Permanent (Indelibly Marked) (Volume 1) (32 page)

“She was a tutor when she was in high school.” Dorothy turned the page.

“Is this Lindsay?” Emily motioned to the picture.

“Of course.” Her mother furrowed her brow.

“Carson.” Emily called him over.

Shane stared at the photo of a girl with non-descript brown hair, thick glasses on an equally thick nose, no makeup, and braces.

“That’s Lindsay?” Carson leaned over the album and Shane turned the page.

“Yes.” Her mother showed them another round of pictures. “This is when we remodeled her room when she became a senior.”

Shane studied the images. Funny, the furniture and wall coverings were what he always pictured Lindsay’s surroundings to look like with dark wood furniture, a four poster bed and a floral bedspread and a big fluffy rug.

“I wish she would have taken the furniture with her, but she said it wouldn’t fit here.” Dorothy leaned over. “I suppose everything in California is too modern.”

Wouldn’t fit was an interesting choice of words. This furniture would have been perfect and saved her a ton of money. Her apartment had no soul.

The three collectively sucked in their breath at the next page.  What stuck out on the picture was not Lindsay, but who was standing next to her. It was a guy not unlike any other guy that he or Carson would have hung out with in high school. In jeans, a t-shirt, and spiked up hair.

“Lindsay told you to get rid of that picture.” Rachel frowned.

“Who’s this?”

“Lindsay tutored him.” Her mother offered. “It was one of those high school things.”

At last her father got up and leaned over the couch. “Not that guy again.” He shook his head. “That one was awful.”

Shane clutched the album tighter and kicked his sister. Something told him he needed to hear this.

“What happened?” On cue, Emily took the album and smiled at Rachel. “He was kind of cute.”

“She always wanted to be with the boys who were ready to go to jail.” Her father grunted. “This one was no better than the rest, used her to help him pass, made her think it was something more and then broke her heart. We should have home-schooled her. She was tortured for years.”

“Simon.” Dorothy raised her voice.

“It’s true.” Simon stood up straight. “It happened over and over again, and every time she thought it was different. Each time she realized she’d been used again, she’d pack any evidence up in a box and hid it away, trying to forget until history repeated itself. No wonder she came running out here.”

A box. Simon’s tirade over his daughter’s whereabouts provided the entire outline of the piecemealed tattoo of Lindsay’s past. Shane shot up off the couch. Everything suddenly fit with the woman he wanted to call his wife, and he needed to look even though he knew the answer.

With his heart pounding, he turned to the Stevens. “I’ll be right back.”

He ran into her bedroom, opened the closet door and yanked out the two boxes, knocking a couple of clothes off the rack. He threw the garments aside and tore the first box open to find the horse trophies he’s seen before. He pushed them away and ripped the second box open and stopped.

The past he always searched for lay in that box, those little pieces of someone that made them unique, different from anyone else. A picture of her parents, one of her and her sister, an old-fashioned adding machine, some awards, the touches Lindsay lacked were personified in a box she hid away.

Part of him ached that she felt she had to hide it away. Did she think he wouldn’t want her? That he would do what the others did? The fact that she felt the need to change in such a drastic way and attempt to hide everything else spoke volumes. All he wanted to do was hug her and tell her buck teeth, brown hair, glasses and all, he wanted her.

Then he flipped the coin over and stared in the box. In Lindsay’s world of new furniture and perfection he was an artist who owned a business. The parts of him she didn’t want to recognize she put into a box and stored away hoping no one would notice. He touched his head. The worst part of it all was that he’d played right into it, thinking he’d done the right thing.

Where was she anyway? He shoved his hand in his pocket and got his phone. They needed to talk. He wouldn’t have a wife who was ashamed of him or of herself. As he dialed, he heard the front door open and returned in time for Dorothy Stevens’ scream. Ivan had entered dressed as a burglar.

*~*~*

The old saying about horrible things happening in slow motion was definitely true. The day couldn’t have taken longer if it was a week.

