The first message was abrupt. Jeffery Lomax—the divorce lawyer I use for referrals—had a client for me if I was interested. The second voicemail was from Rochelle. She had left a cackling message thanking me for tanking that “little twat” and her brand. And the final message was from my boss at Lucy’s data processing job. I was fired for repeated no-shows, no-calls. Which, he said, wasn’t too surprising for me.
That was it. No frantic calls trying to locate me. No worried voices urging me to contact them, whoever them—the people who cared about me—were.
Normally, this sort of thing wouldn’t bother me. It’s how I lived my life. Alone. And I preferred it this way. I liked my solitude and didn’t need intimate connections from friends or family. I had always deemed those a burden.
Still, what if I had died during Alex’s torture treatment? What if I never came back? How much time would have passed before someone noticed…and cared?
I tried to shrug off the unease and concentrate on the next steps I needed to take to recover my life, but the thought kept resurfacing, manifesting in a physical symptom, like something akin to homesickness. A queasy feeling I’d heard described by others, but never experienced myself.
So I went to see Vanessa.
My request to stay a few days with my mother was met with a stunned look. Although to be fair, the Botox prevents her facial muscles from displaying varying expressions. But what she said couldn’t have been more clear.
“You’ve never once, in your entire life, asked me for anything, Blakely. Are you ill? Do you need me to make an appointment with Dr. Westfield?”
“I’m not sick,” I told her. At least, I didn’t think I was physically sick. “I just… I think I want to come home for a while.” I had been fiddling with a loose string on my shirt and it snapped. “Have you missed me…at all?”
Another frozen expression. Then: “I don’t know how to answer that, honestly.” She reached for her Prada bag. “Do you need money?”
When the offer of money came, I hardened my expression, replicating the daughter she’d always known to ease her confusion. Then I left. Money is my mother’s answer to everything, hence why I made it a point to never to accept it. Family money came with strings, expectations.
After a failed attempt to connect with my mother, I saw a psychologist in the hopes that, with a vague summary of my circumstance, she could help correct the faulty wiring that Alex had done to my brain.
There were a lot of questions about feelings that, as it turns out when you actually feel them, make you uncomfortable. I canceled the next session.
I wondered if I should go to the police. Make a report on Alex. But really, I didn’t feel traumatized. Was I a victim? My brain was faulty and I was lost—but I had escaped, and there was a body out there that would dredge up more questions than I was prepared to answer.
Useless.
I was wandering the city aimless and confused and utterly useless, and I was starting to become angry. I always had a strategy. I always had a purpose. I had been more than content with my life, and now I was questioning my entire existence.
Then there are the dreams. Or rather, the nightmares. Waking up drenched, heart pounding so hard I’m terrified I’m having a heart attack. Reliving the torture in such vivid clarity, I wake with strands of hair tangled around my fingers from trying to tear the electrodes off my head.
But the nightmares aren’t what frighten me the most.
I’m stirred awake by the memory of Alex’s touch. His intense, pale-blue eyes as he stared into me, as if seeing a part of me I never knew existed. The way the weight of his body on top of mine felt comforting. And when he told me he loved me…the way it tore through my entire being, obliterating the darkness.
I fear him. I fear myself. I fear the emotions he forced on me, and I fear the loss of them.
What I experienced underneath that waterfall grips me nightly, and my hatred for Alex is tied to those indefinable feelings I have for him. Alex is a stain on my soul.
Trying to erase that dark, sordid blemish has only left a hole. There’s an emptiness now, a cavernous chasm where I was torn in half, and I lost some vital piece of myself at that cabin.
I’m frightened I’ll never feel those feelings again with anyone else.
God, the polarizing madness of these thoughts is unbearable. The crushing height of it right there with the depth of this torrid love, this insufferable anguish, that torments me more than any physical pain.
I’m shattering…just like those fucking clocks.
I have to make it all stop before I’m driven mad. I’m determined to fit the pieces back to together.
So, in an attempt to correct the damage and get my life back, I decide to return to work. I make a hair appointment with Lyric to get my roots touched up, buy a whole new wardrobe, then place a call to Lenora.
“I thought you were dead,” she says, voice laced with bitterness. Which completely contradicts her statement, in my opinion.
I internally scold myself for caring what a client thinks, and clear my throat. “Lenora, listen to me. There were extenuating circumstances, I assure you, but I never not complete a job. I’m on this.”
“I don’t know, Lucy. I’m wondering if it’s been postponed for a reason. Maybe I should handle my husband some other way.”