Chapter 11

Ellie

My books just laid there, on the floor, not in any order. I had shelves without organization, leaving gaps where I should have figured something else out. I didn’t want to tell Mom we couldn’t leave because I had to sort out my crazy person brain, so I’d walked away. I left, with my mind focused on the fact that my books could have been tipping over. If they tipped over, then it could have caused a massive crash. The weight would press down and everything could come falling over. My things would break, damaging the floor. Then people would come in and have to fix it, being in my space, getting their scent on things, looking around. They would be there, and I would have to watch them. What if they moved something else? What if something got broken so bad that I would have to move rooms while it got fixed? I grew up in that room. I couldn’t just live in another fucking room. I would wake up and it wouldn’t be the same, if I could even get to sleep. If I left that room, then I would forget everything that happened there. It would fade away and what would I be left with? Only myself, and god knew I didn’t want that.

I shouldn’t have left Mordechai alone with my mother, but I found the idea too hilarious to not run out of that store. My driver had my door open for me, but we hadn’t gotten the bags yet. I nearly preemptively pulled my shoes off and tossed them inside, finished with being dressed before I even got back home. I held off, not wanting my bare feet on the dirty sidewalk.

I went from staring at my phone to looking back to the glass doors of the store. I couldn’t see Mordechai from where I stood, but I couldn’t very well walk back over there to take a peek. That would look weird and I had no way to explain it. Also, I had no reason to want to peek at him. Mordechai liked nothing more than making sure he never thought about me for longer than two seconds at a time. I didn’t need to give him the satisfaction of knowing I had no such control.

Damn him and damn the way he had me looking back at that glass. Could I come up with an excuse to run back in there? I could pretend I left my phone in the dressing room. I could say I had to pee. For what? So I could look at him? Not much to look at anyway. Tall, sure, but what else? He looked muscly under that suit, but I didn’t know for sure since he refused to dress any other way. The face? Whatever. I’d seen better. But I’d spent a lot of time looking at that damn face. At that damn man. Bright blue eyes could be found anyway, no big deal. Neither was a strong jaw or lips that looked soft. Hands that looked rough. Arms that looked strong enough to pick me up, despite my size. Not that I would have ever asked him or anyone else to do that. I didn’t need to call attention to my body like that.

My books had probably all fallen over. I could see it in my head, tilted all wrong and damaged. It would look like a mess. I had some on their sides, thinking I would fix it. I needed to fix it. If I didn’t fix it, then a scream would escape me. A scream so loud it would burst the veins in my eyes and make me blind forever. All because I couldn’t ask my mom to wait a half hour.

My foot tapped on the ground while I tried to distract myself with the things around me. Billboards, cars racing down the street, other people shopping. It all looked boring. I’d never been bored with it before. Mostly because I didn’t look. If I looked too hard, I would see things I couldn’t fix. Broken pixels on a billboard that I desperately wanted to rearrange, making the missing bit happen in the O so it at least made sense. A trash can not the same color as the others. Trash blowing down the street. I turned my head so it wouldn’t drown me.

“Eleanor Locke?” someone asked.

Red flags shot up in my head before I turned around, seeing a man maybe in his early thirties. He had on a sweater with holes all around the wrist and edges, and a pair of jeans that had seen better days. His shoes gave him away. Ratty, stained, old. I didn’t have my wallet on me. I had nothing to give.

“Can I help you with something?” I said calmly.

“You’re Ellie Locke?” he asked again. He had sweat on his forehead, despite the chill in the air. His hands couldn’t stop shaking either. I couldn’t see any wounds or bags under his eyes. Nothing to tell me if he might have been an addict looking for a quick bit of money.

I could lie, but I stood in front of a car that cost about as much as a modest house and people knew my face. I’d gone to hundreds of events with my family, broadcast on TV and online when he wanted to make a show of donating oodles of money to charities. Mom ran events all the time. This man knew exactly who I was.

“Hey, Bill,” I said to my driver, bending slightly to see him. “You catch the game last night?”

He knew the code to get the fuck out here and help me, but it didn’t matter. I had barely turned to the man when I saw him reaching behind his back. He unceremoniously pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans. I didn’t have time to think about much of anything, but my brain tried anyway. I thought of the quiet I’d never known. A small, quiet house with no strangers in it. Only my family. Only people I knew well. I thought of myself with the blurry, unfinished faces of kids I would never have. Presents I would never give them. Promises I wouldn’t get to keep. I saw freedom and a place so different than this concrete jungle I’d grown up in. I saw green. I saw water, still and cool as I set my foot in it. I saw a future I wouldn’t have had, even if I lived through this.