The two hours Lindsay spent driving around wiping her eyes with Shane’s hidden letters could have been days, and she still wouldn’t be able to justify his actions. But she couldn’t hide any longer, so she went home and opened the door to one of the most terrible scenes she could conjure.

Her family sat with Carson and Emily flipping through her photo album. She left it in Ohio on purpose, yet there it was, like backed up sewage she couldn’t flush away. No doubt they saw everything.

Before that thought sank in she noticed that Carson and Emily looked strange. Emily wore a pink knee-length princess cut dress with her hair pulled back and subdued makeup, and Carson. She tried to swallow. Carson’s hair was cut above his shoulders and combed back, and he was in a shirt and tie. Were they making fun of her? Where was Shane?

She put her hand to her chest and closed her eyes. If Emily and Carson saw the pictures, Shane had as well. He knew everything and he couldn’t even stay to tell her he didn’t need a pathetic bookkeeper as a girlfriend? She pressed her lips together, trying to stay calm when her mother screamed.

“Lindsay Ann Stevens.” She jumped up and put her hands over her mouth.

“What have you done to yourself?” Her father finished her mother’s thought.

She opened her eyes to say something, when she felt a pair of hands on her shoulders. She could only pray Shane was behind her to make things better. That was what he did. He’d have a magical reason why he hid the letters, and the scene in front of her hadn’t really happened.

Then it got worse.

She turned, not to find Shane, but Ivan. Not her Ivan. This Ivan was dressed head to toe in a long overcoat looking like some sort of pervert. “What are you doing?”

“Lindsay!” her father yelled.

The room seemed to move with her and before she addressed her parents she needed to find Shane. Where was he?

“Lindsay?”

The voice. The best voice in the world, the one that comforted her, and she turned wanting to see anything normal. Normal meant a blue-black Mohawk.

It was gone.

Absolutely gone. Vanished into thin air, and in its wake it left a man who held some sort of resemblance to Shane. Through her tears, she saw a man with Shane’s face, but without his signature hair, and in its place a nearly shaved head of black stubble. This man wore a grey suit and matching tie covering all of his tattoos.  What did he do?

“Shane?” She needed to wake up from the dream of an alternative universe where everything she loved had disappeared.

“Lindsay, I demand an answer to what’s going on.” Her father tried again to get her attention, but she kept her eyes on the stranger who answered to Shane’s name as he walked toward her.

“I need to talk to you.”

Time stopped and she went through the motions as if she were in another person’s body. The night at Shane’s parents’ house, he asked to talk to her, but this time his harsh voice resonated through her bones and she had no doubt what came next.

“We’ll be right back.” Shane took her arm and guided her back to her bedroom.

Her gaze darted around and she caught sight of her boxes open and askew. She swallowed tears and prepared for what she knew needed to be done. For once in her life she would not allow herself to be on the receiving end.

“Lindsay.” He put his hand on her shoulder.

At his touch, she snapped. She had to act fast. Get it over with, rip off the bandage and she spun on her heel. “I don’t know what you’re doing or why you did it, but I do know about this.” She summoned her strength, reached into her bag, and threw the letters at him.

“Where did you get those?” He bent down and picked up the envelopes.

“I went to the shop to get some papers.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “You lied to me. How did you expect me to fix this?”

“You lied, too! Why did you hide from me?”

She backed up. “To avoid this.”

“What?” He approached her.

“Shane, let’s just get this over with.” She held her chin up high.

“I don’t care what you were back then. I only care that you felt you had to hide it.”

“You wanted something from me.”

“At the beginning, but you know that’s not true now.”

She looked down at the floor. “This won’t work.”

“I’m not those other guys.”

She turned her face to him. “Yes you are. You just lasted longer.”

“What are you saying?” He crossed his arms.

The tears poured down her face. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m worried all the time. I can’t take it. I want to go home.”

“What?” He stepped toward her.

She turned her back. “I want to go back home, and I don’t want to walk in heels, or dye my hair. I don’t want to watch you with other women. I don’t want to open drawers and wonder what horrors are hidden there, I don’t want to care, and I don’t want you to change because I know what it’s like.”

