Blood in the Past (Blood for Blood Series)

by East, Jordanna

  “You’re right, I know you’re right,” Lyla finally conceded. “I guess only time will tell.”

  Lyla playfully fondled his thin, dirty-blond hair, ignoring the glimmer in his eyes. But with each passing breath, he drew nearer and she hoped he intended only to share body heat.

  ***

  Night fell and CJ insisted on escorting Lyla home, even though it required two trains and a bus. They spent the end of the journey on a double-bus: two regular-sized buses joined in the center by a section resembling an accordion. Lyla jumped at the chance to drag CJ to the seats in the swiveling center, giggling as though they were riding a carnival Tilt-a-Whirl. With every rolling shift, her troubles felt further away. No dead parents. No near-fatal mistake in the operating room. No apprehensions about life or marriage for a solid thirty minutes.

  When the bus screeched to a standstill at their stop, Lyla and CJ spilled out from the rear doors, dizzy from their trip and drunk from laughter. They tumbled along the sidewalk for several blocks, their arms intertwined like a pretzel. The headlights of passing cars streaked their faces and lit their way.

  What little survived of Lyla’s home lay a block ahead on their right, just peeking into view. The house had been reduced to a pile of blackened rubble with charred beams jutting about in every direction—an enormous, sooty bird’s nest. As they approached the scorched and shriveled remains, a thin gasp escaped CJ’s lips. Lyla knew he had tried to restrain it and failed.

  “That’s right, you haven’t seen it since the fire,” Lyla said softly.

  “No. Lyla, I’m so sorry.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it as they drew closer.

  “It’s okay. I mean, it’s been tough, don’t get me wrong, but I think I made the right decision to stay at my neighbors’ house while they’re in Florida. They’ve been really generous, and it allows me to stay close to things.” This way I can keep tabs on the investigation.

  “Yeah, it was lucky for you they were heading down for the winter right when you needed a place to crash.”

  She stared at him until he realized his gaffe: Lyla was in no way lucky. He lowered his eyes and squeezed her hand again, an apology she accepted.

  “So, the insurance is covering everything?” CJ asked awkwardly, stumbling to change the subject.

  “Yeah, the insurance plus both life-insurance policies. I’m sure I could have bought a house and lived off the rest for quite a while, but it was more important for me to rebuild this house. I’m told the fire investigation could take several more months though.”

  “Yikes.”

  They both came to a dead stop, not at the full sight of the burnt-down home—they had managed not to gawk as they passed it in silence—but at the neighbor’s house. The back porch, and most of the yard, glowed. They were illuminated by candles, string lights, and white paper bag luminaries—brilliant, twinkling white stars, brought down from the Cosmos to the Earth.

  It was so beautiful, Lyla felt herself crying in a way she hadn’t in a long time: tears of joy. Despite the blur of her moist eyes, she saw Anthony kneeling in the center of it all. Tall, broad shoulders without being stocky. Same dark hair as Lyla. The green in his eyes sparkled almost as brightly as the decor. He caught Lyla’s gaze. The shadows sculpted both of their faces, making them appear like a matching pair of figurines atop their own wedding cake.

  Anthony, either oblivious or apathetic to CJ’s presence, shouted, “Lyla Kyle, will you marry me?” He beamed almost as brightly as the yard. Almost as brightly as the diamond in his hand.

  Lyla shook her head slowly in disbelief. But disbelief soon turned to freedom. With each subtle, side-to-side movement, her mind broke free of the shackles of the past few days. It broke free from the grief, the uncertainty, and the death. She chose love and a leap of faith. She chose life.

  Lyla ran to him, her long legs eating up the distance in a handful of strides. With her fears abated by her talk with CJ, she fell to her knees in front of Anthony with tears streaming down her cheeks. She grasped his face and kissed him. Hard. Heavily. When she pulled back, her voice cracked as she said, “I choose you.” Lyla breathed in a gulp of crisp air, as though she could inhale the twinkling lights and capture them within her heart. “I choose a life with you, Anthony.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  Without waiting for confirmation, perhaps not needing it, Anthony put the ring on Lyla’s trembling left hand and they embraced. He kissed her neck, and the tickling sensation that followed left them falling to the ground, rolling around in laughter and tears. Their joy rang louder still when they bumped into a luminary, almost setting a fire in their excitement.

  Neither noticed as CJ sank back into the shadows, beyond the glowing lights and joy, to wait for the bus that would bring him back to the other side of Philadelphia.

  6

  An Insect on Display.

  LYLA WAITED. Only a few months had passed since their courthouse wedding, but Lyla had already noticed the signs. The showers as soon as he came home from yet another late night. The new clothes that went straight to the dry-cleaner; Lyla could easily speculate what they were stained with. She wondered if her mother had seen the signs, too. Had she ignored them or just been naive, blind to their true effect on her? Lyla imagined the little white lies as tiny cracks in a snowy hillside growing into larger, more transparent lies that could bury a whole town in a tumbling avalanche of dishonesty. That town had once been Lyla’s mother, and now it was Lyla.

