Forgiven (Ruined)

by Rachel Hanna

  I take a very deep breath, clink glasses, raise mine, and Dexter says, "Wait!"

  "Because?"

  "Because one more thing we're celebrating." Big grin in my direction. "You. Welcome back, Willow."

  #

  Over the next couple days I get back on track at the station, in my classes, at home, and most definitely with Kellan. Most nights he stays with me or I stay with him. My parents sleep on the far side of the house. If they know exactly how much we're together again, they don't say so. For now it's easier for me to have Kellan stay at Bruce's house – his apartment is too far from everything and he can't drive me to school in the mornings.

  He's got a lead on a job at the VA hospital, though, and is looking not only at physician assistant training, which would earn him a promotion fairly quickly, but at then using that job for money to live on while he goes to school to become a psychotherapist.

  "Not sure where I went wrong with you kids," Bruce says one night, putting on a very old man's voice. He's not very good at it. Bruce is way too vital.

  While Kellan and I both go still, afraid whatever teasing thing Bruce's voice promises will go awry, he goes on. "I have all this money and all this house and you both want to work your way through school, earn degrees, and go pay rent while earning a living. Where did I go wrong?"

  "In your defense," I tell him, "you only had four years to try and indoctrinate me. Plus, you're paying for my math tutor."

  "And not seeing great results from it either," says my mother.

  I throw my napkin at her.

  "In my defense," Kellan says. "Oh, wait, I don't have one. I must've gotten the wrong genes, Dad. The work hard and you shall prosper genes."

  Bruce sighs. "Didn't anybody get the Let Bruce support you while you eat bonbons and shop genes?"

  "Can I volunteer for that?" Mom asks.

  It's the first lighthearted exchange between them in some time. It's nice. It's also nice that Mom's only on her first glass of wine as we finish up dinner and start waiting for one of Mama Lita's peach pies for dessert. I don't know where she's finding peaches in October and I'm not going to jinx it by asking.

  * * *

  Things are getting back to normal in other ways, too. By late October I'm in the promised walking cast, though it's more of a hobbling-slash-limping cast. Emmy has successfully switched her major to journalism from business, easily and mid-semester because she was taking a lot of journalism classes next semester anyway. They saw no reason to make her wait.

  "You heard from Reed?" Emmy asks as we stroll together to The Coffee Mug after classes.

  "Yeah! I can't believe I didn't mention. What are you doing?"

  Emmy's getting us a table and almost tackling me into it. "Seating you. What do you want, your usual latte?" She's got a job now, but there's no reason for this.

  "Shut up," she says in response. "Let me treat. I'll explain why later."

  "But don't you want to hear about Reed? Because he had news!"

  Emmy glances at her watch. She's one of the few people I know who still wears one. It suits her – it's a Minnie Mouse. "There's time. Let me get the drinks."

  I stretch my leg out along the length of the booth she's left me in. October sunlight falls over me and it feels great. Sometimes it feels like the warmth of this fall is healing my leg. Maybe soon I'll be out of the walking cast. Then they've threatened me with a cane, though my PT said I could keep crutches instead if I wanted. I'd shaken an imaginary cane at him and said, "You kids stay off my lawn!" which made him eye me warily and suggest I keep on with the crutches when I'm un-walking-casted.

  Watching Emmy as she waits for the barista to supply our caffeine, I wonder idly what she meant by, "There's time." Just that quickly my news and her comment crash together and I panic. We have to get out of here! This is where he's going to be and I can't be here, it wouldn't be fair, he deserves privacy!

  "Em," I say, panicky, when she returns with the drinks. "Can you get those in to go?"

  "No," she says, wryly screwing up her face. "Bad for the environment. Drink your coffee."

  "We can't stay here," I tell her, almost on my feet, except she's grinning kind of cat in the cream like and I'm confused.

  "So," she says. "I'd mentioned Reed. Tell me the news?"

