Lottie was beaming. Maybe some part of her was secretly hoping we’d tie him up too and throw him in the same room as Abram. Or maybe that was just me projecting what I wish I could have done onto her. It wouldn’t be the worst idea I’d ever had.
“Well,” Judge Willis McGrath was done with us. “I’ve made my decision. It will be passed on. The rest isn’t up to me.” It had taken less than 20 minutes for Lottie and Lydia to have their fates sealed by an asshole septuagenarian judge from Delaware. He left quickly after that and Lottie and I talked about whether or not we should call Lydia, but there was no point in upsetting her at work. I figured there was going to be a lot of crying and consoling and wine drinking in store for them that night and a lot of feeling completely useless and helpless in store for me.
We drove out to the house off of Greenwell Springs Road later that day to talk to Abram again, and to tell Eric and Mark about Willis’s appearance at Lottie’s apartment that morning. We found Mark surrounded by paperback books on the slightly-off-beige-colored sectional sofa in the living room. Lottie spotted the bookstore’s signature bag quickly. “Did a little shopping this morning?” she asked. She was smiling, teasing, but he just glanced up at her from his book and returned her smile.
“I got bored.”
I would have bet the very expensive engagement ring I had hidden in my Baton Rouge bedroom that I knew exactly who had helped him pick those books out.
Eric came in from the backyard, his hands and knees covered in dirt. I couldn’t help myself. “You weren’t burying a body in broad daylight, were you?”
Eric snickered and looked at his hands, his face full of fake disgust. “Worse. I tried to save the life of a rose bush. It was getting too much shade.”
I was convinced Eric had been a horticulturist in a past life. “So is he in a better mood today?” I asked, as Eric washed the mud and dirt from under his fingernails.
“He should be. He’s still alive,” he muttered.
“Hm. You know, he probably tortures plants in his spare time.”
“He’s probably the kind of asshole who would plant Perle d’Or roses in the shade.”
Lottie didn’t think we were funny. She went back to the living room and flopped down on the sofa next to Mark.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” she grumbled, “that they can joke about shit like this, or that Eric actually knows what Perle d’Or roses are.”
Mark lowered his book. “Definitely the part about the roses.” There was more. He wanted to ask her something and I had a terrible feeling what it was. “Does Lydia like roses?”
I groaned. They both ignored me.
“Of course. What woman doesn’t like roses? Nobody’s ever sent her flowers before, by the way.”
Mark smiled and I half expected him to pull his phone out right then to have flowers delivered to her at work. Instead, he asked, “How is that even possible?”
Lottie shrugged, her smile so sweet and full of the love she had for her friend. “Guys hit on her all the time, but she’s so … child-like, it’s like they lose interest once they think their chances of getting laid are gone.”
Mark uttered some very unsavory things about men in general which I would have protested against if I hadn’t just had that same conversation with Judge Willis McGrath that morning. Which reminded me I needed to tell them both about our visit with Judge Willis McGrath. Mark was furious, as I had anticipated. He wanted to drive back to the bookstore right away to keep an eye on Lydia, and Eric and I just looked at each other helplessly. We were starting to feel like we no longer knew where the boundaries were of trying to help these women and being just as overbearing as everyone else in their lives. But it was Lottie who finally spoke. “I think that would be a good idea. Her shift ends in an hour and a half. Don’t worry her though. Can you just wait outside and then tell her you had come back to see if she wanted to get dinner or something?”
Mark nodded and swept his new books back into the bag. He had just fished his keys out of his pocket and was ready to leave, when Lottie called “Wait!” He stopped by the door, his hand still on the doorknob. “I’ll be right back.” And she ran out the back door. We all just looked at each other. No one expected me to be able to explain.
Lottie came bouncing back in the living room, a single pinkish white Perle d’Or rose blossom in her hand. “Here,” she handed it to Mark. Even through his deeply tanned southern Mediterranean complexion I could see the color flushing his cheeks. Even men like us fell in love all the time.
