Taut: The Ford Book (Rook and Ronin Spinoff 2)

The angel of ADD

Kills the baby inside of me

The angel of ADD

Blames the baby inside of me

I sail, I sail, I sail into the dark

You’re not listening

And that kills me

You’re not listening

My mind is sailing inside of me

I sail, I sail, I sail into the dark

The angel of death breeds

A sickness inside of me

The angel of death breeds

Killing the baby inside of me

I sail, I sail, I sail into the dark

It’s a poem. A dark one, for sure. But it’s a f**king poem. It’s not a suicide note. And she says that she takes words from songs she likes and creates new poems out of the same words. I go in the office and start up the computer. It’s not anything special, just your run-of-the-mill home setup. But it’s got internet and that’s all I need. I put the first line in the search bar and press enter.

Nothing. I add the refrain, since it’s repeated three times and it makes the poem look more like lyrics.

Bingo. A song called Sail by AWOLNATION.

It’s not even a dark song, it’s kinda techno and catchy. The video is actually quite stupid. Some shit about aliens. But Ashleigh’s arrangement of the words is disturbing when taken out of the context of where they came from. I can see why her family was upset.

I grab the box and open it up, looking for the journal she said she left behind when we left. It’s under a bunch of clothes, smells a little bit like dirty socks, and is bulging at the seams. Three thick rubber bands hold it together and prevent all the loose papers from escaping. I remove the rubber bands and it spills open as soon as the tension is released. Two passports fall out. I open the first one. Katelynn Li. She’s got just one stamp. USA. She entered the country on Christmas Eve. It’s even got a little baby picture of her.

I smile. God, I miss her already.

I put that aside and open Ashleigh’s. Her book is almost full, only a few pages left. She’s been everywhere. Most of them say USA and Japan, but she’s got a lot of Hong Kong and she looks totally different. The date of issue says 2006 and she’s got a punk haircut. Those bangs that drive her crazy now are short and dyed a hot pink. She’s got some black eye makeup on, and from the look of her pupils, she might be high. She’s wearing something revealing on top, I can’t see much of her clothes, but that’s because the shirt is cut very low. Sixteen-year-old Wild Ash is sexy as all f**king hell, but I’d spank her ass hard if she went out in public like this in front of me.

There are pictures too. All of Tony and Ashleigh. He’s a big guy and in every one he’s looking down at her tiny body like he won the Powerball.

He loved her. I have to concede that, he must’ve loved her. She’s right. She had love, she knows what it feels like and there’s no f**king way she’d settle for my pathetic bullshit as a second-hand substitute.

My phone buzzes and I quickly take it out and check the call hoping it’s Ash.

Jason. Fucking pest.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Ford! Fuck, dude! I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day! Some people were here looking for you and that girl you left with. I didn’t know it was a big deal, I swear. I told them you had a place in LA, man. I’m f**king sorry. Did they come to your house?”

I sigh loudly. “Yes, they did.”

He babbles on and on for a few minutes, explaining how he entered the VIN number into his computer and it downloaded as a Carfax database report.

Bam. Her father was on that shit quick.

I hang up with Jason after promising I’d come back and see them when things settled down.

Right.

My phone buzzes again. Pam. “Yes?”

“They’ll start looking elsewhere if you don’t show up today, Mr. Aston. Breach of contract.”

I almost snort thinking of me threatening Rook with the same thing last year when we did the STURGIS contract. She’d get a kick out of this, I’m sure. “Thanks, Pam. I’ll be in after lunch today.”

I go back to the journal and open it to the first page. It’s called My Worry Book.

I read that journal from front to back. It’s a series of letters to Tony and God, alternating, one after the other most of the time. The letters to Tony tell him how scared she is that he’ll die on duty. Things she’d never tell him to his face because this was his dream and she wanted to support him.

The notes to God are nothing but begging. Begging God to spare her lover’s life in any number of ways. Please don’t let him be shot. Please don’t let him be captured. Please don’t let him get blown up.

God was not listening, because Tony did get blown up. Into so many pieces nothing came home to be buried.

I read her fears and it breaks my heart that this is how she lived for three years. In between the journal entries to Tony and God are the poems. All sad poems. The Sail poem is there too, and it says flat out that it’s about death. It’s about Death taking her Tony and ripping away her innocence. It’s dated last year, not even related to this trip at all. That pink note was a desperate attempt to let people know how she was unable to cope with the loss.

The journal entries during the last months of her pregnancy were pretty happy. Ashleigh believed Tony was in a safer position, her worries were mostly about gaining weight, the baby not being healthy, being sick at the end.

And then… the day.

The day she learned about Tony’s death.

It says only one word over and over—Why?