Touched (10 page)
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wo days later, we had the funeral in a small Brooklyn cemetery.
wo days later, we had the funeral in a small Brooklyn cemetery.
A rare bit of April heat baked the white roses on my mother’s grave, browning the edges of the drooping petals. The pastor said one last prayer, and the ceremony ended. Two men in overalls waited respectfully for the mourners—Ben and me—to leave so they could fill in the grave with the dirt hidden beneath a strip of Astroturf.
Dean had not come to the funeral, and I had no way of knowing if someone had told him about my mother’s death. It was left to Ben to shake hands with the pastor. Then he shepherded me into our rental car for the ride to my old apartment. We planned to catch the last flight out to Portland, and I sensed his desperate desire to return home. He’d been tense these last few days. He waited for me to break down, and I think he hoped for it.
He got behind the steering wheel and didn’t start the car right away. After a full minute, he said, “It’s okay to cry, Remy. She was your mother.”
As if I didn’t know. As if I didn’t feel the grief smothering me. “I’m fine.”
He seemed ready to argue, and I urged, “Please, let’s go. We have a lot to do before our flight.”
With a sigh of resignation, he started the car. Apparently, Dean had skipped out of town. Since rent hadn’t been paid on the apartment I’d shared with Dean and Anna, Ben had made arrangements with the manager to pack up the contents for storage.
We used my key to enter our fourth-floor walk-up apartment. Ben crossed the threshold on my heels and told me to stay near the entry while he checked every room to ensure we were alone. I ignored the tug on my heart at his protectiveness as he paced through the windowless rooms. Eventually, Ben went to meet the movers outside, leaving with a grimace when sirens echoed off the thin walls. Violence wasn’t uncommon in our neighborhood, and Dean hadn’t always been the most dangerous person in the vicinity—just the most dangerous between these walls.
Alone, I stood in the living room and turned a full circle, taking in my surroundings. The place was worse than I’d remembered with its shoddy, threadbare furnishings and stale air. The cheap wood coffee table featured water stains and black scuff marks from Dean’s boots resting on it. The once white walls were a sickly yellow from the nicotine that swirled in the air from his cigarettes. A flat screen TV, Dean’s prized possession, sat in a cheap entertainment case—bought with my father’s child support checks. Nothing of me or Anna lived in this room, except the faint whisper of blood and tears. It had been Dean’s domain, and there was nothing here that I wanted.
I moved to the kitchen doorway, expecting to see Anna huddling at the round dining table where she often sat alone, in between waiting on Dean and doing her crossword puzzles. It smelled of leftover Chinese takeout—very few meals had been cooked here. Mostly this room had been Anna’s refuge. One of her crossword puzzle books was lying facedown on the worn plastic tablecloth as if waiting for her to finish it. I picked up the book and hugged it to my chest as I roamed looking for a journal.
I headed down the hallway to her bedroom. I hadn’t been in this room since we’d moved here, and I felt like I was trespassing as I searched the drawers and closet without any luck.
My last destination was my bedroom. There wasn’t much in the way of comfort in the sparse prison of a room with its twin bed, used dresser, and makeshift desk forged from plywood and concrete blocks.
The few things I wanted to keep went into a duffel Ben had given me. Most of my clothes and personal things had already been sent to Blackwell Falls by Anna. Little of me remained. On top of the pile went the iPod Anna had surprised me with on my birthday a few months before. We didn’t have a computer, and I’d wondered at the extravagant gift I had no way to use. I’d never taken it out of the box, but it seemed Anna had used it since I’d moved to Blackwell Falls. If Dean had known about the iPod, he would have tried to sell it. Last into the bag went her crossword puzzle book and a picture of a younger, more carefree Anna taken pre-Dean. Next, I checked the bed where I’d hidden some money under my mattress. This was gone, as I’d expected. Dean would have found the cash right away.