I was about to make a smartass comment but Eric poked me hard in the ribs. So I kept my mouth shut as Mark, rose in hand, left to meet Lydia at the bookstore. I waited until I heard the gravel underneath the tires of his car as he backed out of the driveway then pushed Eric off the sofa. Sometimes, we really were as mature as a couple of nine year old kids. Lottie apparently thought so too.
“Do men ever grow up?”
“No,” we answered at the same time.
She was the only one who was profoundly disturbed by this house, by the secret it held, and I almost felt bad for not sharing her discomfort. It reminded me how normal some things could become. So I didn’t touch Eric as he sat back on the sofa next to me again, although he watched me carefully the entire time. Instead, I waited for him to get comfortable again before saying, “I guess we should go see what Abram has to say.” Eric glanced back at Lottie then shot me one of his you’re-going-to-fucking-pay-for-this looks. I don’t know about other men, but these two would apparently never grow up.
Abram was in the same chair, still bound and gagged, and he didn’t look as desiccated as yesterday but there was no overpowering stench of urine or feces; they were obviously letting him up to go to the bathroom. Eric ripped the tape off his mouth again; it was fleshy, bleeding, and angry red welts spread up his cheeks. Abram Mirowski’s face was getting infected.
Lottie flinched but didn’t back out of the room. “That’s gotta hurt,” she mumbled.
Abram spit the wad out of his mouth and exhaled heavily. “Ya think?”
Apparently, they hadn’t cured his grating attitude.
“Judge McGrath came to see me.” Abram’s eyebrows rose, a look of pleasant surprise on his raw and bleeding face. Maybe he thought rescue was coming, or that Lottie – and if he was lucky, the rest of us – would suffer some sort of retribution for what had happened to him. He was going to be really disappointed. “He doesn’t think I’m salvageable.”
“I could’ve told you that.” Apparently, Abram Mirowski had also grown a new set of balls overnight.
“So what’s going to happen now?” Lottie asked. She didn’t seem bothered by Abram’s sudden moxie.
“Lydia will need to move on. For her own good.” I started wondering if they had been ignoring him too much; he was far too cocky.
“She doesn’t want to. She won’t leave me,” Lottie insisted.
“It won’t matter.” Not only cocky, but he seemed like he was enjoying this, like he knew this was killing her, and he was glad that it was.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Lottie asked. She was getting nervous now.
Abram tried to squirm but he was bound too tightly. “I’m sure he told you. I don’t know what any of this has to do with me.”
I was losing my patience. “If he had told her, she wouldn’t have asked you the fucking question. Now answer her.”
“It’s not up to me. I don’t know what will happen.”
A lie. “Lottie, step out.”
Lottie looked at me, her eyes wide, her lips as pale as the rose she had given Mark. “No,” she said quietly, “I want to stay.”
“Lottie, go.” I said more firmly.
She hesitated, but finally walked out, closing the door noiselessly behind her. We listened as she walked back toward the living room, turning the television on, although we both knew she wasn’t watching it.
Eric stuffed the wad of now chewed-up cotton cloth back in Abram’s mouth
.
And then I found out what Mark and Eric had been doing to the man who wanted Lottie dead. No sane person likes torturing people. But the human brain can get used to a lot of shit, even shit that we once thought we could never do. Sometimes, maybe, we lie to ourselves about why we’re doing what we’re doing so we don’t lose our fucking minds – I’d been in that situation before. But looking down at Abram Mirowski’s deeply tracked, bruised and broken skin, I didn’t feel any remorse at all.
There are these sharp, thin, flat metal rods that can be pushed right below the surface of the skin, breaking capillaries, separating fat deposits, occasionally, if someone wasn’t careful, severing tendons. If somebody really fucked up, he could severe a major artery and the person would bleed to death. A site had to be chosen carefully, then, to avoid that mistake, and even though they were only about four inches long, having one slowly driven under your skin was a brutal kind of torture, especially since it would be repeated all over the body. It makes a ghastly noise and it’s a sickening thing to watch; I had only seen it done once, and at the time, I had hoped to never see it again. And now, I was going to do it.