  A sneaking suspicion starts sneaking up on me but I tell myself not to be crazy. It's late afternoon and gorgeous outside. We've got most of The Coffee Mug to ourselves. There's just a couple making eyes at each other and playing footsie, two guys doing homework at the same table, and one girl who looks completely stoned, or asleep, or maybe even dead. I kind of squint at her until I see her chest rise and fall. Then I turn to Emmy.

  "Reed's met someone," I say.

  She nods. "Know that."

  Because I told her.

  "Online. Through social media."

  "Hopelessly old fashioned," she nods. "Not news. Know that."

  I frown at her. "Here's something you don't know and why we should go. He's been afraid it's some kind of cat fishing thing, that she'll turn out to be a dude or somebody's grandmother or, I don't know, somehow awful. But he finally got the guts, and he's meeting her. here. Today. Any minute now." I try to swallow my latte in a rush. "Ow!"

  "No hurry," Emmy says, looking past me toward the door. "I don't think he'll mind if we're here. And the girl meeting him isn't a dude, or a grandmother, or awful."

  I hear the door jangle shut behind me and turn, seeing Reed Miller stepping into the restaurant. There's a swirl of movement from the other side of the booth and I turn to see Emmy get to her feet and stand facing Reed.

  He's still blinking the sun out of his eyes, looking around the room. He looks briefly at the sleeping/comatose woman, and then, slowly, directly at Emmy where she's standing.

  He mouths her name. Emmy?

  And Emmy grins, and goes straight to him, right into his arms.

  * * *

  A week later the police come to the house. Kellan's not home, and neither are Bruce and Mom, so my first reaction is panic. It makes sense, given my past. But it's just a courtesy call, probably because Bruce, and now my mother, too, are so prominent in the community.

  After the two officers calm my instant fears, they refuse the invite to come in and say they're just following up. That's about the time I realize they're the two I met in the hospital. I forgive myself forgetting – I wasn't at my best.

  "What can I do for you?" I ask, leaning against the doorjamb. It'd be easier if they did come in. I'm healing, and apparently doing so is exhausting work.

  "We just came to drop off a report. Investigations proved that it was Stacee Jacobs, sister of the deceased, Aimee Reynolds, who was delivering packages to Mr. Kellan Avery."

  I probably wouldn't be privy to this info if the tall, skinny, blond cop didn't go on. "She's also the person who pushed you into traffic, Miss Blake."

  "What? How do you know?"

  Because smile, you're on camera, it turns out. One of the buildings across the street has surveillance cameras at the front door that take wide angle into the street. I'm not sure what took them so long to determine this if she's on camera, but I don't care.

  I don't care because when they caught up with her, she was in our neighborhood, and this time she had a gun.

  "You need to sit down," the bald cop says, taking my arm as I start to sag. He comes into the house then, walking me over to the dining table. He sits down opposite me while the blond perches nearby, twitchy. Good cops probably should be twitchy.

  "Is there anyone you'd like us to call?"

  I'm not sure which one says that, because I've got my head down and my ears are buzzing loudly as apparently my head decides whether or not it would be a good idea to faint.

  I hold a hand up. "Just. Need a. Second."

  So let me get this straight, says the voice in my head. You're 19 years old and two people have now wanted to kill you?

  The little voice in my head never misses an opportunity
to be sarcastic.

  When I hear them stirring, I look up. It's only been a couple minutes. "Sorry. It's just, Kellan isn't living here right now, so her targets were his dad, my mom – or me."

  "She's already made one attempt on your life, ma'am," says the blond officer. "It seems highly likely – "

  "Yes, I get it." Don't really want that spelled out, thanks. "And where is she now?"

  "In custody." The bald black cop stands, ready to go. "When she was apprehended, she pulled the gun on the officers. She won't be making bail before the trial."

  I raise my brows, take a breath, thank them and see them out.

  Trial. Of course there will be one. A trial where Kellan and I will probably end up having to spill our guts about the relationship. Wonder how understanding Bruce and Mom will be about that?

  "Have you told Kellan?" My cell materializes in my hands.

