Page 4 of Free to Believe
Finishing the last of my wine, I stand up and call for Mugsy. When he doesn’t come to me, I go in search of him. He’s still in his bed by the door. I frown. More and more, he’s been sleeping downstairs. Grabbing a blanket, I cover him with it. I crouch down and rub my face next to his. “Sleep tight, my handsome man.”
He licks my face.
“I’ll see you in the morning unless you need to go out before then.” Standing, I walk over to the kitchen stove and leave the light on in case Mugsy needs it.
Once I reach the second floor of my home, some of my stress leeches out from me. Here’s where I spend hours when I’m at home alone, either in my converted climate-controlled attic, where racks of vintage designer clothing I’ve collected hang waiting to be worn by me or one of my family members, or in my art space. Filled with light, it takes up the space over my three-car garage and contains an industrial-size sewing machine and multiple shelves filled with the most luxurious fabric I can get my hands on. In reality, the house is way too huge for one person, but I need the storage. We just can’t keep all of this at the mansion where we operate Amaryllis Events.
I don’t linger, but I do wander through the rooms, appreciating the bold colors of the materials against the gray walls. Everything pops against the gray better, even white. They taught me that in design school. And when Cass, Phil, and I were living in Aunt Dee’s old trailer, I didn’t have the room to set up an all-gray studio. With a small smile of remembrance, I remember running down to Publix to get boxes, Hobby Lobby to get Styrofoam, and the cheapest light gray fabric they had at JoAnn’s just so I could set up a corner of my room with a makeshift studio.
Even if I’ll never be one of the greats, I’ve still come so far. And I appreciate that. I really do. It’s just hard to not want more when it’s all I can have.
Even once I’m in bed, it’s a while before I find sleep. Tossing and turning, I deliberate not just Bryan but the past and how it’s influenced my future. I know the longer I’m engaged to him, the more I’m pulling into myself and away from those who care about me because I can sense their concern about my growing unhappiness. And that is the absolute last thing I want. I think about the life I was born into, the life led, and the life I’ve been blessed with.
After my parents were shot and killed in front of me when I was seven, I shut down inside. I went from being a vivacious, spoiled little princess living in rows of matched suburban McMansions to living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere South Carolina. Aunt Dee, God rest her soul, used the microscopic income she earned plus the little money left over after settling my parents’ estate to create a warm home for me. It was safe. It had food. It had love. But what she didn’t have money for was more extensive therapy.
And Lord knows I needed it. Then. Now, I have everything under control.
I was barely seven when it happened. One moment, I was happily dressing my new dolls in my playroom at one end of the house. The next, men dressed in all black with ski masks were dragging me down our long carpeted hall with a hand clamped over my mouth to muffle my screams. Yanking me by my hair and arms, they threw me in front of my father. Words I didn’t understand were spat at him as they forced me to my knees. My little body shivered as I felt a heavy weight jammed against the back of my neck, cold and brutal. I didn’t understand what was happening. And then I looked to the side and screamed. And screamed.
My mother’s body lay on the ground not moving. A pool of red began to spread out beneath her.
“No!” I screamed. “Mommy!” Shoving away from the cold metal, uncaring what could happen, I scrambled over to her. My hands landed in the stickiness. “Mommy, we have to get you help!” My mommy was supposed to be beautiful in ball gowns and jewels. She wasn’t supposed to be bruised and hurt. I started screaming again.
“Shh, Emily. Hush now. It’ll—” She paused to cough, a little trickle of blood coming out of her nose. I used my shirt to wipe it away. “—be okay.”
“Promise?”
The next thing I knew I was being dragged back, this time in front of the bad men. I heard my mother’s whisper. “Don’t let them hurt Emily, Stephen.” Then I saw her head fall to the side.
Looking ill, my father whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Right before he looked over my head and said, “Do it.”
At the time, I thought he meant for them to shoot him. During the years that passed, Aunt Dee confessed the police believed my father meant to buy his own life with mine. As he had my mother’s. But my own actions saved my life.
Throwing myself forward, I spread myself in front of my father and shrieked, “Noooo! You can’t take him too!” Right before a whistle whizzed past me and hit my father with a thud.
“What disgusts me is your beautiful little girl was willing to sacrifice herself to save you. She is worth saving. You are not.” The killer, whose face I never saw but whose eyes I would never forget, pulled me away from my father and mother. “You know how to call emergency, yes?” he asked in a heavily accented voice.
Gasping for my next breath, I nodded.
“Then go call them now.” Turning me toward the kitchen, I gave him one more look. “Go, now.”
I turned and ran. But when my slippery feet hit the kitchen tile, I slipped as I came to an abrupt stop. Miss Meg’s body was on the floor much like Mommy’s was. I let out a wail of pain even as I picked up the phone to dial 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Help…” It was all I could whisper.
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Please speak up.”
“Help me, please. Come now.”
Those were the last words I would speak for almost four years.
The rest was a blur—a movie played on fast forward. I remember the front door splintering as the police swarmed the house, but I hardly remember being picked up and taken from my home. I remember they brought me glass after glass of water in the police station—but I don’t remember how long I was there. I vaguely remember being woken from an unwitting slumber on a cot one of the policewomen found to find my Aunt Dee standing in front of me, her hand clasped over her mouth with tears streaming down her face. She knelt by my side and stroked the bloodstained hair away from my face. “We’ll get through this, Emily. I promise you.”
I blinked at her, all my words gone in the last pleas I made on the phone. I became silent in a world that no longer deserved my voice because silence doesn’t argue. Maybe my silence may have saved the people I loved. Silence doesn’t hurt.
“Go back to sleep, baby. I have to deal with the police before we can…well, before we can move forward,” she said brusquely.