When I was in school, I learned about the Milgram Experiment; I thought it was a pretty shitty explanation for even shittier behavior. And by the time I was 27 years old, I was convinced I had been right. It wasn’t that people tended to defer to authority as much as people have an ability to turn off this moral code they only think defines them. I don’t think I’m a bad person. I know Eric isn’t. But if anyone else had been in that room with us that night, I also know they wouldn’t agree with me. I had accepted that a long time ago. Moralism had long since become an ambiguous and fluid concept for me.
By the time we were finished, Abram Mirowski was much more willing to talk to us. We made sure his clothes covered all of the track marks, the open oozing sores, the bruising blistered skin. We let Lottie back in the room. She was pale, shaking, but still committed to doing this not only for herself but for Lydia; she had paid for her freedom. She had risked everything for the chance to decide her own fate, for Lydia to have that same opportunity. We all knew Lydia would never be able to stand up for herself the way Lottie could, and Lottie, more than anyone, felt that she had to do this for them both. Plus, she had been given a second chance with me – a second life to finish all of the dreams we had built for ourselves in those eight years together. She wasn’t going to lose it again.
Lottie asked him again what he had meant when he said Lydia wouldn’t have a choice.
“She knows too much …” he started, his voice shaky and coarse, but Eric’s phone interrupted him. Eric and I both knew from the ringtone it was Mark.
Eric stepped out of the room to answer it. Lottie and I watched the empty doorway for a few seconds before we heard him speaking. He was choosing his words carefully, and saying as few as possible. I allowed myself a brief spark of hope that this wasn’t about Lydia; if it were, then Lottie would have to find out anyway and he wouldn’t need to be discreet. I heard him coming down the hallway and by the sounds of his footsteps, that hope disappeared just as quickly as it had risen. I grabbed Lottie’s arm and moved her away from the door. Eric stormed back into the room, right up to Abram, and hit him across his right cheekbone. Blood splattered across the room, mixed with the identifiable sounds of bones crushing beneath the force of Eric’s blow. Lottie’s hands instinctively shot up to her mouth to suppress the scream she knew was trying to escape.
“Where is she?” Eric demanded. His voice was so cold and chilling even I would have talked. Considering he was my best friend and I know if given the choice between killing me or killing himself, he would have chosen himself, it was easy to forget Eric could be one scary son of a bitch when he wanted to be.
Abram moaned, unable to stop the blood from gushing into his mouth, and tried to spit it away. Eric moved to hit him again, but I stopped him. “Eric, what the fuck is going on?”
Eric looked at me and I noticed then that he was trying to avoid Lottie’s gaze. He wouldn’t meet her eyes even though she was standing right next to me, even though we both knew this had to be about Lydia now. He was afraid to tell her.
“Mark can’t find her. Her car’s still in the parking lot, but none of the other employees have seen her for over an hour. Lydia has disappeared.”
Chapter 15
Lottie still wouldn’t talk to me. She wasn’t mad, she didn’t blame me or Eric or Mark, but whatever was going through her mind was locked in there, in a Hell of her own. We were sitting on my bed, waiting for Eric and Mark to come back. I knew it would take a while. I felt a little guilty that they were shouldering so much of the work for me, doing so much for me and I couldn’t understand why. Eric, yes, but Mark? Maybe he hadn’t intended on becoming so involved but then he had met Lydia. Daniel was still adamant that we do more, learn more, track down more of these people so that we knew each one that lived in this country and where and for how long and how they were getting here and how we could prevent anymore from coming if someone somewhere in that great mysterious universe I worked in decided enough is enough. I had been stalling him.
Daniel hadn’t met Lottie – not this Lottie – or Lydia. He didn’t know how these women represented everything I always tried so hard to find in this world; those precious few people who loved unconditionally, who believed in the decency of others, who would never abandon someone in need. I wasn’t willing to assume everyone else was like Jackson or Abram or Judge Willis McGrath. Surely, most of them were just normal people, but maybe some of them were as beautiful and moral as Lydia and Lottie. Or maybe my love for Lottie clouded my judgment but I was pretty sure I was at least right about Lydia. And now she was missing.