And what I saw next made me wish I hadn’t.

The man put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

My scream shredded my throat as my ears rang out from the gunshot. I couldn’t hear a thing anymore. Only that ringing. The world got topsy turvy as I lost my balance. Bill caught me but my body wouldn’t stop shaking. I felt blood on my face. I’d felt it splatter on my face, I saw it on my sweater, I felt it on my hands. More than just blood. Red chunks splattered my clothes too and I wished more than anything that I didn’t understand where they had come from.

Other people screamed, running away from the body on the ground. The man laid there, blood leaking from a hole in his head. I would have given him money if I’d had it… I would have, I didn’t know, done something.

Someone shoved me into the car. When I looked up, I saw Mordechai there. He told me to stay put.

“Mom!” I called. It sounded muffled, but my hearing came back a little. “Mom!”

Mordechai put her in next, then shut the door. I couldn’t see much of him through the tinted windows, but he had his gun out, surveying the scene.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Mom asked. “What happened? Did you get hurt? Ellie?”

I gasped, pulling in short, painful breaths through my mouth as I clutched her. I tried to talk but nothing came out as I curled against her, bringing my legs up to my chest as I laid my head on her lap. I felt her sleeve on my face, wiping away the blood and bits that I’d ruined her clothes with.

“Shh,” she said. “You’re okay. It’s going to be okay. I’m sorry. I should have fucking sent Mort out with you. Goddammit.”

I tried to catch my breath to no avail. The door opened again and Mordechai said something I didn’t pay attention to. It sounded like Charlie Brown adults talking as I laid there, staring at the other side of the car. Blood dripped into my left eye, making me flinch so hard that my mother had to hush me again.

I saw it over and over again in my head. That man in front of me and the look in his eyes before he’d done it. He hadn’t looked angry. He hadn’t looked out of his mind. I saw peace there. I saw certainty. I hated it.

Sirens sounded all around me, but I remained almost unaware of most of what happened. I heard my mother talking, unable to understand what she said. I heard Mordechai too, just as muffled. Hands touched my body, some cleaning blood and some trying to get me to sit up.

Mom sat me up, but I remained still, staring at nothing.

“What the hell could they possibly get from her?” Mom asked. “Other people saw the exact same thing she did.”

“Yes, but the police want to see her,” Mordechai said. “I’ll stay with her. Make whatever calls you have to make.”

I looked up, bleary eyed as Mordechai extended his hand to me. I knew what I had to do. Some part of me did, at least. I moved automatically, taking his hand and letting him pull me out. The lights of the sirens made me cringe against Mordechai, hiding my face against him and ruining another set of clothes. That made three. Four if I included the man now covered by a sheet.

“You just have to answer a few questions,” Mordechai said, huskier than normal. He had a deep, commanding voice on the best of days, but this sounded like something else. “Then I’m taking you home.” It sounded like an order I had no desire to deny.

“Ask,” Mordechai told two officers standing there, just a few feet from the body. I couldn’t stop staring at it, covered or not. Mordechai moved me away and the officers followed until I had my back against Mordechai, around the corner of the shop.

“Can you tell us what happened, Miss Locke?” one of the officers said. Cash, I saw on his shirt.

My mouth felt dry but I forced words out anyway. “There’s nothing to say,” I rasped. “The man walked up to me, asked me if I was Ellie Locke, and then killed himself.”

“Was there anything after he asked your name?” the other officer said. “Any detail can help us figure out exactly what happened.”

I had no idea what they meant by that, but I went over everything. Even with all details, it seemed like nothing helpful. The man had been unwell. What else could it have been?

“We should have her go get checked out by a doctor, huh?” an officer asked. “I also want her to tell Jones and Cambell what she just told us.”

“I have to say it again?” I asked. “There’s nothing to solve. And I don’t need a doctor.”

“You’re in shock,” Cash said. “You should get checked out.”

“I want to go home,” I said. It sounded like a demand.

“I’m taking her now,” Mordechai said, linking his arm with mine and taking my hand. “You got all you needed.”

“Sir, that’s not how this works.”

Just then, my mother showed up. She had a cloth in her hands, cleaning my face as a phone rang. I watched an officer grab her phone from her pocket and answer it. The call lasted a total of thirty seconds and she didn’t say a single word. Her eyes found mine though, and I saw fear there. She approached, tapping Cash on the shoulder.

