Chapter 21
Black
Amberly
Black Toyota Corolla. On the highway with a black Toyota Corolla. Now I needed to find the who behind the mystery and I’d be the winner of the game. A winner that won nothing but what? Peace of mind? The ability to approach the murderer and say, I forgive you even if he or she hadn’t asked for that forgiveness? A part of me wondered if they had laid awake at night and pondered what they could have done differently. Did they (man or woman) feel any sort of remorse? Or did they laugh triumphantly with the fact they got away with it?
It’s not like I had believed the person who did it was an actual murderer. My exact definition of one was someone who had done it with intent, not by a split-second choice that ended in catastrophe. Still, what could you classify such a person? One that maybe had too much to drink and got behind the wheel instead of calling someone to come get them?
I would never be able to live my life knowing my choice ended someone else’s. I’d have groveled at the feet of the person’s loved ones, asking for forgiveness and trying to find ways to help them cope—even if that meant moving so they’d never have to chance seeing my face again. I think that was what bothered me the most about not knowing who was responsible. It could be anyone. It could be someone I talked to every time I went to the grocery store. Someone I had to look at each and every day. What if they recognized me? I had to know.
The report didn’t show any names and that aggravated me more than anything. I sifted through more clippings, none of them screaming out to me that they held the truth. That they held a name of any sort as to who was responsible. It was as though the entire town was conspiring against us.
“It’s been an hour and nothing.” I slumped against the couch, tossing the papers I was holding onto the table.
“Let’s get out of here then. Let’s go shoot.” Cricket offered, standing up. “Ten minutes. Time to get the aggression out.”
I agreed and stood up to get dressed.
The shooting range we always went to was a mere fifteen-minute drive. The pros of living in town didn’t go unnoticed by me. It fit the activities that Cricket and I always planned.
I bit my lip as we entered the building, the same anxiety rushing over me as it always did. The unknown. The not knowing who had been the other party in the wreck. I didn’t want to continue living my life wondering if it were every single person I passed on a daily basis. For all I knew, that person could even be Cricket.
Or it could be the one we greeted as we waltzed up to the counter, the one that was handing Cricket and I a receipt for the ammunition we purchased.
I stared at her for a moment too long, almost to the point of me being creepy, before following Cricket to our designed shooting bay.
The gun range was assorted into different categories. Younger kids shot in the first bay where there were five lanes. The middle bay was for law enforcement and others trying to obtain their conceal and carry. Military were also allowed in that bay. The third one was for recreational use. It was the bay you could use to shoot out your aggression. I had planned on doing just that.
I positioned my earmuffs over my hair and placed my clear eyeglasses on my face before opening the second door to the bay. The first area was so you could prepare yourself before being met with the sound of gun shots. It was a tiny area that fit maybe ten people at best in it. After this, I wouldn’t be able to hear Cricket unless she spoke rather loudly, but you could bet I’d still be able to hear my gun go off.
Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol. It had felt like ages since I had held it, though I know it wasn’t too long ago. After all, shooting was what Cricket and I passed our time with when it was too cold to enjoy much of anything else.
She hung my target up and sent it down our lane. We always took turns shooting, we didn’t want to take up another lane since we needed breaks here and there throughout our time at the range. It made us feel less guilty for not being able to shoot our guns as much as someone more skilled could do.
“Ready?” She mouthed, stepping to the side to let me load the bullets into my gun.
It wasn’t anything fancy, though I had engraved Haylie’s initials onto the handle. I was shooting for her. I was letting out my aggression for her. It was a healing process, as if shooting took my pain away…….one bullet at a time.
For the first few rounds, my hands shook. I was able to steady them by my fifth shot. I wasn’t careless with the gun, though it made me nervous. That was a habit I was trying to free myself from. Cricket had said the more time I spent shooting, the less I’d feel nervous about it. I’d feel more in-tune with my weapon.
My shots rang out, hitting the target where I aimed. I was a decent shot. If someone ever broke into my home, I was confident I could score a shot at their leg, if nothing else. It would slow them down and their threat level would dwindle with that one shot.
Cricket had been shooting a lot longer than me, so I knew her target would be obliterated. She enjoyed that more than a target kept in one piece with a few shots on the bullseye.