We sat quietly for a long time; I had tried talking to her before but she wouldn’t or couldn’t talk to me. She was lost in this nightmare, this Hell I understood so well. My voice, my words, may not penetrate that deeply anyway. So I sat with her in silence as we waited, as the clock slowly ticked off the seconds then minutes then hours. Eric was getting whatever information he could from Abram with the assumption he may know where Lydia had been taken, if she were even still alive. Mark was still at the bookstore, talking to coworkers, looking around, hoping to stumble across anything that may be useful. He had planned on joining Eric when he was through there, so we had a long time to wait.
Over three hours had passed before Lottie finally spoke. “Do you think she’s dead?” she asked. She was staring straight ahead but her hand gripped mine tighter, anticipating my response. She knew I wouldn’t lie to her.
“No,” I said. And I wasn’t lying to her. “I think they want you dead, and they are trying to use Lydia to get to you. But I think we need to find her soon.”
Lottie nodded. “That’s what I was thinking too.” She bit her lower lip. “What’s taking them so long?”
How do you answer a question that you desperately don’t want to answer? Maybe most people learn that as a child. They learn what it’s like to be grilled by their parents, to be scolded by them, to be grounded. So they develop aversion techniques, ways to avoid painful truths even when talking to those they love. My mother never grilled me or scolded me or grounded me because she never talked to me. I was a forgotten pest living in the same apartment, an unwanted houseguest that she largely ignored. I had survived infancy. Surely, at some point, she had cared enough to keep me alive. But I couldn’t remember that far back. I didn’t know if she was an addict then, if she disappeared for days, if she pushed me away if I got too close.
In one of my earliest memories, I must have been about three, I had fallen over, tripped over God knows what, and I was bleeding. My hand was bleeding. The blood scared me. And it hurt. I wanted my mother. I went to her, lying on the sofa, half asleep, and reached out to her, showing her the blood on my hand. I didn’t deserve her opened eyes. She pushed me away, and I fell down again, and she told me not to get blood on her and to let her sleep. My mother would not be comforting me
.
So I could not lie to the people I loved. I could not lie to Eric, and I certainly couldn’t lie to Lottie. But telling her what was taking Eric and Mark so long to come home? I couldn’t traumatize her either. I thought of half-truths. “You met Abram. He’s not exactly forthcoming. It’s just going to take some time.”
“Lydia doesn’t have time.”
She was right, but what else could we do? “She has some. Nobody’s contacted you yet; they’re not ready.”
“What does that even mean?” Lottie finally looked at me. Her eyes were so full of faith that I had all of the answers, that I could be Lydia’s savior, that I could be hers too.
“It could mean a lot of different things. This may have been a last minute decision and they’re trying to figure things out as they go or they may be traveling still. And by now, I’m sure they’ve pieced together that Jackson’s death and Abram’s disappearance are related, that those most involved with trying to kill you are in danger.”
Lottie leaned against me, and when she spoke again, I could hear the weight of the agony she was carrying within her. “I did this to protect her. I came here to save her.”
“I know.” I wanted to promise her we would save her now, but I couldn’t make a promise to Lottie if I didn’t know if I could keep it. But she would have never asked me to make that promise anyway.
Instead, she put both of her hands around mine and brought it to her lips. “I don’t regret it, Dietrich. I would do it again. I know this isn’t my fault, I didn’t choose this and I didn’t do this to Lydia, and I would do it again because of you and I’m afraid that makes me a horrible person.”
“Lottie,” I lifted her chin so that she would look at me, “you have the most beautiful soul of anyone I’ve ever known. Both before and now. I can’t speak for Lydia, but I know that I would be really pissed off if you went through the rest of your life feeling guilty because something happened to me and you still allowed yourself to be happy.”
Resurrected (Resurrected Series Book 1) Page 17
