pockets. “It’s not you he wants. It’s me.”
“That’s not completely true,” he says.
“You know…the way you’ve been talking lately is starting to resemble Franco’s mind games. I know you are hiding things from me. I try to ignore it. I try to pretend you aren’t lying to me some of the time. Maybe you’re trying to protect me, but it hurts me to know that you aren’t honest and we aren’t on the same page. We’re married. We’re supposed to be a team.”
He tugs on my elbows and pulls me toward him. “We are a team. And I love you so much that I don’t care how angry you get with me about this stuff. You could never convince me not to protect you the way I am.”
***
“Do you think he knows about Ocnarf?” I ask, pulling a change of clothes from the closet.
“I’m sure,” he says.
Just as I say the name out loud, I rip the flashlight out of Alex's back pocket. I bring it over to the mirror and hold it up. Just as I say the name out loud, I have a crazy premonition. Oncarf backwards is Franco. I press my head against the mirror in defeat.
Alex takes the flashlight from my hand and holds it back up to the mirror. "You have to be shitting me," he groans. "An entire police department couldn't figure this out, and you have a random thought that clears everything up."
"Maybe I should have been the one to join the force." I smirk. "Do you think he was behind Celia's accident too?"
The second my words settle into his mind, he turns red.
He doesn’t respond. He just shakes his head in dismay. He must think he let us all down. We don’t think that, though. He can be so hard on himself.
He throws the flashlight across the room, and it breaks into pieces when it hits the wall. "I'm calling one of the guys to come stay here with Celia and Sammy."
He pulls his shirt off and whips it onto the bed. I want to think he's being ridiculous and going overboard, but he’s not. Even though Franco is locked in an abandoned cell in Paris and there isn't much he, personally, can do to me, there’s obviously still others out there who could do something to us.
He storms around the room, becoming more enraged by the second. If he keeps going like this, he’s going to have a nervous breakdown before we even get to Franco.
“Alex,” I say softly.
“He’s not in Paris anymore.” He whips open his top drawer and starts shuffling around through miscellaneous items. After dumping almost everything onto the floor, he pulls out a black hardback notebook and places it down on his nightstand.
"What's that and what do you mean he’s not in Paris?" I ask, watching him clean up the mess he made on the ground.
"It's a notebook. And things sort of…ah…shifted in your head," he says.
I slap my hands down against my legs out of frustration. "You know I don’t understand what you mean by that!"
He spins around to face me and wrenches his hands around chunks of his hair. "I don’t know how else to explain. Just…please, trust me." He collapses against the wall and brings his knees up to his chest. His expression is disconnected, broken. It’s something I’ve felt many times, but I’ve rarely seen this look on his face.
“You keep asking me to trust you, Alex,” I say softly. “How can you keep asking me that when you’re hiding stuff from me?” Whatever it is he’s hiding from me, it's bad. I know it. I’ve known it.
I crouch down onto my hands and knees and crawl into his lap. He wraps his arms tightly around me and buries his face in my hair. He slides his hands up the sides of my cheeks and turns me to face him. He studies me from my eyes to my chin. When his eyes settle on my lips, he looks like he wants to cry. He presses his forehead against mine and presses his lips onto my nose, then my lips. His tongue dances around the inside of my mouth. My hands are around his neck and I can feel his throbbing pulse. I don’t understand how he can skip from a frantic motivation to find a notebook, to needing me.
He frees one hand from my face, reaches up to the bed, and pulls a pillow down. He throws it on the ground behind me and lays me down next to him before gliding over me.
I still don't say a word. I just study the unresolved look in his eyes. Each of his movements has purpose, meaning. Everything is slow and moves in perfect stride. His eyes are open and staring into mine. It's as if he's trying to explain something to me with actions rather than words, but I'm not sure I understand what he's trying to tell me.
I don't want to go see Franco.
I don't want any more birds flying into our windows.
I don't want to see any more flashlights or weird looking men who are apparently stalking me for The Necklace of Death.