  "He's being informed probably as we speak," says the blond. "But unless you have questions, we'll be going and you can call him." He looks like he might smile in a fatherly way at that idea. Which is silly, since he looks like he's all of maybe five years older than me.

  Could I be a police officer in five years?

  Yes, actually, but I've already had more than enough of people who want to kill me. Maybe I'll just try to gee on one of the remaining newspapers and write the crime beat.

  Chapter 17

  Maybe I get cocky, then, or careless, because things are going right. But after promising everyone who asked that I would never go back to the station at night by myself, that's exactly what I do. Not because I'm thinking about it but precisely because I'm not. I go by cab, because I'm not off the crutches yet, though once I am, I'm learning to drive and getting a license and a car. I can pay Bruce back. Or ask him to take it out of the bonbon fund. That makes me smile. He and Mom have been much better ever since that night, and more so once Stacee was arrested.

  And then Zach says he'll drive me home, only I forget that and send him off long before I stand, totter because I've forgotten the walking cast again, and then realize two things at once: It's night and dark outside, and I don't have a ride.

  "Well, shit."

  That's when I hear it. The sounds I heard the first time. Sounds of somebody in the building.

  This time my reaction's really bad. This time I get mad.

  * * *

  Only I'm not crazy. And I'm not careless. I'm not going to go running after whoever it is, and that's only partly due to having a broken leg.

  Part of it's due to the fact of how I received the broken leg. So great, Stacee Jacobs is behind bars. One thing I've learned, there are crazies out there in the world, and then there are some stone cold sober and sane people who are willing to shove you into traffic.

  Lesson learned.

  So even as I'm listening hard to where the sounds are coming from down the hall, which same as last time means the production room and the library there, and good thing I had Dexter backup the tapes that are now stored offsite, I'm pulling my phone out of my bag and dialing. The sounds are random but they're ongoing.

  Someone is in the building with me.

  I hit send. Not the police, because 911 connects me to off-campus help. Fastest response on campus is campus security.

  "Erin Balliol."

  Keeping my voice low, I ease around the desk so I can start down the hall. The walking cast means I don't have to have crutches, but there's no way whoever is here doesn't know I'm walking their way. My footsteps are the soft splat of a running shoe, and then the hard click on industrial tile floors of the hard plastic bottom of the cast.

  "Balliol, it's Willow Blake at the DCTV building. I'm here alone and there's someone in the building again."

  To her credit she doesn't waste time calling me a jackass for this behavior, though she'll be perfectly within her rights to do so later. It occurs to me Balliol might not even be on duty and that I should have called campus security dispatch.

  Too late now. Balliol's the guard who patrols our side of the campus. If I guessed right, she'll be faster than going through dispatch, and the noises are continuing, so I haven't been noticed yet, but doesn't mean I won't be, long before Erin Balliol gets here.

  "I'm en route," she says. "Calling for backup as soon as I hang up. Don't know where Fergie is but my ETA is at least 5 minutes. You call security dispatch and stay on the line with them. Can you get out of the building?"

  "Yes." I'm at the front, in the executive command center that still looks like a receptionist's really messy desk.

  "Then do so. Wait outside. Do you have your car?"

  "No." Haven't gotten that far with my Willow Takes Back Her Life plans. No car, no license, just me in a walking cast.

  She snorts, which I think is Balliol managing not to swear. "Go outside. It's better than in. At least there's some chance others will be around you. Go now."

  By go now, I take it she means hang up. So I do. Stuffing the phone into the back pocket of my jeans, I start for the same hallway that will lead me either into the station and to the production room where I've been hearing the sounds.

  -- though I'm not hearing them now --

  -- or up to the front door of the station and out into the night where I can wait for security to arrive.

  Maybe I'll do what she suggested, though I won't feel any more safe outside at this time of night.

  I move around the table that serves as a desk and past the first room, just into the hallway.

  There's no point in following Balliol's suggestion or arguing about it.

