The Vengeance (9 page)

As a little girl, Addie had been a spitfire. It had been more a defense mechanism though, a way to protect herself against the constant taunting from the cruel children at school, who mocked her for her crazy mother.

The teasing bothered her at first, sending her home as the final bell rang in the school building with a heart full of anger and a face full of tears. She grew as scared and terrified of her mother as everyone else seemed to be, eventually joining in their mocking of
the woman less to fit in and more to feel relief at being able to openly be mad at her.

As the years went on she found herself in high school. Although there weren’t many bullies in her class, the small number had turned their attention to the more important matters of teenagers – the oppos
ite sex. The taunting dwindled and the stares decreased. She still didn’t have any real friends and after how she’d seen children act and turn on each other, she wasn’t sure she wanted any. Being alone in a bubble of quiet was something she much preferred.

The loneliness grew though, leaving another rip in her heart that began joining up with the one her mother had left. She’d gotten so numb to feeling anything – blocking out the anger, the sadness, and the fear – that her body seemed to have built immunity to emotion. It had protected her over the years, keeping out the words and actions of others so that the notions behind these things would not penetrate her soul. Now, as she watched the couples littering the miniscule hallways of the high school, she felt more alone than ever and yearned to feel needed and loved by someone. She wanted that unconditional love.

The choices hadn’t always been grand and she took to accepting any attention doted on her from the boys at school. Good or bad, closeness blended into jealousy or possessiveness and all those emotions made her feel as though she belonged to someone. She had never really belonged to anyone, save Gram, and despite the cruelty behind some of the boys she dated there was a small hope that she was really theirs.

Robert changed all that. He’d come in and rescued her from poor decision after poor decision. He’d made her his friend first, opening her eyes to the possibility that friendship can fill that loneliness she had built into her life. His words and actions surpassed a knight in shining armor
, as he taught her to believe in her worth and have faith in the world.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” Robert said, sitting next to her on the roof of his truck as they wat
ched the sunset on the horizon in one of her most vivid memories.

He’d told her she was pretty a handful of times, but beautiful had never escaped his lips.

“Shut up,” she said, feeling the blush burning the olive skin on her cheeks. “You have to say that.”

“I don’t have to say anything. I
want
to say it.”

The blush burned brighter, her eyes unable to look at him. He made her feel – well, that was it. He made her
feel
. And that was something new to her. She liked feeling anything but hurt.

“You want to go out sometime, Addie?” he asked, gently looking her way as his white t-shirt moved in the breeze and wrapped more tightly to his body. “Like, a date?”

“I thought you don’t date.”

He’d told her he wasn’t going to be dating anyone anytime soon. Why was he changing his mind all of a sudden?

“I don’t. Not until you were ready. I wanted to wait for
you
.”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, his tanned hand sliding over across the hood to scoop hers into it. “Yeah, for you. You said you’d never really had a friend when we first met, so I thought that might be the best way to go at first – give you something you never had. I think we’re pretty good friends now, right?”

“Right.”

“Then, I want to give you something else you’ve never had and that’s the love of a boy who really cares about you. Who knows you inside and out like a book he’s read a thousand times.”

Had he just used the word love, she wondered? She had to be hallucinating.

“Robert…” she whispered, pulling her hand out of his and folding her own fingers together on her lap as her legs gently dangled off the front of the truck.

“Is that a yes?”

“We can’t.”

“What do you mean we can’t?”

“I mean, you’re you. And I’m me. And we can’t.”

“Addie, that makes no sense. I want to. Don’t you want to try?”

“I’m broken, Robert. I’m a broken person and I’m okay with that now. But you are this … this bigger than life person, this good person, and you would be ruined if you dated me.”

“Ruined? That’s a little much.”

“I’m like napalm to reputations, Robert.”

He laughed. She truly was a drama queen.

“I like napalm. Especially cute napalm.”

“Robert! It’s true! I mean, look around here. Everyone in town would talk. You’d be labeled in the same class as the losers I’ve dated, branded for life as the same. People would crucify you.”

“I don’t care what people think.”

“Yes you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“Well I do. It’s bad enough I’m such a let
-down. I am not taking someone decent down with me.”

She lay back on the hood of the truck, tucking her hands behind her head. The boy was crazy, she thought.