Noise sounded from the living room when Ben returned with the movers, and I went to meet him, duffel bag in hand. It took very little time for the movers to load up the contents of the apartment. Soon the rooms stood bare as if they’d never been inhabited, as if the walls hadn’t witnessed our pain. All traces of Anna and the girl I’d been were erased.
Ben followed the movers out to return the apartment key to the manager. Only the kitchen chairs and the furniture in the living room remained, and the movers would take care of those items in short order. As I did one last walk through the empty, still rooms, my steps sounded an eerie echo. One last thing waited to be retrieved, and history had taught me to keep its hiding place a secret. Old habits were hard to break.
In my bedroom, I moved to the bare closet and felt along the wall until I discovered the small hole I’d made at the very bottom of the drywall. It would have been impossible to find if you hadn’t known it existed, if you hadn’t been locked inside the small space on more than one occasion. Reaching into the hole, I rescued the small nest egg I’d saved working at the video store. This money had been my hope for a new start.
I counted it. Fifteen hundred, ninety-eight dollars. I wouldn’t have gotten very far.
“So that’s where you hid it.”
Dean lounged against the doorjamb, inspecting me with his pale eyes while he flicked a lighter open and closed.
He nodded to the money I crushed in my hand. “I knew the forty under your mattress wasn’t all you’d stashed.”
His large body straightened, and he took a step forward, his blond curls askew. False sympathy resonated in a voice that sounded rougher than I remembered—as if a hand had wrapped around his throat to choke him. I’d done that to him. “I’m sorry about your mom. I was on a job in Springfield when I heard. Just got back today.”
So that was his story. There would be people who would corroborate, too, if the police asked questions. He almost sounded sincere, and I had to give him credit. Dean was stupid, but he had a rat’s instinct for survival.
My situation was precarious. I was alone in the apartment with my stepfather, and he had me cornered in the bedroom. I didn’t know how long Ben had been gone, or when he would return. What if he’d already returned and Dean had hurt him? My gut clenched.
Oh, God, please no.
Oh, God, please no.
Dean read my thoughts with his uncanny ability to sniff out fear. He sneered as he flicked the lighter to life again in a threat he knew had terrified me since he’d first burned me with his lit cigarette. “It was real nice of you and your daddy to pack up my things. I slashed the tires on your daddy’s rental car to return the favor. It’ll be a while before he comes looking for you, princess.”
A surge of relief flooded through me to know Ben was safe, followed by a tidal wave of panic. I would have to save myself.
Dean took another step and said, “What’s the matter, Remy? Cat got your tongue?”
Rather than cringe as he expected, I moved toward him with confidence. Showing fear to Dean was inviting death, so my smile exuded calm. His advance halted, and he appeared wary for the first time. Was he recalling the pain I’d caused him the last night I lived here?
In a conversational tone, I advised, “Remember what happened the last time you touched me? Two broken ribs, right?”
One lip curled in a snarl, but he stopped advancing.
He didn’t know I couldn’t hurt him without an injured Anna nearby to transfer wounds from. I would have to run for the door as soon as I could and hope he didn’t find out. “Do you know I’ve gotten even better at it? I’ve been practicing in case we met up again. Where is my mother’s journal, Dean?”
My head spun with dizzy relief when he retreated from the bedroom, and I stalked him through the dark hallway. In the living room, he regained his composure and smirked. “She didn’t tell you? I learned a few things from it. Like how you’re powerless if you can’t touch me.”
Shock and sorrow blasted me. Anna had betrayed me once more by telling him the one thing that could have saved my life. The journal was gone. He had to have it because, while it was possible he’d figured how my abilities worked, it wasn’t probable. Hopelessness overwhelmed me.
Dean flexed his arm, and I knew he was finished talking.
He cracked his knuckles, and I forced steel into my backbone. I would not be easy prey. He wouldn’t walk away from this fight uninjured. Balancing on the balls of my feet, I waited for his next move.
It didn’t take long.
He rushed me like a linebacker, and I waited until the last possible moment to sidestep him. His body moved past me, stumbled into the wall, and crumpled, sprawling on the floor. His momentary confusion allowed me to make a run for the front door.
