The lake is calm and there’s something floating on the surface.
Small, a doll maybe? I try to wade into the water but it turns to cement beneath me, not allowing me to save the doll… the person.
My mouth opens, calling out, but I can’t hear the words.
“Evi,” a small voice calls from the water, and my heart breaks, shattering into a mass of ashes.
The wind carries the dust over the water, and when it settles over the form in the water, my body crumbles.
A cold blast shocks me and my eyelids spring open just as I’m submerged into the lake. The cold mass consumes me, dragging me under. It’s a rude awakening and causes my heart to almost stop completely.
You were sleepwalking.
Kicking my legs, I break the surface and gasp for air, coughing out the water that rushed into my mouth when I wasn’t prepared for it. I’d been sleepwalking and must have been at the edge of the pier.
I’d been tired last night and didn’t take a sleeping pill. Most nights they keep me dosed enough that I don’t move from the bed.
My dreams are vivid but distorted. Just like my memories, they don’t make sense to me.
Since I’m already in the water, I pull my nightshirt over my head and dump it on the small pier that leads to the water.
Pushing through the current, I lose myself to the strides forcing my body to fight the weight of the water, pushing myself.
The farther I swim out, the colder the water becomes.
I love how secluded this place is. With only the odd scattering of lake houses—eight in total—in the entire stretch of woodland, most are only occupied in the summer months and the rest of the year it’s empty. Perfect.
As I reach the marker I always swim to so I have enough energy to swim back, I turn and make my way back.
Daylight brightens the sky and the birds sing to each other.
As I breach the pier line, a stone skits across the surface of the water and collides with my forehead.
My feet seek out the ground and I rush from the water to find Leroy standing on my land, staring at me.
“You must have seen me?” I bark. Anger coils my nerves.
Shrugging, he just stares at me, eyes wide and mouth slightly open.
My hand had instinctively gone to my head before I left the water, and as I remove it, watery blood coats my palm and I feel the warmth of it running down my face.
He blanches and walks toward me.
Holding my hand out to stop his approach, rage cooks in my veins.
“I didn’t mean to get you,” he says.
“Bullshit!” The blood coats my eyelashes and blurs my vision in one eye.
“Shit, you’re really bleeding.” His gawking keeps dropping to my chest, the pervert fuck.
“Go get your father, Leroy.”
His face screws up into a scowl. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.” What a stupid question.
Blood is now dripping off my chin and down my body. I look down to realize I’d taken off the nightshirt and was swimming in just panties.
No wonder this shit face’s eyes nearly bugged out of his skull. The only other tits he’s probably seen are his mother’s when he was breastfeeding.
“I saw him, you know?”
Walking up the pier, I pick up the wet shirt and hold it to the bleeding wound.
“Saw who, Leroy?” If this wound scars, I’m going to give him a matching one, the little brat.
“My dad leaving your house last night all flustered.”
The snoop. I knew he’d be out here, lurking.
He needed a therapist. Maybe I’d give Garret’s card.
“Were you spying on me again, you pervert?”
He squints and his lip lifts in a sneer.
“No. Don’t flatter yourself.”
I laugh. It’s spontaneous and loud. “Is that why you hit me with a stone? Because you think I’m fucking your father? Jealous little boy, Leroy?”
“Fuck, no. He’s old and cheating on my goddamn mother.”
Rolling my shoulder, sick of his jealous outburst, I bite down on my anger.
“He was fixing a cut for me, you idiot child. Now, go get your dad or I’m going to call the police and have you arrested for assault.”
His eyes bulge and his neck flares with a red rash.
“It was an accident.”
“No, it wasn’t, and we both know it.”
He stares at me for a solid five seconds before gritting his teeth and running to get his father.
I make it inside and collapse onto the couch, the throbbing pain familiar and welcome.
I’m going to have this couch steam cleaned; the blood coats the cushion covers and clots in my hair.
My skin prickles with a sprinkle of cold awareness, the fabric under my bare thigh itching my skin.
I’m always sensitive after a swim, my body humming with awareness of every nerve ending, the hot blood racing through every vein like a fever. Taste, touch, and hearing; everything felt heightened.