  That day, the phone rang. She answered it. Her first hang-up phone call. So she waited, eerily calm. She waited for Anthony to come home and wave to her absentmindedly before bypassing her to go upstairs, which had become their frigid ritual. She sipped her chai tea and waited for him to take a shower and return downstairs. In the center seat of their sofa, arms outstretched across the back, legs crossed at the ankles, feet resting on the glass coffee table with the jagged driftwood base, Lyla waited.

  Anthony lightly jogged downstairs. His wet hair dampened his shirt collar. He was still fumbling with the buttons as he entered the room, his glistening chest disappearing inch by inch. He was handsome. Just like her father. In more ways than one.

  “Did you get her scent off?” Lyla asked calmly. She knew it came across as far more frightening than shouting. Anthony’s mouth opened, caught in amazement and wonder. She put a finger to her chin, mocking thoughtfulness, before she added, “I think I still smell her. Maybe you should try more cologne.”

  “You smell my secretary?” he said with a laugh that sounded forced. Anthony rounded the love seat to sit across from her. She imagined his mind squirming. His eyes betrayed him. “I told Edna not to hug me. I’m not that great of a boss.”

  “Please don’t try to diffuse the situation with a joke. I know what you’re doing.” Lyla removed her feet from the coffee table, planted them on the floor, and pressed forward like a predator closing in on its prey. In a hushed tone, she said, “Besides, your secretary called out sick today. And you never returned to the office after you left for lunch. You forget, I have your law firm on speed dial, my love.”

  Anthony didn’t speak. He rose from the love seat and strolled around it, placing a barrier between himself and his accuser, as liars often did. Lyla still smiled sweetly when he faced her. His body stiffened, rigid arms hanging at his sides. “I had errands to run.”

  “So her name is ‘Erin?’” Lyla said with a sly smile, trying not to enjoy herself.

  “No, her name is not ‘Erin.’ She doesn’t have a name. There is no her, there is no she. God, Lyla, you’re so paranoid! Paranoid about us becoming your parents. You should really see someone or something.”

  Lyla could not count how many times her husband rolled his eyes in an effort to avoid her glare. She chuckled. A laugh of pity, most definitely. She was trying to decide whether she pitied herself or Anthony when his cell phone rang. Lyla lunged for the vibrating phone on the coffee table. Her delicate, red bone china teacup tilted on its saucer and s
pilled cooled chai onto the cream-colored carpet. Though they scratched at each other’s hands, Lyla managed to grab the phone first and answer it.

  Lyla kept her husband at bay with her free arm extended, blocking him as he swung wildly to snatch the phone from her. She heard a high-pitched, yet sultry voice echo “Hello” several times before hanging up. Lyla imagined the phone call her mother had received the night before her death while her father sat smugly at the dinner table. Just like Anthony stood smugly before her now.

  Lyla opened her mouth to say something, but her rage took the form of momentum—strength and power, not words—and she shoved her husband with all her might. Caught off guard, Anthony’s eyes widened, and he lost his balance. He teetered and fell backward onto the coffee table.

  Lyla watched her husband’s descent for what felt like an entire minute, as if he fell from a much higher distance, as if each body part was in its own separate free fall. She held his gaze, feeding on the fear and horror in his pupils. Glass exploded around them and still Lyla stared him down. The branches of the driftwood base impaled him. Shooting toward Lyla through Anthony’s torso, they reached for her, raised in genuflection.

  Anthony lay there, pinned like an insect on display, as he tried to wriggle free, flailing his arms and legs. Blood erupted from his mouth and nose, rolled down his face, pooled in the crook of his neck, and seeped steadily into his shirt. Lyla wanted to stomp on his chest. Fury smoldered within her, itching to drive the wooden stakes of revenge deeper into his cheating heart.

  Lyla was shocked by those feelings at first, but she soon found herself basking in the blazing empowerment that grew within her. Its warmth spread from her gut out to her limbs and into the tips of her fingers and toes. Just like the night she lit the fire that burned down her childhood home. Lyla understood: That fire would stay with her forever. Death truly was her story.

  Lyla poured herself a glass of Bordeaux. She sipped it, wishing she could watch Anthony rot. Instead, she called the police after summoning fraudulent tears, another similarity to the night of the house fire. As she recited her address to the operator between sniffles, Lyla couldn’t help but wonder if some people lived their whole lives without ever calling 911. Then she found herself amused by the fact that two of the three times she had done so was the result of her own doing.

  Lyla toasted her husband’s blood-drained body with a soft chuckle and gulped down the last of her wine.

  7

  A Sea of Names Etched in Stones.

  JILLIAN SAT ON her bed and focused her longing gaze out of her bedroom window. She had mostly stayed in her apartment for six months, watching the trees change from golden leaves to snow-laden branches. From late sunsets to early darkness. The melting snow provided an audible crackle, ironically similar to a fire. But such comparisons only served to remind Jillian that she needed to get out of the house for more than just food and doctor’s visits.

  She’d managed to earn a decent income writing articles from home for psychology publications such as gradPSYCH and Psychology Today. But sooner or later, she needed to put the past behind her, put the box of bloody keepsakes behind her. With spring fast approaching, Jillian could not fathom a better time to rise from the ashes. She chuckled at her clichéd desire and storybook plot of spring and rebirth and rising from the ashes. She was no Phoenix. She wasn’t resolute or resilient. In fact, she was terrified. But the timing felt right.