  The intruder is standing in the hall, halfway between the front of the building where the desks are and the production room at the end of the hall. Normally I'd say my chances are good of making it to, and through, the front door, before she got to where I'm standing. I'm about 15 feet from the front door and she's about 20 feet down the hall.

  But the circumstances aren't normal. Nothing has been normal in a long time. The walking cast on my foot and leg means at best I'd be considerably slowed down. At worst I'd slip on the ancient, yellowing tiles in the hall and splat out flat. Then she wouldn't even have to chase me.

  I have no idea why she'd want to. I've never seen the girl standing there before in my life.

  She looks like she's about 16, maybe 17. Couple years younger than me, anyway. She hasn't moved and I seem fixed to the spot, like someone seeing a snake and going still so it won't strike.

  The longer I look at her, the more familiar she looks, though. If a stranger can look familiar.

  Why isn't she moving? She hasn't spoken but then, neither have I. I've just opened my mouth to say The police are on the way though there's a good chance she overheard every word of my side of the phone call with Erin Balliol, when her stasis breaks. She starts up the hall toward me and now I'm actively backing away, fumbling my way, splat of running shoe, click of cast, as I back toward the door, hand out for the door, meaning to shove it open, but they're glass doors leading into the building and I locked it, unlocked when I came in, turned the quarter-sized silver knob that shoots the deadbolt once I was inside.

  Even if I were near the door – and there seems to be a good half mile between me and it, where'd all the space come from? – I probably wouldn't make it.

  Panic, my brain fills in calmly. It's still the same distance.

  But the game has changed. I couldn't have beaten her out the door even if I hadn't been shoved into traffic.

  One thing after another, says a distracted voice in my brain.

  The rest of my attention is focused on her. "I don't know how you got in here," I say, trying not to shout, or ask questions, or let my voice waver. "But police are on the way right now."

  She's still walking toward me, almost prowling, like a cat confident in whatever it is it's going to pounce on. She waves away my statement like it's actually something in the air she can shove aside.

  "It's so easy for you," she says. That's a mean girl voice. That’s anger, grow
ling out of her voice.

  My fear ratchets up a notch. Where the hell is Balliol? Maybe the space between me and the door hasn't actually grown, but I swear more than five minutes has passed.

  And the girl looks even more familiar. What, is this another deputation from the Avenge Aimee Reynolds Club? Did she have sisters or half-sisters that didn't look like her?

  Because Stacee looked like Aimee. But while this girl is familiar, she doesn't look like Aimee. At all.

  She looks like.

  My thoughts drop off completely. But she has the strawberry blond hair, the same hair that blows in my face on the beach and never responds to me shaking my head to flick it back. Light, flyaway strawberry blond hair.

  No. No, no, no, no, no. I'm an only child.

  What was I thinking instants ago? Whether Aimee Reynolds could have had a stepsister.

  "What's easy for me?" I'm still backing away from her though I don't think it will help. The way she's moving, if I make it to the door, the minute I start to fumble with the lock mechanism, she'll pounce on me.

  "What isn't?" She practically hisses that. "Want a new life? Everybody feels sorrrrry for you. Want a new life? Just commit a little murder and you have everyone's sympathy." She hisses that last word, too.

  My heart pounds in my temples. My vision blurs with fear. My palms are sweating, my phone held slickly in both hands. But my mind is clearing. She looks familiar. She's angry. She knows about Kate Lambert and what happened in Seattle with Kate Lambert's father.

  "Want to move away from the place where a couple people are annoyed at your new life? Momsy finds a millionaire and poof! You're in the money, you're in Charleston, you're in a mansion on the beach."

  "It's not a mansion," I say without thinking.

  Lame, Willow. Potentially deadly.

  "'It's not a mansion,'" she mocks. "Want to know where I lived?"

  Abruptly, no, I don't. Abruptly I've had enough. I'm tired of waiting for Balliol and stalling. The girl isn't carrying a weapon that I can see. She's wearing jeans and sneakers and a tank top and I don't see anything on her which doesn't mean she doesn't have a knife in her pocket or a gun shoved down the waistband of her jeans in back, gangsta style.