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She shrugged and turned her head away.
Gwen called to say that Dave’s adoption paperwork was finally complete after over two weeks and getting the go-ahead from Dr. Robert that she was finally clear of the malignant mass in her brain. It would be an understatement to say that Lena was quite happy with the news.
She was no longer sick, and being a mother was just around the corner.
She laughed and sobbed, and then she decided to have a party. There was a modest celebration at the orphanage to celebrate the happy occasion when the adoption papers were given to her. Gwen had said that she could take Dave home the next morning, and everyone around her seemed happy.
Lena had asked her close friends and coworkers to join in the fun, and she had also called Kellen to invite him over. She expected he would come because he was still in Velden and was sleeping in a motel, even though she hadn’t seen him since they last met in court.
She didn’t know how many times she had peered over her shoulder at the entrance during the whole party. But Kellen never showed up. And in her heart, she realized that everything was coming apart.
As she sat under the starry sky in front of the orphanage building, she tried in vain to get her thoughts together and do something with them.
Damien’s query broke the silence: “Did he even call you back and say he wasn’t coming?”
She shook her head to say no.
“Hey, Dami!” Lola said too loudly as she suddenly appeared in front of them.
Damien groaned and ran a hand down his face. “Lola, I told you not to call me that.”
Lola let out an annoyed sigh as if she were the one who should be outraged. “Ryan says he’s going to take me away from your store and make me his personal tailor. He’s even offering me a lot of money for the job. What do you think? Are you ready to lose your best employee?”
Damien smiled and pulled out his phone. He started to type on it. “Who am I to stop you from being stolen by him?”
He was now more focused on the phone than on the angry woman who was virtually jumping on her feet.
Lola’s eyes blazed with anger. She glanced at him for a long second, which made Damien feel uncomfortable when he saw it.
“Fine then!” she eventually said, stamping her foot on the ground and hurting the grass below. Then she turned around and went, adding over her shoulder, “You’re a bore anyway, and it’s more fun to beat Ryan up.”
Crushes can come and go, but the thin line between love and hatred is sometimes worth the risk.
Lola’s loud and quick footsteps as she ran straight at Ryan made both Lena and Damien clutch their breath.
Damien’s fingers suddenly wrapping around Lena’s wrist made her let out her breath. She turned her perplexed gaze to him and saw that he was getting up, his expression full of determination.
“Damien…”
He said, “Let’s go.”
“Where to?” she asked in shock and fear as he pulled her up. And before she knew it, she was being rushed out of the orphanage. He held her wrist tightly the whole time, and he dragged her along with him as he walked and ran.
She asked him a couple more times, but he didn’t answer.
As a taxi drove over at the curb, they got to the sidewalk in time. Lena’s perplexity only grew as he walked toward the cab with her.
“Damien, your car is parked just two feet away. Why is this taxi here? Can you please explain what’s going on?” She dug her heels into the ground to make them both stop.
Damien turned his back. He gazed at her in an odd way by tilting his head to the side. “Because you need to go to him,” he added. “Go talk to Kellen.”
Lena looked at Damien for a long time before shaking her head softly to say no.
He only grinned. “You know you need to. You both need this before the time comes when you can’t anymore.”
Always the smart friend.
Lena was breathing heavily now. She wanted to do it, yet didn’t want to do it at the same time. She was locked in a mystery. It was sad because she already knew what the last answer would be.
We can sometimes see where we need to go, but we’re not bold enough to take a step toward it. Thank God for angels that push us to move when things are hard.
Damien gripped her shoulders and told her to get in the cab. He then closed the door lightly. He urged the driver to get going.
Lena couldn’t believe how quickly everything transpired.
Her fingers stung from how hard she held onto the rolled-down window.
Damien started to rush next to the car as the motor started to grumble, and the car started to move. Lena gazed at him with desperation, her brows furrowed, wanting to cry but not being able to.
She screamed at him, “Why are you running?” so he could hear her above the sound of the motor.
Damien laughed, and the sound was full of feelings. “I don’t know.”
The cab was going quicker now, and it seemed as if Damien had gone crazy because he was moving his feet faster, too. Lena stuck her head out the window and looked at him while she pressed herself against the door. She was going to tell him to stop running, but then a white blur came dashing from the other side and smacked Damien, who didn’t see it coming. Lena heard their twins screaming. She turned her head as far as it would go to see the horrible sight.
A woman in a white wedding dress lay on top of Damien’s thrashing body on the side of the road.
Lena gasped. She wanted to see what would happen next, but her cab had already rushed by and gone to where she needed to go.
*****
The motel’s manager, an old guy with gray hair and a weak frame, informed Lena, “He hasn’t left his room in three days.” He coughed a few times and then spoke again, making his eyebrows furrow even more.
“My staff tried to find out what the hell was going on, but he wouldn’t let anyone in. I was really going to call the cops right now. What if he’s a criminal or a drug addict hiding in my motel?”
“He could be sick. Have you thought about that for once?” she said, trying not to show how angry she was by clinching her teeth.
He just said, “That too,” with a raised eyebrow.
Lena ran to Kellen’s room after learning the room number and acquiring the key to that room, which the management kept in case of emergencies. She thought it would come in helpful.
The motel was an old structure with four floors. The prices for the accommodations were really low here. That was what the sign at the front desk said. As Lena walked down the dark hallway, she thought of the most likely cause for that. It wasn’t hard for her to figure out the cleanliness standards or the absence of them.
She got splinters in her palm and scraped off some flesh twice while grasping the banister and climbed up the creaking stairs as fast as she could.
She didn’t stop for a second when she got to the room, even though she had a stitch in her stomach and was breathing hard from racing so fast. It may also have been the terror that was swirling through her belly like the blades of a blender.
She took a deep breath and turned the key in the lock, getting ready for whatever was coming. The metal doorknob was rusted and frigid to the touch. She held her breath and pushed the door open.
It was dark.
She reached for the switch on the wall and flipped it, but it didn’t work.
When did the lights go out in this room? She pondered, her gut twisted with worry.
Through the small, floor-to-ceiling crack that she thought was the door to a balcony, a little light, dull and disappointing came in. The fact that there was a light there made the darkness next to it appear much stronger.
The shadows are what make it spooky, not the utter black.
She held onto her tiny handbag with her fingers. She nervously pressed it on her hip, where the cloth practically dug into her bone. She went inside, leaving the door wide behind her. She could immediately feel her eyes getting used to the gloom. Now, she could see the shapes of the furnishings better. To her left, in the middle of the room, was a single bed. Next to it was a medium-sized tea table.
Before the bed, a chair fell over next to it. She gently moved up to it and peered at the little door on the right wall. She thought it might be the closet.
She could see the pool of water flowing from the balcony from where she was standing in the middle of the room.