  Jillian shoved off the bed with some effort and crossed her bedroom. She pushed the box full of bloody clothes way back into the recesses of her closet—and her mind—and prepared to begin her new life. Jillian picked out a deep-purple suit and held it against the newfound convexity of her midsection. She hoped it would fit. The next day, she was applying for an open psychologist position at a Center City practice. But that day would be the first day she left the house out of more than sheer necessity. The first thing on her agenda: visit the grave of her fallen but not forgotten lover, Calvin Kyle. Pushing a box behind a pile of shoes wasn’t closure enough to embark on the future.

  Jillian strolled through the cemetery gates, blue sky above, stone-gray pavement below. The sun felt good and warmed her body beneath the woolen trench coat. As she abandoned the walkway in favor of the grass, weaving through the headstones, she realized how much she had missed the sun. Allowing her body and mind to bask in the warmth, Jillian thought about all the things she would do after finally putting the past behind her. She smiled—wondering if the practice she planned to join offered opportunities for partnership—as something tugged on her pant leg. She gasped. Broad daylight or not, it was still a cemetery, and cemeteries were eerie in any light.

  She looked down to find her pant leg had simply snagged on the weeds sprouting from the base of a small headstone. Jillian bent to free herself and someone brushed past her, causing her heart to skip again. When she stood, she sighed with relief. A man, slightly younger than herself, had bumped into her. He had a rather odd haircut with a short, stubbly section above his right ear reaching around to the back of his head.

  “Excuse me, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going,” he stammered. He glanced backward at a woman crossing the threshold of the iron gates before mumbling, “I thought I recognized her.” When he turned, the sun highlighted the shaved area of his head, revealing his odd haircut was the result of a jagged, pink scar.

  “No problem,” Jillian said tersely. She continued to her destination. Her voice sounded foreign to her ears; she hadn’t spoken to anyone other than Mel in months. Even when she visited her doctor, she spoke very little. But as she neared her lover’s gravestone, she felt the urge to speak to it. To speak to him. She would soon get used to hearing her voice again.

  She unbuttoned her coat to sit next to the grave, but her pants dug into her expanded abdomen uncomfortably. Instead, she stood and looked down upon the stone. She opened her mouth to speak. Her unfamiliar voice did not follow. An overwhelming bout of nausea struck her, and she braced herself against Calvin—well, his stone, anyway.

  The nausea passed, and Jillian sucked in some fresh winter air while she leaned against Calvin’s headstone. She rubbed her swollen, upset belly and released the cold air, ready to begin again.

  “I’m ready to move forward, Cal. I may have done a horrible thing, but it looks like I won’t be held accountable for it just yet. I’m sorry for that, but I needed you to see me, to talk to me, one last time. I thought I could change your mind, but I see now I probably couldn’t, no matter what the circumstances. I’m ready to move forward, but not entirely without you. A piece of you will always be with me, always in my life. I love you. Goodbye.”

  Jillian tucked her black hair behind both ears and leaned forward to kiss the gravestone. When she rose to her full height, she noticed a woman heading in her direction. Storming in her direction, in fact. Jillian recognized her as the lady who’d distracted the young stranger. Now that she was closer, Jillian also recognized her from the news: Calvin’s daughter, Lyla.

  Buttoning her coat around her pregnant stomach and yanking the collar up around her chin, Jillian hurried off the way she came, soothing her unborn baby through the lining of her deep coat pockets.

  ***

  Young Jason Brighthouse Jr. emerged from the outpatient facility, finally finished with physical therapy. He’d gone from his muscles quivering if he tried to sit upright for fifteen minutes to talking and walking normally.

  “Just like a real boy,” he said in a high-pitched whisper. He chuckled at the reference to his childhood favorite, Pinocchio. But Jason no longer felt stiff and awkward. Six weeks of rehab and three months of physical therapy had done away with that for good. The doctors said he might experience exaggerated fatigue, but outside of that, only a scar remained.

  Chief Tunney had visited Jason in the hospital several times, inspiring him like his father had and encouraging him like his father had not. After much debate, Jason decided he would join the police force. He wanted to ho
nor his father’s life, not his wishes—or rather, his orders. Once committed to the idea, Jason gleefully pored over the stack of reading materials the Chief had left behind and anxiously filled out the Police Officer Recruit Application.

  But something still nagged at him. The Chief had assured him he would pass the psych evaluation, as long as he was telling the truth about not remembering the accident, but Jason wasn’t quite sure it was an accident. His mother said it was, but she didn’t act like it. Nor did Jason feel like it was. But perhaps his memory loss was a blessing, allowing him to become a police officer. The taint of an attempted suicide would certainly prevent it.

  Jason hailed a cab and tried not to focus too much on the psych test. He’d been told he only needed to exceed expectations. He had done that. Tenfold. He felt stronger than he’d ever been, and tomorrow he would take his written competency test. But first, he needed to visit his father’s grave and apologize for disobeying his orders.