Page 10 of Broken Promises
“Thank you for telling me everything, Rhys. I appreciate you telling me the truth, but I’m not your concern anymore.”
Turning on my heels, I grabbed my purse and car keys as I left the kitchen and walked to the front door. For weeks, I’d felt like I was going crazy. I found myself looking over my shoulder, feeling like someone was watching me. Turned out I wasn’t crazy, but I was a little pissed—not that he was watching me, but that I was clueless to it happening.
After locking the house behind me, I got into my car and cranked it up. The outside camera facing the driveway was pointed directly at my face, and I stared into it for a moment before backing the car out of the driveway and pulling away. Ineeded some space to think, and my entire house being under surveillance gave me no privacy.
I had no destination in mind, and for the next hour and a half, I drove out of Atlanta and into the mountains of north Georgia. Granny and I used to go on drives to look at the leaves changing colors and often found beautiful little pull-offs to park. We’d talk for hours about everything and nothing, and it was times like this, when I felt like everything was spinning out of control, that I missed her the most.
I found an empty pull-off halfway up the mountain, so I parked my car, set the emergency brake, and got out. The air was warming up from the crisp morning as I took a seat on a rocky outcropping overlooking a valley. Exhaling deeply, I lifted my face to the sky and closed my eyes, remembering all the advice Granny had given me over the years.
Never be a quiet woman when given the chance to speak.
Don’t let a man step on your dreams to make his come true.
Laugh more than you cry, dance more than you sit, and love today more than yesterday.
Trust your gut and don’t be afraid to walk away.
Her advice wasn’t always so uplifting, but no one wants to hear the wisdom of a seventy-year-old woman regarding sex, men, anger, and forgiveness. You’d think you would, but trust me, you don’t want to know about old people’s sex lives. Unless you are one, I guess. In that case, get your freak on, gramps.
I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting here, but being away from the noise and bustle of the city gave me a chance to relax. It wasn’t until that moment I realized how stressed I’d been for so long. Not just over my ordeal, but losing Granny, selling our home, and moving, and learning that my suspicions may have been correct seemed to cause a dam to break.
When the first tears fell, I tried to wipe them away, but it took moments before they were streaming down my face. It wasn’t asobbing cry but a cathartic one. Every tear washed away another piece of guilt, shame, anger, and sadness that had been filling me up, giving way to a sliver of hope.
Hope for what, I had no idea. But it was there, nonetheless.
I heard a vehicle pull into the space next to my car and quickly used my shirt to wipe my face. Turning my gaze over my shoulder, I shook my head as I saw who was parked next to me. Standing up, I brushed off the back of my pants before walking up the slight incline to the two parking spaces.
The second vehicle was on my passenger’s side, and I walked to the driver’s side of my car and looked over the roof. “Following me like some kind of stalker is going to piss me off.” I unlocked the car and opened the door before asking, “How did you find me, by the way?”
Rhys raised his sunglasses to the top of his head as he looked out the driver’s door at me. “I put a tracker on your car the night I brought you back to your granny, and after your statement, I was worried about you. I’m not trying to be a stalker, but you have to understand it’s not safe for you to be out here alone until we have answers.”
“I’ll share with you one thing you don’t know about me. I don’t like to be backed into a corner.” With those parting words, I got into my car and backed out of the space.
If there was a tracker on the car, he would know where I was, but at that moment, I needed to get away from him before I showed my low-class attitude to him. Yelling, cussing, and acting a fool were things Granny frowned upon, but it was what I’d experienced the first six years of my life, so it was buried way down deep inside me.
He was pushing my buttons, and the madder I got, the harder I fought the urge to throw myself at him. Even with what I’d experienced in that house, I still had needs and desires. They seemed different than before, but I wasn’t afraid of sexlike it seemed a lot of survivors were. That’s another reason I left therapy. The guilt I had wasn’t the same as the guilt most survivors carried.
Refusing to analyze the whole situation, I maneuvered the windy roads and state highways until I was back on the interstate. Traffic wasn’t that bad for a Saturday afternoon, and I got home in a reasonable amount of time. As I pulled up, I looked at the camera and shook my head. Turning off the car, I got out and unlocked the house.
Securing the door behind me, I glanced at the cameras mounted inside the house and got an idea. Smiling to myself, I walked into the small office and opened the desk drawer to retrieve a few items. I began whistling as I returned to the living room and grabbed the step stool from the side wall before placing it under the first camera.
It took less than ten minutes to tape the black pieces of cardstock over the lenses of all the cameras, and when I got to the last one, I looked directly into it as I spoke.
“You’ll still be able to hear what’s going on around here, but you don’t get to peek into my life anymore. Back the fuck off, Rhys. I’m not someone who needs saving.”
After my mini rant, I climbed the step stool one last time and taped up the last camera. Another brilliant idea came to me, and I returned to the office and grabbed my noise cancelling headphones. Slipping them on, I returned to the living room and picked up the small radio I had on the bookshelf. Turning it on, I raised the volume until I could just hear it over the headphones and walked away, ensuring whoever was listening in had as much Taylor Swift as they could handle.
Because fuck them, that’s why.
No one had the right to invade my privacy, and if wasn’t for the ominous truth to Rhys’s statement, I would disconnect the system entirely.
But until they discovered if I was a Lenkov or not, the potential for danger could be behind every corner.
I didn’t know how long I’d danced around the kitchen, unpacking boxes and stowing items under the counters and inside the cabinets, when I thought I heard a noise. Pulling the headphones away from my ears, I listened over the loud music for anything out of the ordinary, but when my favorite song came into rotation, I removed the headphones and continued to unpack with a shrug.
The dishwasher was finished, and I was swapping loads when I paused and listened closely but still didn’t hear anything. Guessing it was my nerves and subconscious playing tricks on me, I returned to my task, happy I was making headway in unpacking.
Once the dishwasher was running again, I poked my head out of the kitchen and looked toward the front door. The music changed from one song to another, and when I didn’t hear anything again, I silently chastised myself for being paranoid. Shaking my head, I grabbed another box from the dining room and carried it back to the kitchen counter.
