by Ivy Smoak
“It was. His name was Henry Johnson if you want to check.”
“Johnson?” He lowered his eyebrows slightly. “His last name wasn’t Clark?”
“No, Clark was my father’s last name. My mother took Henry’s last name when they got married. But I didn’t want it. Besides…he never officially adopted me anyway.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling him all this. “So…you can check the registration now. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“I told you it didn’t matter. And now that you got rid of it? It really doesn’t matter.”
I nodded. He could have turned me in but he hadn't. When he showed up on my doorstep a few days ago, I felt like he was there to ruin my life. I had heard a clock ticking down in my head, counting down the hours until I wound up behind bars. But all he had done was help me. Again and again. I wanted to be able to trust him. I wanted to be able to rely on someone. I tossed his keys back at him. “I’m glad we cleared that up.”
“Don’t you want free rein in my house?”
“I don’t need to look around to know what kind of stuff you have hidden in your drawers.”
He laughed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re a bachelor. It’s all tissues, lotion, and dirty magazines.” I climbed in the car and closed the door to the sound of his laughter.
In a few seconds he was sitting down in the driver’s seat. “I really am sorry that I lied to you, Violet. Maybe we can just start over?”
There was no need to start over. I was getting used to him being around. I was getting used to him. Besides, rewinding time was impossible no matter how badly I wished I could. I knew that better than anyone. “I kind of like where we are right now.”
“So you’re not mad at me anymore?” He put the car back into drive and started heading in the appropriate direction this time.
“I was never mad at you. I understood that it was your job. I was just…disappointed.”
“Wow, that is such a mom thing to say.”
I laughed. But he didn’t understand my meaning. I had meant that I was disappointed in myself, not him. People were inherently untrustworthy. A town outsider was no exception to the rule. Maybe the people here hadn’t manipulated him yet, but they would. I’d enjoy our time together until that happened. Besides, it was probably only a few minutes away from happening. We were about to go to the mall. He’d see the way people whispered and pointed. He’d feel how horrible it was to be me.
“How often do you have episodes like that?” he asked. He said it so calmly that I barely registered the fact that he was fishing for personal information.
“Maybe a few times a month.” I fiddled with the hem of his jacket. “It’s usually only when I’m alone. Zeke is good at pulling me out of my head before I get lost in it.”
“He’s a sweet kid.”
“Yeah, he is.” Zeke was the one thing in my life I had done right. He was everything to me. “Thank you for not arresting me. I’m all that he has.”
“It didn’t even cross my mind to.”
A comfortable silence settled in the car. I still didn’t know why I wasn’t in handcuffs, but I was happy that he trusted me for some reason. I stared at his profile out of the corner of my eye. He already had a five-o’clock-shadow growing along his sharp jaw line. He was beautiful. And apparently naïve, if he hadn’t learned that everyone is inherently untrustworthy yet. For some reason, I didn’t believe my own thoughts though. It was like he trusted me because he had lived. Like he had made his own mistakes. Like he was more like me than I could possibly know.
“So, what kind of lizard are we looking for?” he asked.
I snapped my attention back to the road. “I don’t know exactly. He was orange and yellow with spots. Sometimes.”
“What do you mean sometimes?”
“He changed colors a lot.”
“And you have no idea what kind of lizard it was?”
“No, I made Zeke promise he’d take care of him by himself. I never wanted anything to do with the slimy little guy. But I have the receipt for him. And I remember the location in the store that we found him. I’m hoping there will be replacements in the same place.”
“Right. How hard could it be?” He pulled into the parking lot of the mall.
I glanced at the time display on his dashboard before he cut the engine. It was only a few minutes until noon. This was going to be a disaster. “It’s lunchtime.”
“If you’re hungry, we can grab a bite to eat.” When I didn’t respond, he leaned over the center console and grabbed my hand. “It’ll be fine, Violet.”
I didn’t move to get out of the car. I just sat there reveling in the fact that he was holding my hand. It had been years since anyone had held my hand aside from Zeke. It felt…comforting. I realized I was holding my breath and slowly exhaled. “You don’t understand what it’s like. People can be so cruel.”
“I’m a detective. I know perfectly well how cruel people can be. A few catty women are nothing to even worry about. Fuck them.”
I smiled. He was sweet even if he was naïve. “If you knew what they said, you wouldn’t want to be seen with me in public. Maybe I should just run in real quick and…”
“We need a lizard, a winter jacket, and lunch. I’m not waiting in the car. This is going to be fun, Violet. Just try to live in the moment.”
Live in the moment? I could barely live outside my own head. “Right. But not lunch. There’s no way I’m eating out.” I let my hand drop from his as I unbuckled my seatbelt. I ignored the fact that my body suddenly felt cold despite his huge jacket. It was like his touch could warm my whole body. I held the fabric tighter around me as we walked toward the entrance to the mall. And by walked I mean I practically ran. Because I could already feel all the stares. I could hear the whispers. I wanted Detective Reed to be naïve, at least when it came to me, for just a tiny bit longer. He’d be manipulated soon enough. For just one afternoon, I wanted normalcy even if it was overrated. I desperately wanted it.
