Chloe came to the house almost every day, and we chatted easily as we’d done from the start. Even though the topic was extremely personal, Chloe had a way of making me feel comfortable and at ease. She’d make a good therapist someday. She was warm and intuitive, and I found myself hoping we’d keep in touch even after this project was over.
I couldn’t deny that I wondered what it would have been like if I hadn’t met Ellie, if Chloe had shown up and I’d felt ready to pursue a relationship with her and she had wanted one as well. Chloe was vibrant and pretty and so easy to be around. I liked her, and maybe under very different circumstances, I could even love her. It would be a comfortable sort of love, I guessed. But she’d never set my heart on fire like Ellie. She’d never move me and captivate me and make me feel a thousand different emotions all at once. I knew that like I knew the feel of stone beneath my palms, the same way I understood how to move the chisel to create a round edge instead of something square, how much pressure to apply to chip away, but not to break. Because Ellie’s mine. Not to possess. But to love.
Maybe it was something I saw in her eyes that reminded me of the pain I’d experienced, too. Maybe it was the same reason I loved anything I loved: because it spoke to my heart and my soul. Maybe it was nothing that could be explained and nothing that needed explanation anyway.
My love for Ellie felt like a breath of life inside of me.
And so, in a way, it felt strange to be sharing intimate details of my life with one woman when the only woman I ached for was sitting somewhere in another part of the same house.
One day, after Chloe left, I found Ellie sitting on the patio, and she turned to me and smiled. “I’ve been thinking.”
I chuckled. “Thinking’s good.”
“What’s your favorite dessert?”
I frowned slightly, confused by her question. “Uh, lemon meringue pie.”
She tilted her head. “Oh.”
“Was that the wrong answer?” I teased.
“No.” She bit at her lip. “It’s probably not that easy to make, though.”
“You want to make me dessert?”
“I thought I would, yes. If that’s okay. Dinner, too.”
“Of course that’s okay. If you feel up to it.”
She smiled and it was bigger this time. “Would you mind taking a quick trip to the grocery store with me?”
I laughed, hope filling my heart. She was going to cook me dinner and make a pie. Something about the normalcy of that felt so good. “Not at all.” I tilted my head, grinning.
We drove to the grocery store in Morlea. I pushed the cart through the aisles while Ellie read ingredients off her phone from a recipe she must have looked up. I tried not to smile continually, but was hard-pressed not to. Watching Ellie walk through a grocery store—even on crutches—made me happy in a way I realized might be slightly excessive. Still, it felt like we were a couple, and I allowed myself to enjoy it. I felt comfortable with her beside me, found myself moving toward the soft brush of her arm rather than away.
As we were checking out, I noticed the looks, people talking, looking at me uncomfortably, the way they always did. I noticed and I saw Ellie noticing, too, although she quietly went about her business, unloading the items from the cart onto the conveyer. She looked embarrassed—for me, I assumed—and it put a sudden damper on the trip. Something about the expression on her face worried me, though I couldn’t say exactly why.
My eyes moved to the newspaper stand, where I saw a small article about the Wyatt Geller case. It wasn’t even a headline story anymore. That reality settled heavily in my gut. Other than checking the online news every morning, I had been somewhat successful at not letting my mind settle there. I was completely helpless and just had to hope and pray the police would get a break. Dwelling incessantly wouldn’t help anyone, least of all me.
Ellie was quiet in the truck on the way back, but once we’d arrived at home, she seemed normal again, and I helped her unpack the groceries before heading back outside to finish the yard work I’d started the day before.
I’d only been working for about an hour or so when I heard the front door bang open and looked up from where I was kneeling in the front flower bed spreading a bag of mulch. I stood slowly, my eyes moving up Ellie, her white shirt stained with something green, to her face, streaked with flour, up to her hair, which was splattered with the same green sauce on her shirt and in complete disarray.
“Ellie? You okay?” I watched her face, figuring there’d been a kitchen disaster, but not sure why she looked so incredibly devastated.
She came hobbling down the steps to stand in front of me and let out a long, shaky breath, using her hand to smooth back a piece of food-drenched hair. Her eyes were filled with such incredibly raw pain, I was rendered speechless. My heart wrenched as I stared at her.
What is going on here?
“When I was twelve, one of my dad’s friends came into my room one night while I was sleeping.” Oh no. Ah, Christ. I continued to stare at her, unwilling and unable to look away from her wide, pained eyes.
She had failed at making dinner, and this was her reaction. Why? Why had a simple failure brought such deep pain to the forefront? Was she trying to shock me again with something from her past she believed made her ugly and unlovable? I stood frozen, waiting for her to voice another thing she thought would do the trick and make me feel the same disgust for her she obviously felt for herself. Tell me, sweet girl. I can handle it.
She took a deep breath that made her whole body shiver. “We were together.” She raised her chin as if bracing for a reaction. I gave her none. You were raped, Eloise. Why don’t you call it that? A deep tremble seemed to move through her again, her shoulders raising and her eyes clenching shut for a moment. “He would bring me candy and then laugh and say he guessed he was my s-sugar d-daddy.”
Sugar.
Sorry, my lap-dance card is full for the night, sugar.
So what brings a nice guy like you to this den of sin, sugar?
Oh God. Oh Christ. It felt like someone was squeezing my guts in a vise. He was old enough to be her father, and she was just a little girl.
She took another heaving breath, and it was everything I could do not to reach for her. But I knew my gesture would stop her words, and right now, she needed to get them out. “My dad caught us one time and I thought … I thought … well, he didn’t c-care. He never cared. It went on for a year and then he s-started dating some woman across town a-and stopped coming over to my dad’s house. It was wrong, I guess, but when he stopped coming to me, I went to his h-house and begged him not to stay away. I begged him.” She spat it out as if it were poison. “I thought he loved me and so I begged him not to leave me. He did anyway, of course, but not before one last roll in the hay to remember me by.” A sound came up from her throat, not quite a moan, not quite a sob, but something that spoke of deep devastation, a sound I imagined had been lodged inside her for far too long.
It felt as if my body, my soul, was radiating pain. She gave me a shocked glance as if she had just come out of some strange fog and then turned abruptly and limped away, faster than I’d ever seen her move, as if the pain in her leg was the least of her concerns in that moment.
Oh Jesus. Now that she couldn’t hear me, I groaned out loud from the pain of her confession, the way in which she’d made herself starkly vulnerable in front of me. She’d been used—abused—so horribly and hated herself for mistaking it for love. God, sweet Eloise. I knew that type of pain, knew what it felt like to be so desperate for love that you’d try to find it anywhere. Create it if you had to. But the difference between her and me was that I had never been abused and thrown away by the people who were supposed to love me and keep me safe. My heart ached for her. And I realized again what a tender soul she was, how she wanted love so badly she had even tried to find it in the ugliest of places, in the first attention she’d ever received from a man.