He handled them lovingly. They were important to him. His great passion.
He made guitars but would never play them.
I knew he was a musician. I could tell by the way his fingers drummed along to the beat of a song as we drove in his car. I heard the melodies he hummed when he thought I wasn’t listening.
But when I suggested he play the guitar I had purchased, the one he had made, he refused.
Then he became angry. Livid. He slammed the lid of the case shut and shoved the instrument back to where I kept it behind the couch. Out of sight. Far, far away.
“Don’t ask me that, Layna! Just leave it alone!”
I wondered about Elian and his rage that quietly simmered. The haunted expression that he wore at the best of times and the anguished scowl at the worst.
I picked him apart, looking for what he wouldn’t tell me.
But I knew parts of it already.
The day would come when he would too.
He’d put it together. Like our two stars. The same. Connected.
He was running. So far and so long away from the things he was scared of. He had no idea that what he thought he had left behind was right here. In front of him.
Kissing him with practiced dishonesty.
Loving him with open armed treachery.
He sucked the lies from my tongue like candy. Their seduction tasted sweet but shredded like razor blades when swallowed.
Guilt.
It was there.
It could change me.
Alter what was meant to happen.
Could it?
I hoped so. I fought so hard against the very nature of who I was. But Elian…my choice—he was making it easy to fight.
Matt, my brother, my link to a girl I had once been…he had been my call to Jesus. He had always been my grip on a slowly disappearing morality.
But Elian…
He could help me hold onto that thing that I had been so ready to lose.
Myself.
The nature of who we are, as people, as individuals, was determined in the womb. Our personalities were formed in those months before breath. It was unchanging. Who we became. It was so much more than nurture. It was in the blood and guts—at the root of who we were meant to be.
Loving and knowing my father had shown me the inescapable hold of family. Of their dominion over who we were to become.
I knew I had inherited the monster. I was so sure of it.
But with Elian…there was now a maybe.
If only the shadows unremembered didn’t lay in wait ready to strike. Ready to destroy. Ready to maim.
Ready to eat me whole.
“Hi Lieutenant Orwell, my name is Kaitlyn Sandburg and I work at the Dentonville Chronicle. I’m looking to start a new piece on cold case files. I was told by a colleague about the unsolved murder of Janette Winters. I was wondering if you had a moment to answer a few of my questions.”
I chewed on the end of my pen and hoped I was talking to a gossiper. Someone not interested in protocols but wanting to dish about the stain on their small town.
Sometimes reading the newspaper articles weren’t enough. I needed more. It wasn’t enough for me to be sure. To know…
“What questions do you have, sugar?”
I didn’t even bristle at the condescending endearment from a complete stranger. He was open to giving me answers.
“I heard she was seventeen. Was she from Dentonville?”
I heard the squeak of a chair as though Lieutenant Orwell was leaning back and getting comfortable. “No. She was from Jackson, which as you know, is about an hour away. I’m going off the top of my head here, just from what I remember. I wasn’t on the force the time. Hell, I was still in high school.” Obnoxious laughter. “How old are you Miss Sandburg? It is Miss, right?”
“Yes it is. There’s no Mr. At least not yet.” I oozed charm. When necessary I was capable of it. “When was the murder?”
“Uh, ‘96, I think.”
“Oh, well I was just wearing a training bra then,” I chuckled. Lieutenant Orwell laughed too. He liked that.