My retreat wasn’t fast enough. One of his hands closed around my ankle and he yanked my foot out from under me with a vicious twist. I tripped and threw out my hands to break my fall, unable to stop my face from colliding with the edge of the coffee table. My lip split open, and my shoulder tore as I slammed to the floor on my left side.
Before I could register the pain, Dean dragged my body across the carpet toward him. I rolled over, ignoring the jolt in my shoulder. His face was mottled red with fury, and his blue eyes lit with malice. I used my free foot to kick him in the face as hard as I could. Blood spurted from his nose and I hoped I’d broken it as I stunned him into loosening his hold.
Scrambling onto all fours, I scuttled away. Gaining my feet, I ran the few feet to the door. Panicked, I heard him rise and felt the change in the air as he rushed me. The doorknob twisted in my sweaty hand and opened two inches—my freedom so close—when his flat palm slammed it shut again. My forehead dropped against the hollow wood as he locked the door and crowded me against it. Hot breath fanned my neck, smelling of the beer and stale cigarettes from my nightmares.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled back my right elbow and shoved it in his gut as hard as I could.
Doubling over, he grunted, and I twisted away, running for my bedroom. Maybe I could lock myself in until help came. Until Ben could come for me.
I’d gone a few short feet when Dean gave me a brutal shove. My body flew over the couch and slammed into the entryway table. A new explosion of pain rippled from my hip to my back as I collided with the large mirror that hung on the wall, and it crashed down on me, shattering into tiny shards that sliced my arms and back. Stunned, I slid off the table and crumpled to the floor.
Dean stood over me and shoved me on my back with his foot. I was too weak to run, and the triumph flaring in his eyes said he knew he’d won. He would kick me, and it would be over then. I wouldn’t be able to fight.
Energy gathered in me like a snake coiling to strike. He drew his foot back.
The front door shook as someone battered it.
Dean glanced away for one brief moment, and I had my chance. I grabbed his leg and let the current sizzle through me to him in a violent lash of red electricity. My pain barreled into him before he could react. He grabbed one shoulder as it dislocated and his lip split, the blood mingling with that from his broken nose. New blood appeared in a dozen tiny cuts on his arms as he shrieked and collapsed on the floor, moaning. I rolled to my side, grabbed a larger piece of broken glass, and held it over his throat. His eyes locked on mine in terror, and I experienced a rush of primal satisfaction.
There was a
crack
of wood splintering, and the door fell off its hinges as Ben kicked it in.
crack
of wood splintering, and the door fell off its hinges as Ben kicked it in.
My father rushed into the room and froze in shock. A male police officer filled the doorway behind him and moved to stand over Dean with a gun while Ben knelt at my side.
“Drop the glass, miss. You’re safe now,” the officer said, in a calm voice.
I did as he asked, and Ben lifted me from the floor without hesitation. He carried me to the kitchen like a child and sat in one of the hard-backed chairs with me cradled in his lap. His tight grasp hurt my shoulder, but I didn’t protest. Whatever he saw in my face, my father started crying. I wondered if he’d hurt himself breaking down the door. Under the guise of reassuring him, I patted his cheek to scan for possible injuries. “It’s okay, Ben. I’m safe.”
He was healthy, unharmed, aside from the uneven beat of his heart, which could only mean he cried for me. “I’m safe now,” I repeated.
When a female officer walked into the kitchen, Ben’s expression turned fierce and he said, “You better believe we’re pressing charges.”
Ben refused to leave my side at the hospital, even to talk to the police.
He told the two officers what he knew about my situation, including why I’d come to live with him and what he suspected about Anna’s death. He didn’t have to tell them about this latest confrontation since Officer Gonzalez had walked in on the scene with him. It turned out someone had seen Dean slashing the tires on Ben’s rental car while we’d been busy packing and had called the police. They’d come to investigate some hours later while my father was returning the key to the manager, and that was when he realized I might be in danger.
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