This is not safe, Ellie thought, even more concerned about her father’s safety than before they’d driven up to this cesspool. I need help.
She’d been toying with an idea since she left the ICU, but if she followed through on it, Ellie knew it would be the end of things with Collin. It wouldn’t be the scenario she’d just been contemplating—their relationship tapering off in a week or two months. No. If she did this one simple thing, it would end their relationship as soon as the blue-and-red lights turned into the parking lot of Nancy’s Emporium. Ellie glanced at her ring one more time, memorizing what it felt like and considering the future she and Collin had planned.
They’d had five and a half years of something. It wasn’t something overwhelmingly bad, but it wasn’t something great either. Outside of his questionable actions that day, Collin was steady and predictable. He was loving but not passionate. He was enjoyable but not exciting. Her relationship with Collin was like Broadlands—it was familiar and ultimately the only relationship she’d ever known. And when the thing you’d counted on being dependable and safe suddenly turned on you, there was little reason to stay. Not if it meant risking more lives.
She stared at the small stone she’d just gotten used to wearing, and then she took it off. Ellie opened the car door again, leaned across her spot, which was still warm from her body heat, and dropped the diamond solitaire into the cup holder with a clink. Then, before she could think better of it, she reemerged from the car, closed the door carefully this time, and then pulled out her phone and started typing.
CHAPTER 32
AMELIA
Tuesday, May 10
The driveway looked the same as it did on any normal workday. Two trucks were parked at the top by the oversize garage where the roofing supplies were stored during the winter. Amelia parked at the end of the gravel drive like she always did during roofing season. It was the best way to keep her car from being nicked by the constant stream of vehicles coming in and out and to ensure she could leave at a moment’s notice if she needed to grab the girls from school or run an errand.
She had been on the lookout for Randy’s rental car but didn’t see it in the street or by the house, and she was starting to wonder if maybe whatever ominous event had been planned for the day had been canceled after last week’s altercation.
Well, she might as well go inside and take a quick look around. Maybe this big thing wasn’t even going to happen in Broadlands. For all she knew, Randy could be off somewhere robbing a bank, that being the crazy thing planned for this Tuesday. Amelia laughed out loud at the thought.
She ascended the back stairs and unlocked the door to the kitchen. She placed the keys on her hook like she’d been sure to do since that day six weeks ago when she somehow overlooked their existence. The kitchen was dark. Not sure what she was even doing here, Amelia flicked on the light in the hall next to the key hooks, but nothing happened. She flicked it up and down a few more times and still nothing.
Instead of making Steve change the bulb and get a lecture on how it probably burned out because she and the kids always forgot to turn off the hall light when they left the house, Amelia took off her Nikes and headed toward the pantry where they kept the new bulbs. She reached up to pull on the string hanging down from the bare lightbulb in the ceiling. Once again, the light didn’t turn on.
“Damn it!” she swore under her breath. The power must be out. Sometimes the kitchen breaker flipped if the coffee machine, Crock-Pot, and the microwave were running at the same time or pretty much any other combination of appliances. Broadlands Roofing shared a wall with the kitchen, and the breaker box remained there, even after what used to be a utility closet was expanded one hundred times to be the new business office. Amelia did occasional jobs for Steve, a lot of it organizing or delivering papers and obtaining signatures, but in general she stayed out of the office unless it was empty or she was invited.
Usually she’d send him a text about the breaker. She rarely entered the office during the workday without asking first, but after checking her back pocket, she realized she’d left the phone in the car. She batted at the hanging string and wished she could do one thing right, that one time, just once, she could try to take a stand and be successful. How could someone fail so very often?
She walked out of the pantry and closed the door carefully, tempted to go back to her car and ignore the tightly wound cocoon inside her. It was filled with some sort of winged creature ready to break free from the silken walls it had settled on as its home, walls that now she understood were ropes that kept it from flying.
Sometimes when a stupid thing like this happened while she was in a moment of boldness, Amelia wondered if it was a sign that she was as forgetful and useless as she always felt. In the past, she’d rush to correct the error, hoping that no one had seen, that no one would be able to tell the story of how silly Amelia forgot her phone in the car on the same day she decided she was going to be independent and responsible.
The cocoon seemed particularly tightly wound lately, but when, resigned to returning to the car and forgetting it all, she felt her fingers land on the cool metal of her key chain, Amelia froze. The breaker box was on the other side of the office door to her right, a door she hated and had never wanted in her kitchen. How much of her life had been decided for her over the past twelve years since meeting Steve? He had gotten good at making them feel like her decisions too, but they weren’t, were they?
She didn’t want the ugly white door in her kitchen and she didn’t want Steve playing bookie in his spare time to make money, she didn’t want to give up her real dreams of music, and she didn’t want to put her father in a home. She’d already decided this: today was day one in the life of New Amelia. If the light was out in the kitchen, her kitchen, and she needed to flip a simple switch, then, starting today, she wasn’t going to play by Steve’s unwritten rules. She would flip the breaker herself.
Releasing the keys, Amelia wrapped her fingers around the cool nickel doorknob, letting the warmth of her palm soak into the metal ball. She could hear the murmur of voices on the other side. With a quick twist of the knob and a set jaw, Amelia opened the door. It swung in toward the office and felt lighter than usual. With a deep breath, she picked up one foot and stepped over onto the office’s thin gray carpet.
“Don’t worry about me. Just need to flip the switch. Light in the kitchen is out again.” Amelia spoke as she walked, her eyes on her feet. The door slammed shut behind her.