Fuck, I’m sitting on her bed. Call me Goldilocks, because I want to lay back and take a whiff.
I continue to flick through the pages, and though I intend to stop before the last page and put it away, I still find myself pausing at the end as a surge of fury bubbles in my blood. Raymond Tate’s face, his mugshot.
Small comfort comes in the fact she’s not keeping a family portrait in her scrapbook, but the article of his arrest.
The four columns of information are detailed, they’re thorough, they speak of his crimes that span several decades. I let my finger stroke the grayed paper, not because I want to be anywhere near him, but because of the tear stain that smudges a little of the writing. Elizabeth sat reading this article one day, and she cried. Did she cry for him? Did she miss her father? Did she grieve his incarceration? Or did she cry because of what he did to her?
Did he hurt her after I was gone?
I wish I was stronger back then. I wish I could have taken her with me. Lord knows those days in an alleyway would have been an almost vacation if she came with me. I would have protected her, I would have fed her first, and taught her how to look after herself. If she’d come, she could know me as Griffin now. She wouldn’t have to be a filthy fucking cop, but sitting in an office beside mine, ruling the world with me, commanding her soldiers my way, rather than her father’s way.
Instead, she went neither way. She went her own, and now she earns a pitiful salary, puts herself in danger on a day-to-day basis, lives in a walk-up, and has no clue some asshole lets himself into her home when she’s not watching.
It’s me. I’m the asshole.
I snap the book closed, and though I would give almost anything to take it with me, to study it, and perhaps keep it for bedtime reading, I put it back where I found it and continue my search.
The whole time I spend here is a farce. I came wanting to know that she’s a clean cop. I needed to know she had no connection to our old world. And now I know; she’s clean, she’s legal, she’s beautiful, and had this been any other person, I’d have already finished my search and walked away.
I search her closet, take down a pair of perfectly folded jeans and snap them out straight. This is the strangest search I’ve ever conducted, but I can’t stop myself. I can’t walk away just yet. I need to know her new world. I need to know what makes her tick. And apparently, I’m the creep that wants to know the size of her waist.
She’s not the chubby girl from two decades ago anymore. She had fat dimples back then, curly hair, and no clue how to get two skinny bitches off of her. What I saw in the gym today was not the same person. No fat dimples, but pockets of muscle. No chubby knees, but thighs that could choke a man. No weak arms, but biceps that could almost,almostchallenge me to an arm-wrestling match and make me look like a punk.
The blue jeans in my hands are tiny, the waist is barely more than thirty inches around. She’s worked hard to make jeans look like heaven. I haven’t even seen her wear them yet, but I know what I know.
Folding them again, I stack them back in place and make sure they line up exactly how she had them, then I continue my search until I find a gold gift box. It’s the kind of box Grandmas buy to shove a gift in, rather than wrapping it. Gold foil, twenty inches long, and topped with dust. Frowning, I pull it down and note the disturbances to the dust. It’s been in the closet for a long time, but it’s opened semi-regularly.
The smell of rubber hits me before I lift the lid. That should have been hint enough, but I open it anyway and blow out a heavy exhale when my eyes stop on a dildo that makes me feel like a little bitch. Batteries roll around inside the box. A bottle of lube, used, but three-quarters full. The smell of rubber is stronger without the lid, but my senses have short-circuited on the sight of this dildo that has, at least once, known Libby Tate intimately. Very,veryintimately.
Put it away. Put it away. Put it away!
My brain struggles to separate nine-year-old Elizabeth and thirty-one-year-old Libby. My brain knows the girl, but today, I met the woman. For two decades, I’ve thought of the girl with a deep longing, wondering how things turned out for her, and concerned for her well-being.
I didn’t look her up in all these years. Not once, because I wasn’t ready to tell her my truths, and lying to the girl I’d made promises to was intolerable.
But last night, I saw the grown version while she slept. Today, I saw her working out. And now, I see her stash of sex toys.
“Fuck.”
My phone vibrates in my pocket, my one and only warning to clean up and get the fuck out.
Slamming the lid back on the box, I shove it all back where it goes and close the closet doors. I take a fast glance around her room to make sure everything looks the way it did when I got here, then I move through the rest of the apartment and do the same. I switch the lights out, and stop at the kitchen counter when I find a stack of mail. I quickly flick through the pile – electric, phone, building maintenance. Setting them back exactly how I found them, I rush through the apartment and make sure everything is perfect, then I let myself out and down the stairs with a heart full of adrenaline.
The vibrating phone meant I had twenty minutes to get out. I took only ten, so there’s no reason to panic. No reason to rush. I push through the building’s front doors and onto the sidewalk. It’s dark out, windy and biting at the tip of my nose. I drop my hands into my pockets and watch my shoes as I walk to the corner and cross over.
I don’t go far. I want to see her arrive home. I want to see her, period.
Stopping just a block away, I back into the shadows of an alleyway just like I did twenty years ago, and wait for her headlights. These streets aren’t busy. The traffic is almost nonexistent; surprising, considering it’s a Saturday night.
Did she go on another date tonight?
Just seventeen minutes after my alert, she pulls around the corner right where I stand. Her lights flash over my shoes for a beat, but she continues on and pulls up against the curb outside her building. They don’t have secure parking, the way I do. There are no underground lots, no shelter for when she comes home in the rain.
I mean, it’s not like she lives in poverty or anything, but the fact she lives in anything less extravagant than I do bothers me. She had the chance to live among gold and riches, but she chooses this. That proves her innocence in a way the scrapbook should have. Or the fact she became a cop. The fact her bank accounts prove the way she lives. The evidence to support the fact she’s not her father is overwhelming, but it takes her pulling up in the dark wearing jeans just like those inside, black sneakers, a ponytail, and a Dixie’s Ice Cream cup perched in her hands to slide the lock into place and let me trust her.
She’s a cop, yes. And I hate those almost as much as I hate old man Tate. But I suppose if there was such a thing as agoodcop, she would be it.
Phase one of my trip to this shithole town is complete. Now I have to decide what to do with my ally from my past. What would she do if she knew it was me? What would she say if I waited ten minutes for her to settle in, then knock on her door? And what would be her excuse for not recognizing me today?