“Put it in a box.” Shane came up behind her and hit the wall.

She jumped but didn’t say a word.

“You’re right. If you do this, I’m not going to beg you or chase after you with flowers. If you can’t trust me that I had my reasons like you had yours, then put me in a box and forget about me, too. You’ve already tried.” He leaned to meet her eyes.

She braced the wall for support when he came close enough for her to get a whiff of his soap. It hurt too much and she pushed away and with the last strength she possessed she ran toward the one person who never changed. “Daddy?”

“What’s happening?”

“I want to go home.” She ran out of the cheap apartment in Hollywood for the last time.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Rachel reached forward and touched Lindsay’s hair. “It’s so pretty.”

“It’s such a pain to take care of.” Lindsay wiped her eyes on the sheet of the hotel bed.

“You look different.” Rachel sat cross-legged on the bed and tilted her head. “You’re teeth sparkle.”

“I bleached them.”

“I saw that on television.” Her sister leaned forward. “Can you really see without your glasses?”

Lindsay nodded. “The surgery only took a few minutes.”

“Wow.” Rachel lay down next to her. “Mom and Dad are mad you didn’t tell them.”

“I know, but I needed to do it my way.”

“I wish I could.”

“No.” She ran her hand through Rachel’s hair.

“Why did you do it all?”

“I wanted to look different. I thought it would be easier.”

“Was it?”

“No, it was worse. I was always worried.” At least she didn’t have to worry about being found out.

“I thought Shane had a Mohawk.”

“He did.” If she closed her eyes she could see him.

“I thought he did tattoos.”

“He does.” She was pretty sure she was going to throw up again. “Amazing tattoos.”

“I heard the overcoat guy say he only wore it to cover up his tattoos.”

“I don’t know why they did that.” She hated how they looked.

“Don’t you want to be with him?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

“We’re too different. In the end it would have never worked. I’m not really what he wants.” She hugged the pillow, the best she was going to get. “Let’s go to bed.”

*~*~*

“Everyone we rely on leaves us.” Emily stood at the screen door of Shane’s apartment.

“You’re not an orphan.” Carson threw a crumpled paper at her head.

“Are they almost done?” Shane watched the movers take more things out of Lindsay’s apartment.

“She won’t take my calls.” Emily stomped her foot. “She just disappeared, like Dillon.” Her voice cracked. “Maybe they should have been together.”

Shane’s audit was the next day and she hadn’t contacted him once. So that was how it was going to end. This time he wouldn’t go to her.

He spent three days drinking his way through the hours, especially after his mother called telling him his grandmother’s ring was ready to be picked up for Lindsay. If he had come clean with those letters, she would be getting ready for tomorrow as the future Mrs. Elliott.

He pounded his fist into the screen door. She didn’t want him. She couldn’t even tell the truth about him, or have the decency to come through when he needed her. Still, he blinked back his emotion, refusing to admit he cried.

“Ivan has a friend that said he’ll help you tomorrow. I told him to hightail it over here.” Carson called to him.

Another accountant. His stomach lurched and he broke out into a sweat. He couldn’t have anyone else, but he needed someone and he was about ready to accept the offer when Rachel and Mr. Stevens come up the stairs.

He opened the screen and caught her father’s attention, but he walked right by.

Rachel, wide eyed, stopped and pointed. “You do have tattoos.”

“What?” Shane wanted to run over and shake her for any information that would set him free.

“Lindsay told me about them, she said one side had a painter’s palate and the other is made to look like a robot.” Her gaze traveled to his arms.

He held out his arms to her. “When did she tell you this?”

“Oh, all the time.” She leaned closer. “I wanted to see the tattoo shop, my dad did, too.”

“You knew about the tattoo shop?” He motioned for Carson to come over.

Rachel nodded, blushing when Carson waved to her. “Before we came out Lindsay said we could go there.” Her face crinkled. “But, we’re leaving tomorrow to go home.”

He grabbed the doorjamb. If she got on that plane he would never see her again. “Rachel, do you have any messages for me.” He was not above begging a sixteen-year-old.