I want our family to be normal, but we don't get normal. I was born into abnormal and I don’t know how to escape that. My life has been one big imprisonment of cruelty and broken things. My mother abused my father and me. She held me hostage for nineteen years and eventually had me admitted permanently to an institution.
I've brought nothing but a whole lot of heartache, stress, fear and anxiety into Alex's life and he's taken on more than one person should have to take on. My excess baggage is more like a truckload, and Alex is carrying it all on his shoulders.
I shouldn't be thinking about any of this while my husband’s hands are working their way around my body, but my mind can’t seem to avoid these thoughts. There's little room for happiness or joy—it seems like nothing will ever give.
Sammy deserves better. He deserves honesty and clarity. Maybe Kiera took better care of him than I am. Maybe someone else would be a better parent than I am. So many minutes of my life goes to solving a mystery I'm not so sure has a solution. My time should be spent playing checkers, make-believe, action heroes and baking cookies. I promised myself I wouldn't be this person, but what choice have I been given? I've not had a choice. Things seem pre-planned and no matter what I do, I can't change the outcome. I can’t change my mind.
Alex is breathing heavy, and I’m barely breathing. He knows my mind is not where it should be. I can see it on his face. I’m just a body with a lost mind. Or a mind without a soul. What kind of wife am I?
His hand sweeps across my face as he leans back down to kiss me. "Are you okay?" He sweeps a loose strand of hair off of my cheek. “You didn’t…ya know.” I was completely missing from the moment, much less even enjoying myself.
"What's happening?" I ask softly.
He kisses me again and rolls to my side. He reaches up to the nightstand and pulls down the notebook. "This is all you'll need," he says. He kisses my forehead and replaces the notebook on the nightstand. “Come on, let's pack a few things so we can leave early in the morning." He stands up, leaving me sprawled out on the floor, lifeless, mindless. Lost.
The notebook is all I'll need? What the hell is that supposed to mean? I want to see what's in it. I need to see what's in it. I pull myself off the ground and reach my hand out for the notebook, but Alex's hand is wrapped around my other arm, pulling me away. "Why?" I whip my head around to face him. "What is going on, Alex? You know something—something bad that's going to happen. Don't do this to me," I cry. I can’t help the tears that are burning my cheeks, and the sobs that are making it hard to breathe.
He wraps his arms around me tightly and sucks in a breath of air. "It will all be over soon. Everything will be okay."
I pull away from him, angered and bewildered. "You tell me that, but nothing ever seems like it’s okay or going to be okay. You know this, Alex."
"It's almost over, Chlo." His voice crackles as he says my name.
"What's almost over?" I take a step backward. "Us?"
He matches my step, co
rnering me against the wall. "You and I—we will never be over. Never," he says with a blazing stare. "You just need to trust that you know what you should know, and anything more will hurt you and us. I know I'm asking a lot, Chloe. But this is the way it has to be.”
“This isn’t fair. I’m sick of this,” I continue to cry.
“It's not fair to you, I know.” He combs his fingers through my hair, trying to soothe my pain and worry. Nothing could make that go away. “This situation is bigger than either of us. Sometimes, we have to take certain steps backward in order to take one forward. I'm just asking you, as my wife, my best friend, the girl who I knew I was going to be with forever at age seven, to trust me, one more time. That's all I'm asking. It will be the last time. Will you do this for me, again? Please?"
I shake my head to say no, but my mouth says, "Yes."
Why do I keep agreeing to be kept in the dark from things like this? Is it really what's best for me? "How long are we going to Massachusetts for?"
"Plan on just the one day," he says.
We both take our backpacks from the closet and throw a change of clothes in there. Alex takes all of the money out of his wallet and places it in the top drawer of our dresser, looking at me and making sure I see what he’s doing.
"Won't we need some of that to travel?" I ask.
"I have enough for tomorrow."
He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket, looks at me again and places it in the notebook. "Later," he says while closing the notebook.
***
I didn't sleep, not even for a second. My head has been spinning, thinking and planning the worst. Alex fell asleep a few times, but he tossed and turned more than he slept. He had some nightmares too. They startled him awake, sweating and delirious.
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