The Coincidence 03 The Destiny of Violet and Luke ARC (30 page)

I drive past the police station on my way back to the apartment, just to make sure she’s not waiting there and she’s not. I should be feeling good. I doubled my money. Everything should be great, yet I feel like shit. I can’t stop thinking about how surprised Violet looked when I gave her my number and wondering how she felt when I didn’t answer her call.

When I get back to the apartment, Seth’s sitting on the leather sofa with his feet kicked up on the table, blankets piled to the side of him as he watches a sitcom on the television. Greyson is lounging on the floor with his head resting on a throw pillow surrounded by the many boxes that still need to be unpacked. Violet’s standing in the kitchen pouring a glass of juice. She doesn’t look up at me as she puts the juice back in the fridge, grabs the glass, and heads for our room.

I step over Greyson and cut her off as she reaches the hallway, racking my brain for the best thing to say. “Hey.”

She puts the rim of the glass to her mouth. “Hey.” She guzzles a mouthful, avoiding looking at me.

I crack my muscles, nervous for reasons I barely understand and don’t like. “I’m sorry I completely forgot not to turn off my phone. When I go to games, I do that… and I wasn’t thinking.”

She stares at me with that detached look in her eyes, the one that I was first a little envious of, but now I just want to make it go away. I want to put a different look in her eyes, like the one that was there right after I kissed her. I want to make her look alive again.

She lowers the glass from her mouth. “It’s fine.” She starts to step past me and I brace my hand on the door frame, barricading her path.

“No, it’s not. I told you I would pick you up and I should have picked you up,” I say. “How did you even get home?”

She shrugs. “I walked.”

“But it’s hotter than hell.”

“It’s just a little heat. And I made it, so you can stop feeling bad.”

“Violet, I’m really sorry.” I sound so pitiful, but I don’t care. What I care about is fixing this—fixing us. And that realization is both liberating and fucking terrifying.

“I promise it’s okay.” She gives me a fake, plastered on smile, then ducks underneath my arm and goes into the room, shutting the door.

“What was that about?” Seth asks as he aims the remote at the television.

I shake my head and go to the fridge to get a beer. “I fucked up.”

He grins cleverly. “Aren’t you always doing that?” he asks and Greyson snorts a laugh.

I pop the cap off the beer and roll my eyes. “Ha, ha, you two are fucking hilarious.” I go over and drop down on the recliner, kicking my boots off. “And why are you even laying around? The apartment’s a mess.”

“We were waiting around for you to come clean it up,” Seth says and Greyson laughs even harder. “Our own personal maid.”

“Well, that’s nice of you,” I say. “Use my weakness of liking things organized against me.”

Seth puts the remote on the arm of the chair and leaves the channel on the news. “Hey, you don’t have to clean. You could leave it messy.”

I look around at the boxes and balled up newspaper everywhere and shift my shoulders at the discomfort it brings me. “I’ll start taking care of it tonight.”

They both laugh at me and then we settle into this quiet rhythm, watching the news while guzzling beer. Seth eventually gets up and digs around in the cupboards for food, finally coming back with a brownie. He chomps on it as I watch the newscasters talk about every bad thing within a hundred-mile radius. I’m barely paying attention, thinking about how I should just go into the room and apologize to Violet again, make things right.

My mind begins to flood with ways to make it up to her, when suddenly I hear the reporter on the television say the name, “Hayes.” I snap back to reality for a moment and pay attention to the screen. The reporter quickly rattles off about the Cheyenne murder case being reopened after thirteen years and that if anyone has any question to call this number. The room gets really silent as I stare at the screen, even when it goes to a commercial. I only look away when Greyson gets up and stretches.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” he announces and then leaves the room.

Seth gets up off the sofa. “I’m going to go have a smoke,” he says to me. “You want to come out with me?”

I shake my head and his face contorts with confusion, because I rarely turn down a smoke break. “Okay,” he says, his eyebrows raised as he leaves me and goes out onto the balcony.

I wonder why none of them are reacting like I am, but then again neither of them know the stuff I do about Violet. They might not even know her last name, since she was so reluctant to hand it over to me.

Jesus. What do I do? I mean, maybe it’s not related to her, but she did just go down to the police station today and she grew up in foster homes, but wouldn’t tell me what really happened to her parents. But other than that I don’t know much about her, which seems so wrong at the moment, especially if she’s carrying that inside her, all that death. Death is so heavy. I know this.

God, she must be hurting.
I get up and go to the bedroom door. It’s locked, so I knock. It takes several more knocks before she opens the door with a look on her face that rams me in the chest. She’s not crying or frowning or upset. She just looks like she’s drowning in a lack of emotions. There’s a small television perched on the desk in the corner and the same news channel I was just watching is on the screen.

She takes one look at my face and says, “Don’t ask me.” Then she steps back from the door and flops down on the bed on her back. Desperation filters through her voice. “Please just don’t ask me anything about it.”

How the hell am I not supposed to ask her? Her parents were murdered? There’s so many questions. I want to understand her life, her, and worst of all I just want to hold her and tell her it’ll be okay, like I wish someone would have done for me after Amy died. But that’s what I wanted and I have no clue if that’s what she wants. The only thing I know is that she asked me not to ask her anything and if that’s what she wants I’ll give it to her.

“I’m going to go get something to eat,” I tell her, gripping onto the door frame as I smother the urge to bombard her with questions. “Do you want to come with me?”

She shakes her head as she gazes up at the ceiling; her arms flopped to the side. “No thanks.”

“Do you want me to pick you something up?”

“If you want.”

“Okay, I’ll bring you something back,” I say, letting go of the door frame. “Or if you want I can just stick around and hang out.”