I hung my first target on my wall, behind a frame. No one but Cricket knew the secret behind it. I had felt free for the first time since Haylie’s death. I had pretended the target was the person who’d taken Haylie away from me. I had broken down, fallen to my knees and my face became an instant home for a rainfall. It poured out of me with purpose, as each tear fell one more piece of me was being delivered back to complete myself. I had been lost and those tears piled upon the one before it, like they had frozen and were building a brick wall inside of me.
I shot at the Corolla. In that moment, the flimsy paper target had transformed itself into a heaping mold of metal. The headlights beamed down the range, flashing me with a cyclonic pattern of taunt. I wasn’t scared. I wouldn’t be scared…even as it bounded down the lane looking for its next victim.
I screamed and shot at it, my shots ringing through the air in a symphonic procession. I didn’t stop, aiming for different areas and hitting them with precision. I kept pressing my finger against the trigger, even as the bullets emptied to a bare chamber.
Cricket’s hands clamped over my outstretched arms, bringing the gun down to aim at the floor. My chest heaved with indignation, to the point I had to slow down my breathing, otherwise I’d be on the brink of hyperventilation.
She strained to pull the gun from my grasp. Surprise clouded her eyes as she stared me down. Something clicked in me. I could feel the thirst for revenge pulsing through my body. It felt similar to a song where the bass was calibrated to the point of shaking you out of your seat.
She dragged me from the range. “What the hell was that?” From the tone of her voice, I could sense her anger. Instead, when she turned around I saw nothing but elation pricking her features.
“I... I... I d-d-don’t know.” I stammered, clambering for the appropriate words to describe what I was feeling. Not a single word would be deemed accurate. “We have to find that car.” I said with finality. It was the beginning of retribution for me.
My enemy would be punished for what they did. Fuck forgiveness. Revenge felt so much easier. It fueled me in a way no other emotion could compare. I was dying for the surge of energy it surrounded me with. The mere thought of delivering punishment to someone who had slipped by the system and gotten to go home to lay down at night, had me reeling with excitement.
“We will. Give it time.” Cricket reassured me, packing our guns back into their cases. “I’m going to get your target. We can come back next weekend.”
I didn’t object, though I knew next weekend there would be a date with Bryant. Thinking about him had me feeling guilty, the date didn’t sound as appealing as it had before I’d envisioned my target as the weapon used in Haylie’s demise.
We emptied out into the parking lot where I inhaled a huge burst of crisp, icy air. It coiled on its way into my lungs, taking residence where it was most needed. Eventually, the air would reach my brain and I might be able to think with clarity.
B: I miss you.
I stared, feeling empty, at the text. The words got bolder and seemed to lift from the screen on my phone.
Cricket and I had spent an ample amount of time typing the license plate on the car into search engines on my laptop last night. Nothing. Unless we wanted to pay twenty-nine ninety-nine to get any information on it. I’d tried that before, trying to figure out what random number had called me and hung up the second I answered. I paid whatever the company charged that promised to provide me with a name and all I got after my information was entered was the fact the number belonged to a land line somewhere two towns over. It wasn’t worth it. Though, in the back of my mind the what ifs started creeping their way into my thoughts. What if it provided more? What if it provided the name of the owner and where the car was located. Yeah, on a fat chance.
B: I have to see you.
Texting Bryant had become a regular thing. He had started texting me every morning after we had made things official. They were sappy texts, the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a romance movie. Still, as corny as they were, I hung onto his every word. Words that defined what type of person he saw me as. You didn’t know yourself until you knew what other people thought about you. How you saw yourself was not near as important as how others saw you. You had to tread carefully though. You couldn't let their opinions become the total definition of who you were, but their insight would help you find yourself.
I had learned that I was easy to be around. I gathered this by how often Bryant wanted to see me. Every damned second of every damned day. Even though I could annoy myself faster than anyone, somehow Bryant was immune to that. It was stupidly adorable.
I typed out a quick reply to him. Twenty minutes tops.
B: Can you meet us at the park?
Sure. Make that fifteen minutes.