“Addie, sometimes, it’s not your choice. Life, it just happens. It’s not our choice who we fall in love with; it just happens.”

“What did you say?”

“I said it’s not always your choice.”

“After that.”

“I said I love you. You know I do. There’s no way you couldn’t know. I’ve said it to you a thousand times.”

“As a friend.”

“We’ve always been more than friends Addie,” he whispered, placing his hand in between hers instead of pulling hers away into his, giving her the control she needed over the situation. “I’ve just been waiting for you to be ready, taking everything slow.”

“You don’t love me. And I can’t love you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

The question caught her off guard. She didn’t know which was the correct clarification.

“Can’t. We’re too young.”

“You’re honestly going to say that Addie? All you’ve been searching for is someone to love you. It’s all we talk about! Well, all
you
talk about and I listen to. How this guy broke your heart and that guy was a cheater. Now you’ve got someone real right in front of you. Someone who wants to love you the way you want to be loved. Someone who already does love you like that. I’m here and I’ve been here and I am never going to walk away from you. Even if you can tell me without hesitation that you don’t love me, I will still be standing next to you tomorrow as your friend, waiting for the day you might change your mind.”

“Robert!”

“Don’t think about it. Don’t say anything. I don’t expect you to just be in love with me. I want to be here with you, in this moment. In tomorrow’s moments. That’s all. No pressure. We’ll go as slow as you want. I can just hold your hand for a year if that’s what you need.” He smiled at her and she finally looked back at him. “You’re worth the wait, Addie Jenko.”

She smiled, the tears stinging her eyes as she fought to keep them from breaking the dam and flowing. She wanted to tell him she loved him too, but she already knew he knew it somehow.

As the sun set on the horizon, Addie finally found what she had been searching for as long as she could remember: a real home. And she found it in him.

Addie lay on the couch with Rose intertwined in her arms, sound asleep. She’d been trying to recoup the rest, energy, and strength she had lost the night before. As she went over the images in her head: the intense heat from the fire, the sound of tears as the town wept in unison, the smell of smoke still – and perhaps, permanently – etched into her clothing, she realized her thoughts kept going back to AJ.

She didn’t really know him. But damn if her heart didn’t feel like it completely did.

The unknown was the worst. She could deal with forgetting things, she figured. The thought of people lying to her, covering things up – those were the unsettling thoughts which bothered her. She was anxious and wanted to shift, but held her spot so as to not wake the sleeping little girl beside her.

Who was he to keep the truth from her? And Gram was the worst – Gram refused to talk at all. Not one peep. Addie would ask and Gram would walk away from the conversation, a stoic look upon her face. It’s not like she could ask the vast expanse of friends she had in town. There weren’t even rumors that she caught whispers of – just dead silence. And for a town like Lee, the silence in and of itself spoke volumes.

“This is worse than the constant words being hurled at me in middle school,” she thought out loud.

She ran her fingers through Rose’s hair over and over again, as she did when she was nervous. The familiarity of the movement became calming to her over the years. She felt the connection with her beautiful child, a perfect mixture of Addie and Robert with an innocence and sweetness all her own. She’d finally found unconditional love even though it hadn’t been the way she’d thought. She hadn’t even considered a child’s
unconditional devotion back when love was her main priority. Her entire focus had been on finding Prince Charming but as always, she thought, her prayers were answered in a different and better way.

R
ose shifted, arms and legs moving and readjusting, the same way she had done since she was a baby. The little girl could always take up ninety percent of the queen bed, even back at a foot and a half tall. Her leg draped over Addie’s and Addie looked closely at it.

That scar! What on earth had made that scar, she wondered?

It was huge – definitely well over six inches. She traced her trembling fingers over the raised, pink skin on Rose’s leg. She didn’t recall Rose ever experiencing anything that would make a scar that large. She would certainly remember that, right? She tried to convince herself of it though the belief was fleeting.

Her somnolent mind went into overdrive, searching through memory after memory, behind thoughts she had long tucked into the back of her psyche. It was all there, right up until the accident. Or whatever the hell had happened that no one was telling her the truth about. Did the scar come after?

She immediately dumped the thought, knowing full well that a scar that large would not have healed in three months’ time to the extent it had. It would still be purple and new looking and this appeared as though it were years old.

