Page 16 of The Attraction File

EIGHT

Edgar

May 30, Fifteen Years Ago

Alone in darkness but anger helped me see.

My fingers traced the cool metal that lay on the seat next to me as I sat in my ten-year-old truck at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night.

I should start back up the engine and leave. Go to that party King mentioned. Find some girl willing to fool around with me, willing to help me forget, and leave what was inside that house behind me. Mr. Marks warned me not to come here without him. But I didn’t listen.

If he came then he would know what I took from his locked desk drawer. The one that King thought was so cool when we first met during my senior year in high school after he transferred from New York. The one he showed me when his dad wasn’t around.

More than being caught with something that wasn’t mine, I didn’t want his dad or anyone to stop me.

No one knew I was here. Not even the person in the house I couldn’t take my eyes off of. If Damien Rosen knew, he’d run.

I kept my eyes locked on that small two-story house. My wish, that Damien would walk out that door. Or better yet, appear at a window and I could get a clear shot. But there was no movement in the house yet. Just a few lighted windows.

The house itself wasn’t much to look at. It had some siding missing and there wasn’t much landscaping in front. Just grass and a big tree. I wondered how long they had lived there.

My thoughts didn’t last long on their length of stay.

Why this woman? King’s dad showed me a picture of Damien with her and she was attractive, but so was my mom. My mom had more to offer. Much more than a rundown house.

I’d been looking for Damien for the past five years. What he did to my family, to my mother, was unforgivable. My brother had to quit college. He came home to work and support us. I was still in high school at the time, but I took any job I could get to help pay the bills.

When King told me his dad was a private detective, I couldn’t believe my luck. It took a while to convince Mr. Marks that I needed his help. But the more he got to know me, the more he realized I wasn’t just some kid with a grudge against a guy who broke my mom’s heart. He understood Damien Rosen had done real damage to my family.

When Mr. Marks told me earlier today he had an address for Damien, who now went by Shane Reynolds, I wanted to run and tell my mother. I drove home from Mr. Marks’ house to find my mother using duct tape to fix a cracked plastic folding chair she had for the dining room. I told her I would run out and get her a new one, to throw the broken one away.

I remember my heart sinking when she said, “Honey, we can’t afford new things anymore. It’s fine, I’ll just tape it. See, good as new.”

Only it wasn’t. It looked like something you would find in someone’s trash pile waiting for the garbage man to pick up. It wasn’t that I felt entitled to spend money on anything I wanted. It was that I didn’t want her to cry every time a bill came in the mail. Or see the fear in her eyes as she looked at her bank statement.

I wanted Damian to pay for what he took from us.

I started to tell my mom but her response was swift and strong. “Never mention that man’s name again. He is dead to us. Let’s just move past that and focus on the future, Edgar. Like your brother Jacob. He finally got an investor for his company, Mimir.”

Of course, Jacob was the dream son. When mom was in trouble, he swooped in and saved the day. He dated beautiful women and didn’t just have fun with them, but stuck around. Mom kept telling me that she thought Jacob was going to propose any day to his current girlfriend, Danni.

Good for him. But Jacob wasn’t me. Sure, I would love to have investors interested in a company I made, a beautiful woman who I could worship forever, and my mom’s adoration. But we can’t have everything we want in life, now can we?

I decided, after my mom told me not to mention Damien again, to keep this information to myself. That’s why I took Mr. Marks gun and told no one I was coming here. Maybe if I made Damien beg for forgiveness, then my mom would look at me the way she did my brother.

Glancing up toward the house, I noticed something hanging from the second story window. A pair of legs.

Then a large bag hit the grass as it fell from that window. Everything happened so fast, I thought whoever was attached to those legs had fallen. But that person had swung themselves to the tree and climbed down like an animal in a forest.

When they emerged from under the branches the street light hit long, blonde hair. While it was dark, the street light hit the girl in such a way that for a moment, I thought she was naked. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I drank in every curve of her body.

That cheesy pick-up line popped into my head about an angel falling from the sky.

I shook my head, realizing she was wearing light-colored pants and a matching sweater. She wasn’t naked and even though I couldn’t make out the features in her face, she was enthralling. I tried to rationalize that my quickening heartbeat was due to nerves of being caught watching her. Not because I wanted to know her.

Her head tilted back as if she was taking a deep breath and I noticed how young she was, maybe a few years younger than me. That wasn’t the woman Damien was dating, but she looked similar. I guessed the girl must be the daughter Mr. Marks mentioned the woman had.

A chill rippled down my back as she picked up the bag and glanced back at the house. I could only see part of her expression, but if the way she wiped at her face and how she held herself was any indication, I suspected she was making a very hard decision. It didn’t take a genius to know Damien and then see a young girl at night with a big bag sneak out of her home, to realize she was running away.

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