She shrugged, giving me the minimal response I was accustomed to receiving over the last few months. She walked out to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and poured a glass of orange juice.
I walked over to her. “Are we going somewhere? Let me change, it’ll only take a minute.”
Mom laughed. “I’m going somewhere, but you’re not coming.”
This shit again. She would never forgive me. What I did was for her. Why couldn’t she see that?
“Really?” I sharpened my tone. “Why are you still treating me like this? It’s been months! Why won’t you understand?”
Mom glared at me. “I understand that you took him from me, and I’ll never forgive you for it.”
Tears rose inside me and I ran to my bedroom. I would not allow her to see me cry. Never again. I stayed there for a few hours, having fallen asleep on my bed. Groggy, I got up and made my way to the kitchen. I poured a glass of juice just as my mother had done earlier in the day.
I noticed a piece of paper lying on the kitchen counter and picked it up. Aunt Lou’s name and phone number were scrawled across it in my mother’s handwriting.
Weird.
One hour later, the phone rang.
My mother was dead.
FORTY-SIX2024
Aimee
I sat at one of the windows in our bedroom, the one at the front of the house. I kept the blackout curtains mostly closed, except a small middle section where I watched across the road with my binoculars. It was a fair distance away, but as I zoomed in my focus, I was surprised at my clear and close view of the small woods across the road.
John could see more than I realized if he was watching our house from that vantage point. I’d better make sure to keep the curtains closed. I continued to sit there, on a soft cushioned ottoman, at random times throughout the day, hoping to spot John on one of his excursions. No luck yet.
I felt better today. The medication Dr. Daly prescribed last week was kicking in and some of the edginess I’d experienced was tapering off. I’d made another appointment with her for next week and looked forward to it. I held the binoculars up. There was movement across the snow-covered field. A man in camouflage coveralls walked toward the woods. No vehicle in sight, so he must have parked in the dirt lane down the road. He walked in a familiar way.
John.
I watched him with the binoculars, zooming in on him. He walked into the woods, far enough among the trees to be unseen from the road. He took off his backpack, sat it on the ground, unzipped it and lifted out binoculars. He turned and faced toward our house, lifting the binoculars.
I backed up, the closeness of his image jolting me. I stood back a discreet distance in a dark room watching the stalker search for a glimpse of me.
The cold air whipped around us as we drove the new side-by-side ATV through the deserted fields. It was a two-seater in electric blue and we were having a ton of fun zipping around our land in it. Archie had a good idea with this one. Asking John to join us on his four-wheeler, not so much.
I pulled my hat down further past my ears. I wore warm winter coveralls, thick gloves, and dark sunglasses. The brightness of the snow and sunshine was blinding, more so than a hot, sunny summer day.
Archie floored the ATV. We sped across the frozen back field around the creek at the bottom and back up over the slight hill to the flat area. Ahead of us, John was flying on his red four-wheeler, tossing up snow in our path.
John’s strangeness with me had continued, and Archie still claimed not to notice anything off about him. I thought of all the people who’d noticed John’s behavior as being abnormal—Robin, Margie, Rachel, even Rachel’s mother all felt the same as me—yet how did this not register with Archie? Was he so desperate for a friend that he would ignore something that impacted his wife? Maybe he just needed to find another friend and then John wouldn’t be so important to him. Maybe Doug, Margie’s fiancé, would be a possibility.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” Archie yelled over the hum of the engine. A few snow flurries spun in the air around us. “Even in the cold.”
“It is, but I’m ready to go in and get warm by a fire.”
Hot chocolate, a warm fire, and snuggling under a fuzzy blanket sounded like heaven to me right now. It was fun, but my fingers were becoming numb, even protected by thick gloves.
“Okay.” He turned around and headed back to the house. John followed us and we parked the vehicles by the side of the garage.
“Let John go home. I don’t want him coming inside,” I told Archie.
“Why?”
I smiled and rolled my eyes. You know why. Oh, he likes to play these games. “I want to be alone with you.”
He laughed. “You just don’t want him around, but that’s okay. I want to be alone with you too. And maybe we’ll take this out later today by ourselves.”
“Maybe, if you’re lucky.”
He grinned. “I’m already lucky because I’m here with you.”
I laughed.
Maybe Archie was finally figuring it out and taking the right side. His wife’s.
FORTY-SEVEN2017
The Commune
Dream
Anger flooded through me, and I stormed out of the guesthouse, leaving Sunny crying on the floor. I paced around the pool several times, then walked into the yard to the yoga deck and paced that space, feeling anything but Zen. Frustration and irritation rose inside me, and I hated feeling that way. I didn’t like myself in that state. Why was Sunny doing this to me, to us? She’d started having private talks with Raindrop again; maybe they had never stopped, and I hadn’t noticed, but things were changing now because of those secret meetings. Things that involved me and her. If she would just let everything alone, we wouldn’t have the problems we now faced.
Raindrop’s ex-husband was a prominent LA attorney. She’d spoken to him about Jim Bob, the abuse, and the commune. He filed a restraining order stating Brother Jim must stay fifty yards away from her and her property. In addition, she wanted all members of Listening Lark out of her home, except River, who was leaving the family and staying with Raindrop. We had to move out tomorrow. Tomorrow!
I stomped over to the property next door, now owned by us. Technically Fire owned it, but he was a family member. What one owned, we all enjoyed, was the motto of Listening Lark. Sharing as one created unity in all. Too bad Sunny didn’t seem to adhere to this concept. Now that we were thrown out of the guesthouse, would we move here or back to Grandmother’s house? Nobody was outside and I was glad. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. I sat on the grass next to the swing set and sighed.
What happened to being partners, not keeping any secrets from one another? This was one hell of a secret she’d kept from me! Why wouldn’t she have talked to me about what was going on before things changed so drastically? Anger burned inside me like it used to many years before. I was so damn angry! I punched the ground next to me. And again. And again, until my hand was dirty with soil and grass. Breathing exercises weren’t going to help me today. I wanted to hurt something.
Or someone.
The sliding glass door opened and Jim Bob stepped out onto the patio. He was wearing a white bathrobe and holding a blue coffee mug.
“Dream,” he said. “I guess you heard the news.”
“Yeah, guess I’m moving,” I muttered. “Thanks to Sunny.”
“Sunny?”
“Yeah, I think she talked Raindrop into all of this.”
Jim Bob frowned. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I can trust her anymore.”