“They need to leave,” she said.

“What? We have—”

“They need to leave.”

The police stayed to do what they needed to do, but I got brought back to the car with Mom and Mordechai. I sat between them, saying nothing for the whole drive home. I stared at the blood splattering my clothes, wishing I could burn it all away. I should have stayed in the store. I should have waited for Mordechai. I should have told Mom I didn’t want to go out. I’d been in the middle of my books. I’d left them unorganized and my mind kept going back to it like a puzzle left unfinished. Like a riddle where I had the answer on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t figure it out. I would die if I didn’t figure it out.

The car parked and Mom got out first. II couldn’t follow. I looked at Mordechai, barely seeing him as I said, “I have to fix my books.”

He stared at me, looking like he didn’t understand what I meant.

I got out of the car and stopped for no one. I didn’t see my father in the crowd of people rushing past me as I went for the door. They didn’t exist. They bumped my shoulders, they almost knocked me down, they moved past me like I was a ghost, but I kept moving.

I went into my room, shoving the door open and finding my shelves.

Everything remained where I’d left it. Fine. Perfectly fine. No boogeyman waited under the bed. Death didn’t lurk around the corner because I didn’t put everything back where it belonged. No food stained my boots.

I screamed again, but I broke into a cry before it could finish. I already had arms around me, pulling me away as I frantically dug books out of the box to put them where they had been before. I slid one into place, putting it exactly where I had remembered. It would all look the same as it had this morning. It would all be the same as it had this morning.

“Ellie!” Mordechai pulled me back against him before I could get another book. “Hey, you need to take a second.”

I didn’t have a second. I had to make it look like it had before. I had to make it better.

I reached for another book, but an arm snagged me around the middle, pulling me away. I pushed and I shoved and I cried, but he didn’t let up. He brought me over to a chair and sat me down. He knelt in front of me, keeping one hand on my arm and the other on my knee as he told me to catch my breath.

Staring down at my shaking hands, I saw that I still had blood all over me. It had dried onto my skin, my clothes, my face, my hair. I stared blanketly at Mordechai, feeling myself come undone.

“It wasn’t food on my boots,” I whispered.

He couldn’t have known want it meant, but I watched the breath leave his mouth in a soft, weak huff. When I looked into his eyes, I saw pity. I saw mercy.

A loud banging against my door had me screaming, cringing against the chair. I grabbed at Mordechai as if he could come up there with me, keeping me safe from the world. But how? At his expense? I couldn’t do that.

“Ellie!” my mother shouted. “Let me in.”

“I’ll be right back,” Mordechai said. “Okay? I’ll be right over there.”

He left me, going to unlock and open the door. My mother flooded in, followed by four men with guns all pointed at Mordechai. They didn’t lower them when they saw who answered. The very sight of them made me lose my mind again.

“Put those down!” I ordered. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!”

“You screamed,” one of them said. “The door was locked.”

“I was told to bring her somewhere safe and lock the doors,” Mordechai said, not even sounding offended. He should have been.

The guns lowered and Mom rushed over to me. I said, “Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s busy,” Mom said. “He’s working on this. He told me to come talk to you.”

“Is Mordechai in trouble?”

“No, I told your dad what happened. Your dad wants Mordechai to take you somewhere safe for a few days. Somewhere away from all this.”

“What? Why? That man is dead. He was just… Am I not safe?”

Mom didn’t have to say anything. She turned to Mordechai, and he began to pack his bag up. Then she went to pack mine.

I stared at the door, thinking that Daddy would show up to check on me. I expected him any second. He would have heard the screams. The guards stayed there, talking to each other and looking out into the hallway like they thought something bad came for me.

“She needs to get the blood off her,” Mordechai said to my mother, setting his bag by the door. “It’ll only take a couple minutes.”

“No,” Mom said. “Her father wants her out of the house.”

“Two minu—”

“That’s an order. Get her out of here. Keep her safe. I know you want that too.”

Mordechai left my mother, only to come to me. He extended a hand out. It looked so big. So safe. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

“Mordechai…”

“Do you trust me?”

A dozen red flags shot up in my head. The fake phone, the way he always looked like he studied and memorized the things he saw, the confidence he had in this specific lifestyle, everything else. I shouldn’t trust him.

I still took his hand. I still said, “Yes,” with no idea if I lied or not.