“I didn’t realize you were a sprinter,” he said as he caught up to me.
I laughed. “I never did any sports. My mom was pretty strict. I didn’t do any after-school programs at all.”
“Did you want to?”
I shrugged as he opened the door for me. The blast of warm air made me sigh. “I don’t know, I never really thought about it because it wasn’t an option.”
He stayed close to me as we walked through the mall. He somehow seemed oblivious to all the people staring at us. “What happened to your parents?” he asked.
“My father died when I was really young. I barely remember him. My mom married Henry less than a year after my dad passed away. I thought it would make her happy again. It didn’t.”
“That must have been hard for both of you to lose your father when he was so young.”
“I think it was harder on me than it was on her.”
“Why was it harder on you?” he asked.
“She suffered from severe depression for as long as I can remember. My father used to be the only one that could make her smile. She wasn’t really present most of the time because she was so doped up on drugs. Almost like she was numb. And when she was lucid, she wasn’t very nice. So the dark days stretched for longer periods after my father died. But she had the meds to numb her. I had to feel the loss every day.”
“I’m sorry, that must have been hard.”
It only got worse. I didn’t want to talk about my family. He was asking me too many personal questions. I pointed to the pet store in the distance. “Almost there.” I started to pick up my pace, but he grabbed my hand to slow me down. When I pulled him to go faster, he stopped moving completely. And then we were just standing in the middle of the mall holding hands. “People are going to talk.”
“If they have nothing better to do, then let them talk.”
“You moved here for a reason. Whatever that reason, if you get mixed up with me it’ll be ruined.”
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He lowered both his eyebrows. “Violet…”
“No, Brendan, stay away from her!” a woman shouted as she scooped up her son before he could get any closer to us. “You’re going to get yourself killed if you run off like that.” She glared at me as she bustled off with her toddler pressed close to her chest.
I had never seen her in my life. But she knew all about me. I could feel my face turning red. There was no explanation needed now. He had just seen firsthand the way people reacted when they saw me. “You don’t understand what it’s like here. It’s not just catty women spreading rumors. They’re…horrible, Tucker. It’s like a virus. I’ve never even seen that woman before.”
He squeezed my hand instead of letting go. “I’m glad we’re on a first name basis again.”
“That’s what you took away from what I just said?” I shook my head. “That’s the whole point…we shouldn’t be on a first name basis. You shouldn’t be talking to me at all. Especially in the middle of the mall during lunchtime.”
“What is it with you and lunch?” He started walking again, keeping my hand in his.
“It’s crowded when…”
“No, I got it the first time you said it. But you’re being ridiculous. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now than here with you. If that makes me part of this town’s gossip, that’s fine. Lunch shouldn’t be a forbidden word in your vocabulary. You have to learn to shake it off. What’s that old saying? Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you?”
I decided it was better to not tell him about that time someone cut my brakes and I almost careened into a tree. Or how my house became one big cracked egg on mischief night every year. Or that my son sometimes came back from school with bruises on the backs of his hands that literally looked like someone had hit him with a stick. And on top of all that? I disagreed. Words did hurt. Horrid rumors that followed you around for six years had a tendency to sting. I wasn’t weak for feeling that pain. I knew what weakness was. I was weak in high school. But now? I was strong because I was still standing in spite of everything I’d been through.
It was easy for someone who had never been ridiculed to say I needed thicker skin. He didn’t understand what it was like to be a pariah. I hoped he never would, despite the fact that he was being condescending. There were a lot of things in my life that were out of my control. But this one thing, I could prevent. I could make it so that he never knew what it felt like to be me. And it was easier to distance myself when I was pissed at him.
“Here we are.” I pulled my hand out of his and walked into the pet store. I kept my arms folded across my chest so that Tucker wouldn’t be able to grab my hand again and headed straight toward the back of the store. The closest aquarium needed my undivided attention.
Tucker cleared his throat. “So your stepfather and mother both passed away too, right?”
I didn’t realize that his only two points of conversation were my parents and how small-town gossip was harmless. But I’d honestly rather talk about them than hear anything else about sticks and stones. “Yeah. The summer after I graduated from high school.” I’d keep my answers short and to the point. I just needed to find the lizard and get out of here.
“That must have been hard too.”
I stood up straight and peered into the top of one of the aquariums. “I was pregnant with Zeke at the time. It was hard to focus on so much all at once. So I chose to be excited for Zeke’s arrival instead of mourning a family who never actually wanted me.”
“I’m sure they wanted you.”
I glared at him. He was putting his own judgment on a situation he knew nothing about again. “You never met them. Trust me, neither of them loved me. I was just a reminder of my dead father for both of them. And that was the way that they treated me.” I looked at the lizards in the next aquarium.
“I’m sorry. Expecting a baby when you were so young must have been hard all by itself. Was his father never in the picture?”
“He made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the baby. So I wanted nothing to do with him.”
“The ex that you have the letters from…Joel. Is he Zeke’s father?”