Rose stirred at her mother’s touch, the thin slits of her eyes opening wider to take in Addie’s face.  A delicate smile
ascended on Rose’s lips and she tucked her hand under her cheek like a pillow.

“Hi Mommy,” she whispered, her eyes lighting up even brighter than her smile.

“Hi baby,” Addie responded, dropping a kiss onto Rose’s forehead. She loved kissing the spot right between Rose’s eyebrows as it was so soft. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

“I bet. It’s been a long couple days. Or months.”

“Can I watch cartoons?”

Addie laughed. Leave it to the innocence of the young to let go of the bad things – like last night – and move right onto what makes them happy. It was a lesson she wished she herself could put into action.

“Sure,” Addie smiled.

She adjusted Rose off of her body and let her re-settle on the couch. Despite the warmth in the air, Addie tucked a light blanket over the little girl and patted her legs, the image of the scar popping back into her mind after the momentary lapse in memory.

“Rose?”
She couldn’t stop herself from asking the question. “Can I ask you something?”

“Okay.”

Addie slipped the blanket down a little to reveal Rose’s legs. “Do you remember how you got this?” Addie traced the scar again with her finger, top to bottom, and Rose sat up a little to look.

Her little face studied it before turning to Addie, her head crooked to the side.

“Do you remember?”

“I’m not sure, sweetie. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“But I’m asking
you
,” Rose replied.

Realizing she was only going to get more questions from the girl who obviously didn’t remember, Addie sighed and saved the conversation for another day. Rose’s stubbornness was a spitting image of Addie. Rose’s tiny eyebrows dipped in deep thought before she had yet another question for her mom.

“Mommy, do you remember what happened to make you lose your memory?”

“Gram says we fell, you and I. A perfect pair of klutzes,” Addie said lightly, tickling Rose on her sides.

The little girl squealed in delight, reveling in the closeness of her and her mother. Addie had always been determined to make sure they had a good, safe relationship after all she’d gone through with her own mom.

“We bumped our heads I guess
and so here we are! A duo of forgetfulness!”

“Did you get a bump or a scar? Like the one on my leg?”

Addie reached for the back of her head. She hadn’t thought about it but Rose was right. If the accident had been only days ago, there would definitely be remnants like a bruise, a headache, a cut. Nothing – not one centimeter of her own skull felt sore or out of place. She tilted Rose’s head, scouring every inch of her little skull for evidence of a fall.

“This doesn’t make sense…” she whispered. What the hell had happened to them?

“Do you think you’ll ever remember? Do you want to know the stuff you think you’re forgetting?”

“Oh sweetie, let me worry about that stuff,” she said, wrapping Rose in a big bear hug. “Let’s watch some cartoons. What do you want to watch?”

“Cartoons!”

“Cartoons it is,” Addie laughed.

As she rose to pick up the remote off the television top, she caught sight out the window of the fields surrounding the house. Blackened, charred, and barely any life left in them. Their remains almost seemed to be a reminder of the wickedness that had plagued the town that year. It was going to be a buttered noodles type of year, she sighed. They’d made it through worse and they would be able to do this, she reassured herself.

Tucked in together on the couch, Rose’s head in Addie’s lap, Addie began to wonder what might have happened to them as she stroked her little one’s hair.

Maybe, she thought, she had finally gone crazy like her mother.  Maybe the genes were taking hold and now they were going to start showing. It wouldn’t be long then before she needed to go and get away from her daughter to spare her from the pain. That scenario is viable, she thought, considering everyone is so tight lipped and a man she had given her most precious possession to no longer wanted to talk to her in the same manner they apparently used to.

She looked down at Rose. How long would it be, she wondered, until the hallucinations and anger set in and she was forced into some institution? Would the kids at school tease Rose relentlessly? Or would they do worse because now Rose descended from a long line of unstable family members? She shuddered at the thought.

Then a fleeting idea flashed through her mind – had her own mother been trying to spare her?

It was like a voice whispered the idea in her ear. She’d never considered that possibility before
, until that very moment while staring at her own flesh and blood. The child she would do anything for and give anything to protect.

Maybe, just maybe, her mom had felt the same way about her and went away in an attempt to shield her.