Us. Bryant and his daughter. I had no idea why my palms started thickening with sweat. I had met Delia before. Of course, the circumstances had been different than they were now. I was now her dad’s girlfriend, not just another softball mom. Bryant had said he didn’t want Delia knowing about us until he knew she would take it well. He wanted to gauge her reaction before he went full force with admitting we were a thing.
I scrambled, without grace, across my room to find a pair of jeans and a sweater with a hood to put over the current shirt I was wearing. I slipped my shoes on before stumbling into the living room.
“Where are you going?” It was two in the afternoon and Cricket was stuffing her face with ice cream. I couldn’t blame her. She was recovering from my mental and physical break down yesterday. I’d eat some damned ice cream too if I felt I could stomach it. Her eyes floated from my neck to my untied shoes.
I knelt down to tie them. “Can I use your car?”
She finished off her last bite and let the spoon clink against the bowl. “Where are you going?” She asked again.
“Bryant wants me to meet him at the park.”
“If I take you, can he bring you back?”
I considered this for a moment before asking him so I would know for sure. It would’ve been easier for him to come get me, but I assumed his request was a last minute one. We had agreed we wouldn’t really hang out on his weekends with his daughter but that agreement was getting more difficult by the day.
B: Yeah, I can drop you off when I take Delia home.
“He said yes.” I relayed the message to her.
She threw the blanket off of her and went to retrieve her shoes from her bedroom. “Does he not realize it is forty degrees outside? What’s he doing at the park anyway?”
“It’s his weekend with Delia.”
“Oh.” She fumbled with her keys, tossing them from one hand to the other as she reentered the living room. “Let’s go.”
We pulled in the parking lot to see Bryant pushing Delia on the swings, oblivious to anything else around him. I sat in the car for a few moments, watching them both.
“I suppose it’s a good thing he wants you around Delia?” Cricket asked, disturbing the silence and breaking me out of my trance.
“It’s a slow process.” I told her, yanking on the door handle of her car. “I’ll see you soon?”
She shoved the gear shift into reverse and smiled at me. “How many days should I wait until I call the rescue team?”
I laughed and rolled my eyes at her, lifting myself from her car.
Watching Bryant with Delia was refreshing. I no longer felt jealousy when I saw a parent with their child. I saw love, happiness, and relief. Love that they had for one another. Happiness that they were living in the moment. Relief that they were spending time together and making memories for years to come. As I approached them, I was tempted to dig my nails into his sides and yell out and scare him but chose to wrap my arms around him instead.
I inhaled his scent, noticing that he was wearing cologne. I couldn’t place what name brand created it but its presence helped steal my heart. The little gestures meant everything. I noticed the first day he had worn it, after he had found out I was working at Skrillex.
He faced me and delivered a light kiss to my forehead. Within seconds, last night was forgotten and I felt nothing but relief.
“Daddy, who’s that?” Delia crept up to Bryant’s side, squeezing her frame between his arm and torso.
“Delia, this is Amberly. Remember Haylie’s mom? From softball?”
Delia’s eyes shot up and then darted around behind me, looking for something or someone. “Where’s Haylie?”
An innocent question that would be answered by a heart-retching truth.
Bryant lowered himself so he was eye level with Delia. “We’ll talk about that another time.”
“Why? Did something happen to her?”
No matter what age, death was never an easy subject. It was even more difficult when the person you were delivering the news to wasn’t quite in their teens. They wouldn’t fully understand it. It wasn’t like I could blurt out that Haylie died. No, the deliverance had to be softer. You had to treat the person you were talking to as if they were porcelain and your words mimicked the same damage as if you threw a rock at its surface.
“How about you and me go out to lunch the next weekend you come over to see me? I’ll tell you then.” Bryant was buying time. No way he wanted today to end with Delia finding out one of her past teammates was no longer around.
Delia shrugged her shoulders as if her curiosity vanished in thin air and ran off to the slide. Her brown hair tumbled behind her, creating a sort of cape behind her scalp. If the sun was out, no doubt it would make her hair sparkle.
“I missed you.” Bryant watched to make sure Delia’s back was turned before kissing me.
“I missed you too.” I said once he pulled away from me.
The remainder of the park visit played out this way, Bryant stealing kisses and me wondering when he would do it again.