I could still picture Joel asking me to go to California with him. All the promises he’d made. He hadn’t meant a word of it. He’d never loved me. But sometimes it was easier to lie. If you lied enough, some days it was hard to remember the truth. “Yes. But Zeke doesn’t know anything about his father and I don’t want him to. It’s always just been the two of us and he’s never asked.”
“So Joel knew you were pregnant and he just…left?”
“It’s easiest to see someone’s true colors when things get hard.”
“You’ve kept the letters for all these years, though. Do you still have feelings for him?”
I stopped staring at the lizards. A lot of feelings swirled around when I heard Joel’s name. Mostly ones of regret. But if he was asking if I still loved Joel? If he’d asked me a few days ago when I was standing at the lake, I might have said yes. But I wasn’t so sure anymore. I was trying to fight the feeling, but I knew I liked Tucker too much to be in love with another man. Liking Tucker was the scariest feeling in the world. I didn’t know if I could trust him. I stared into Tucker’s eyes and felt this pull between us, something I wasn’t sure I had ever felt with Joel. If I had ever felt it with him, six years without him had made me forget. Regardless, I knew it wasn’t Joel that I missed. I missed the dream of getting out of this town. I had loved what Joel represented. Freedom.
“No. Honestly, I think I loved the idea of him more than I ever loved him.”
“The idea of him?”
“He always had dreams of leaving this town. I wanted that too.”
“Then why don’t you just leave now?”
Sometimes I dreamed of moving to a big city and disappearing into a crowd. I’d be truly invisible in a city like New York. Most people moved to places like that to be found. But me? I’d blend into the nobodies and the washups.
Leaving wasn’t an option now though. If I left, I wouldn’t be able to guard my secrets. I’d be found out. People stayed out of the woods because they were afraid of me. If they were no longer scared of the woods, they’d find everything I had tried so hard to keep hidden.
“Zeke and I have roots here. I wouldn’t want to just take him out of school.” My excuse was incredibly lame. Tucker knew my son hated school. He knew that Zeke was teased endlessly. And he knew that I hated it here. I was freaking scared to leave my house around lunchtime because I didn’t want to be seen. But I wasn’t going to admit any of that to him. He already thought I was weak.
“Moving is tough. But a fresh start can be a good thing sometimes.”
“Is that why you moved here?" I asked. "For a fresh start?”
“I was born and raised in a small town like this. I never expected to leave. But when my mother passed away, everything I looked at reminded me of her. I needed a change. It was like I couldn’t move forward. I just kept thinking about how we should have tried something other than chemo. That maybe there was something else I could have done to save her.”
I knew what it was like to live with guilt. “Stuck in the past.” That was the story of my life. I moved to the next aquarium. “I’m sorry about your mother. What was she like?” It was only fair that I could interrogate him about his parents too.
“Incredibly strong. She raised me by herself.”
She sounded like the complete opposite of my mother. Especially because it was so clear that Tucker had adored her. “What about your father?”
“Never in the picture.”
“So you can’t even control yourself when you see a single mother? You just have to step in and help them even when they’re doing just fine on their own?”
“I have a lot of respect for single moms. But if you’re asking if I creepily like to date single moms only or something like that? No.” He laughed.
Everything he just
said was loaded. Did that mean he wanted to date me? Hopefully not. For a few minutes there back at his house, I’d had this tiny shred of hope that we could be more. But it was short lived because it was ridiculous. I moved to the last aquarium. “Well I’m sure there are plenty of single moms around town to choose from if that’s your thing. Maybe that woman who yelled at her kid not to come near me was a widow or something. She’s probably right up your alley.”
“Hey.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Did I say something wrong? I feel like we were having a good time just a few minutes ago.”
I ignored the hurt look on his face as I shifted my shoulder so his hand would fall away. “If you haven’t heard yet, I’m crazy. You should start listening to all those rumors that don’t hurt strong people.”
“Whoa.” This time he put one hand on either of my shoulders and turned me to face him. “I never said you weren’t strong.”
“You gotta shake it off, champ,” I said in a deep voice. “Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you.” I rolled my eyes. “It was a great pep talk.”
“I didn’t mean…” his voice trailed off. “I most certainly didn’t call you champ,” he said with a laugh.
I shoved his hands off of me.
“I’m sorry, I was never bullied growing up. I just remembered that old saying and said it. It was stupid. Of course rumors hurt people. Do you have any idea how scared I was when I got that dispatch call that you were attacked? I thought it had escalated to violence. I was terrified because I knew it was a very real possibility that you or Zeke were hurt.”
I could feel tears welling in my eyes. I blinked them away so he wouldn’t see.
“I think you’re incredibly strong, Violet. You’re amazing.” He touched the bottom of my chin to turn so I’d meet his eyes.
I was in trouble. I’d tried pushing him away. I’d tried everything I could think of to save him from me. But he was still standing right there staring at me in that way.
“They don’t have the right lizard,” I said to prevent myself from saying anything stupid.
He glanced at the closest aquarium. “What about that one?” He pointed to one that looked nothing like Lizardopolous.