“I want to be alone,” she whispers. “Please just go. I need to be alone right now.” She reaches for a purple teddy bear on the bed, hugging it as she rolls over. It takes a lot of strength not to lie down in bed and wrap my arms around her, but I don’t because she asked me not to.

Chapter 13

Violet

Today is turning into the shittiest day of all days in the shitty history that makes up my life. It was going fine. I got up for the twelfth morning in a row at my new apartment in my new bed and for the first time I wasn’t disoriented. Good start. Then I read a book, which was relaxing, and I didn’t think about my parents or their death the entire time. As an added bonus, I hadn’t seen Luke all morning. I’ve been avoiding him ever since he found out about my parents because I don’t want him looking at me with pity in his eyes. I don’t want him asking questions. I don’t want him learning all the details, like how I found my parents. At least the news kept that much quiet.

I’ve been focusing on moving forward and getting myself back to the place I was before all this happened, before the case was reopened, before Luke came along and it wasn’t just me in my life anymore. I need to get my head back to where it was before, become the independent unaffected Violet again.

He hasn’t even moved into our room yet, probably because I scared him off. He did stack some boxes in the closet but I think he keeps his clothes in a duffel bag in the living room. He hasn’t said anything about it either and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I keep telling myself that it’s a good thing—that space is a good thing—but I find myself questioning my true feelings.

After I spend most of the afternoon reading, I go to work and it isn’t that crowded because it’s raining and for some reason rain keeps the crowd away. Everything is simple. Until everyone suddenly decides they’re going to take their chances out in the rain. Then things get a little chaotic and I’m running around seating everyone and waiting on them the best that I can. The doorbell keeps dinging as more people file in, tracking water and mud in with them. There’s this one guy who comes in by himself, which sometimes happens—random people wander in and eat alone. He’s wearing a red T-shirt, tan pants, and has a creeper mustache, but, hey, to each their own.

“You want to sit at the bar?” I ask, hopeful, otherwise he’s going to take up an entire table.

He shakes his head, closing his umbrella and brushing the water off his arm. “I’ll take a booth.”

I mentally roll my eyes at him, seat him in a corner booth, then leave him to read over the menu while I go behind the counter to get him some water. Then I hurry and tend to the register, before I head over to his table, hoping he’s ready to order and not ready to waste my time.

“You’re Violet Hayes, right?” he says as I press the tip of the pen to the order book and suddenly I recognize his voice. I glance up from the order book as he says, “The Violet Hayes whose parents were murdered in Cheyenne thirteen years ago?”

A suffocating wave rushes through me and I clutch at the pen in my hand. “Are you the asshole who’s been calling me?”

He notices my trembling hands. “I am.” This stupid grin stretches across his face as he reaches for the water.

Fury thunders through me, along with the stifling heat of panic. My hand takes on a life of its own and I throw my pen at him.

It hits him in the face and he flinches, dropping his water on the table and spilling ice everywhere. “What the hell?” He gapes up at me like I was the crazy one, and then raises his hands in front of him. “Okay, calm down. My name’s Stan Walice. I’m a reporter for Chanel 8
News at 8
and I’d liked to ask you a few questions about what you saw that night. I’m doing a piece about it.”

“You can go to hell. Calling me up like some kind of psycho. Seriously. You think I’m going to talk to you?” I toss the order book at him and it lands in the water and ice and the pages are instantly soaked. I spin on my heels and weave around the tables, with people sitting around them, some staring at me. In ten seconds I’ve managed to go from stressed waitress, to about-to-lose-her-shit Violet. I can feel the anger in the center of my chest, a widening hole, being torn open more.

Stan follows me as I storm to the counter. “So you saw them that night?” he asks. “The ones who broke into your house?”

I don’t answer, begging myself to remain calm. That I have to. That there is a restaurant full of people, enjoying their dinners and family time and I’ll be in some serious trouble if I make a scene.

“Did you find them?” he asks. “Your parents? I thought I read somewhere that you did? And that you stayed in the house for twenty-four hours before you called the cops. Why did you do that?”

I slam to a halt at the counter in front of the register where Sherry, a middle-aged waitress with a gray bob is tallying up bills. I turn around. “Go fuck yourself, Stan.”

At the exact moment I say it, my boss and owner of the restaurant, Benny, walks out. “Violet,” Benny hisses, glancing around at the tables and booths. His face reddens as his voice lowers. “Go in the back right
now
.”

Things kind of escalate from there. Reporter guy takes off out the front door, bailing on what he started. I trudge into the back kitchen area and Benny enters seconds later. He’s also the cook and wears this stained white apron that ties around his round belly. I can’t stop staring at the stains as he stands in front of the oven and chews me out. The stains are red, probably ketchup, but they look like blood. Blood. Death. Blood. I start to visualize things, not just about my parents, but about me. My death. How it’s going to happen. Horrible. Tragic. I picture myself on the floor, dying with my parents. For a second, I feel okay.

“Violet, I think I’m going to have to fire you,” Benny says and all I do is stare at his bald head, shiny in the fluorescent light.

I probably would have just let him fire me but then Greyson walks in. He’s wearing his bartending outfit, a white shirt and black pants, and has a glass in his hand. “Hey, Benny, cut her some slack. She’s having a bad day.”

“I don’t give a damn if she’s having a bad day,” he replies, lifting a lid off a stainless-steel pot. “She dropped the f-bomb in my restaurant. There’s kids out there for crying out loud.”

“Yeah, but the guy grabbed her ass,” Greyson lies, glancing at me quickly. “You have to cut her some slack. That’s sexual harassment.”

Benny peers up from the pot as he reaches over to grab a large spoon from the stainless-steel shelf. “Is that true Violet?”

I shrug, knowing I should put more effort into this, but there is too much heaviness in my chest to care. All I seem to care about is the damn red stains on his apron. “I guess so.”