“Evi?”
Edward’s cautious tone penetrates my ears, causing my lids to flutter open.
My gaze is unfocused and the room spins a little.
“What happened to you?” He rushes to my side, scanning over my body for injury. Leroy has joined him and is openly staring at my tits.
Soak it up, you little freak.
“Get out, Leroy!” I demand.
His father’s stare shoots to his son and then back to me as if noticing for the first time that I’m almost naked.
Grabbing a throw pillow to cover me, he nods over to his son, gesturing him to leave.
Huffing like a five-year-old, Leroy says, “Whatever,” over his shoulder, slamming my front door behind him as he leaves.
Edward takes the nightshirt that I still had over my head, and I hug the pillow he placed in my lap and watch his worried regard and fallen brow as he inspects the cut.
“What happened?”
Peeling my lips apart, I grunt. “Your son was skipping stones.”
His gaze focuses on mine, the lines around his features more visible in daylight. “He did this?”
I pull my gaze from his. “It was an accident,” I lie, knowing Leroy deserves more than his father’s wrath. Revenge is better served from the source of their jealousy.
“You’re ice cold.” He places the back of his hand against my cheek. The contrast of his warmth against the cold of my flesh makes his hand feel like a flame against me.
“I was swimming.”
Taking his hand away, he gestures to the wound.
“It’s stopped bleeding and I can use some medical glue so it hopefully won’t scar.”
The blue material of Leroy’s sweater passes the window behind Edward and my insides ignite.
Fuck you, Leroy.
“Evi, about last night…”
Before he can finish the sentence, I launch forward, getting up and straddling his lap, throwing the cushion to the floor as I do.
His hands clumsily catch me and his mouth pops open in surprise.
My bare chest pushes against the cotton of his t-shirt, my arms wrapping around his neck.
The burn of his palms around my back signal that he’s not going to deny me.
Of course he isn’t.
Dry blood tightens the skin on my face but it doesn’t appear to bother Edward.
His cock grows thick beneath my pussy, which grinds into him.
I cup his face and pull his lips down to my neck so I can see around him to his jealous son, glaring at me through the window.
I grin wickedly back at him and lean back farther, letting the good doctor kiss down my chest and suck a nipple into his greedy mouth.
The figure at the window disappears and I push Edward back. He’s panting heavily and his fixated gaze is full of turmoil.
“I think I need to lie down,” I murmur, and he snaps back into doctor/patient mode.
Moving me from his lap, he goes about cleaning me up and patching the wound.
I close my eyelids and pretend to fall asleep, waiting for the clicking of the front door as he leaves before I sit back up.
Images pass by the window again and I jolt to my feet, knocking the box that contains my other life to the floor as I do.
The contents splay out across the floor, a documented sadness of the true evil that can be in anyone.
Picking up a handwritten letter with a stamp from federal prison on the top, my heartbeat stampedes a million miles a minute.
My body collapses to a sitting position on top of the table.
There’s a tremble in my hands as I drop to my knees and crawl to retrieve it.
Dear Evi,
This is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
I hope by the time you’re reading this, you’ve had enough time to heal from the events of your life with us.
I know this will be hard for you to hear, but I do love you. Back when you were a little girl, I was also only a young girl and did some stupid things. Your father was an enigma to me, and mixed with the drugs, he ruled my life. Because of that, I didn’t do what I should have to protect you from us. I hope you have forgiven me now.
I will be released by the time you receive this letter, but I won’t come looking for you. I want you to live your life with hope and peace. Your grandma (my mother) left you the house in her will. If you can’t face going back there you can sell it on and never think about that place and what happened there again.
Just know I don’t regret what I did, only that I didn’t take action sooner.
Thinking of you always,
Mom
Tossing the letter away from my body as if it was on fire, a pit opens in my chest.
How can she not regret what she did? The phantom pain of the stab wound hums on my abdomen. I search the pile of paper and find a deed with my name printed on it. Keys still sit in the overturned box.
Thoughts mull around, not finding root, only expanding further questions.
Why would she be released?
Why would I be left the house?
Where would she go?
Do I want to go back there?