Page 19 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
God, it’s like he heard me.
I look over to Shane.
“Do you think it will be? Do you really think he’d hurt me?” I have no idea why I’m asking. Shane and Ambrose met once, and they didn’t exactly develop any kind of bond.
“Are you being serious?” Miranda scowls. “Don’t be so stupid!”
This is the first conversation in years that she wants to have with me, and she starts it with an insult.
My eyes move to her, to the baggy sweater dress she’s wearing on this relatively sunny day.
“Of course, he’d hurt you. He’s a killer.” Her narrowed stare watches me with disapproval. “Have you forgotten the state your parents were found in?”
My mouth falls open in pure disbelief that she’d ask me something like that.
“Really? You think I could forget seeing my parents lying in their own blood?”She’ll never know that I have. I only know this is how it happened because Shane brings it up every anniversary.
It’s more painful than it is comforting, but maybe he means well.
Maybe he thinks I remember.
I don’t want to remember.
Any of it.
But it’s clawing at me, dragging me back in time for the first time ever. And then I’m in my house, trying to piece together broken memories.
A flash shows Ambrose in my room. I sit up in bed. The sheets pool at my waist, but my focus is on his face and the scars that give him a permanent smile. He’s deathly pale, which isn’t his natural coloring. He holds a phone in a bloody hand, and it looks like the one that belongs to Dad. My phone buzzes on my nightstand, and he nods for me to answer it.
There’s a sadness in his eyes that almost pulls me from my bed.
Another flash before I get to him, and then I’m crouched at the side of my parents’ bodies, screaming hysterically. A bloody hand locks in mine, sticking us together, trying to pull me from the scene. I stare down at my phone in my lap as it falls tothe ground. The bang is white noise. The message that came from Dad’s phone, but not from Dad, stares up at me on the bloodstained screen.
We have to leave now.
I whip around, my vision blurred with tears, barely making out Ambrose and his hand in mine, pulling me from the reason for my despair.
Another flash has a cop in my face, asking questions I can’t answer.
Then another, and Ambrose is in the police car, ready for the drive away. It was the last time I saw him.
“Lancie, come on.” Shane’s hand touches my thigh, pulling me back to reality. “Let’s not get heated over that fucking monster.”
The nickname I hate lingers in my head as Ambrose’s perfect face morphs into William’s frown.
He never looked like a monster, even with all those scars.
Blinking him away completely, I bat Shane away and shoot him a warning glance, just in case the flush on my cheeks doesn’t alert him to my building anger.
“I don’t want to be touched right now, and this isn’t a conversation I want to have over dinner.”
“You’re not even eating.”
“I don’t feel well.” Once again, stomach issues prevent anyone from asking questions.
“As soon as I’m done, we’ll hit the road.” Shane returns to his steak, his knife sawing through the semi-raw meat until blood leaks out on his plate.
Avoiding their eyes on me from the other side of the table, Miranda and William’s lingering stares make me feel as if theyare waiting for me to say something. So, despite my knowing it’ll annoy Shane, I do.
