Untouched Read online

“It’s not my place to tell you about your sister. Assuming I knew. Which I probably don’t,” the woman said in a quiet voice that belied her prickly exterior, and Alexa thought she saw something like understanding flash through the other woman’s eyes. “But I remember you.”

  Before Alexa could even process that life changing statement, the lavender glasses were off the crooked nose, the flowers tucked in the crook of Mrs. Gunderson’s arm, soggy paper and all. “See that you don’t make any noise after seven. I go to bed early.”

  Then the woman was gone, the bells chiming merrily as she shoved her way through the door. Alexa was left alone with more questions than answers.

  It wasn’t until she closed up the shop for the night that she realized Mrs. Gunderson hadn’t even paid for her flowers.

  Chapter Five

  Alexa’s cell phone rang as she set up the small portable easel and a fresh canvas on the tiny balcony of the apartment over Estelle’s Blooms. The theme music from Jaws blared in the scorching evening air, announcing that it was her mother on the other end of the line, and though she was ashamed of the thought, for a split second Alexa considered letting the call go through to voice mail.

  She didn’t like keeping secrets, especially not from her mother, with whom she told almost everything. But a little voice in her head was holding her back from spilling everything.

  “Mom.” Telling herself not to be ridiculous, Alexa finally snatched up her phone and accepted the call.

  She was not going to avoid her own mother. Even if part of her was wondering if her mother could possibly have known about this secret sister situation.

  “Hello, Alexa.” To some, Tracy might sound cool, but Alexa knew that was just her mother’s way—she wasn’t given to grand emotional gestures. “It’s good to hear your voice. I thought you might have called when you got in.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words were said automatically, even as a trickle of anger broke through. Lord, but she was tired of these little guilt trips. “I was a bit… overwhelmed… when I arrived.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re remembering things?” Her mother’s voice hurt her ears, more forcefully than the other woman usually spoke, and Alexa winced.

  “Ow. No, Mom. Not really.” Tucking the phone between her shoulder and cheek, Alexa began to set out her tubes of paints, savoring the familiar but long missed surge of joy that never failed to appear when she sorted through the rainbow of colors. “Well...”

  “What?” Once again, her mother sounded more intense than she usually did. “What’s happened?”

  “Are you all right, Mom?” Alexa really wasn’t sure what to make of this. Tracy Cunningham just didn’t do excitable. “You sound a little… off.”

  “I’m fine,” Tracy snapped, and Alexa blinked in surprise, but before she could reply, Tracy continued, sucking in an audible breath. “I’m just… worried. That’s all. Worried about you away from home, after everything that happened.”

  “Oh, Mom.” As she so often was with her mother, Alexa felt torn. She loved her mother, absolutely she did. And she didn’t want to cause her any distress.

  But she was also an adult, something Tracy had a very hard time remembering. It seemed extreme, but Alexa suspected that if she gave the okay, her mother would have her live back home forever.

  The overprotectiveness came, Alexa knew, from an overly enhanced fear that harm would come to her, and the accident certainly hadn’t helped that. But Alexa wanted—needed—to move on.

  She couldn’t with her mother trying so desperately to wrap her in a cocoon.

  “The accident was a year ago, Mom,” Alexa reminded her mother gently, wincing a bit as she waited for the inevitable sarcasm meant to put her in her place. “We have to move on sometime.”

  There was a long silence, during which each listened to the other breathing. Then…

  “I just don’t know if I’m ready.” Tracy whispered so very quietly that Alexa wasn’t sure she heard her correctly. When she decided she had, she was so shocked that she blurted out the first thing in her mind.

  “I had a hard time driving into town. Outside one of the prisons.” She heard her mother suck in a breath, but pushed forward, her own voice loud and unfiltered. “There were these… these big long stretches of barbed wire. I don’t know if it was a memory, exactly. But it creeped me out.”

  “Alexa,” her mother breathed into the phone, sounding every bit as shocked as she likely was. “I do not want you spending time near the prisons. Do you hear me?”

  “Excuse me?” Irritation percolated just beneath her skin. “What I do with my time here is my own business.”

  Damn it, but what was it about her mother that made her feel—and act—sixteen again? She could have alleviated Tracy’s concerns, could have told her that she wasn’t near the prison at all. Instead, she felt the need to stomp her foot and declare her independence.

  There was silence for what felt like an hour but was probably only thirty seconds. Alexa balanced on the tightrope that defined her relationship with Tracy, but her mother spoke before she could decide which side to fall off on.

  “I’m sorry.” Her mother’s voice was harsh, and Alexa felt her mouth fall open, just a bit.

  Her mother rarely apologized. In fact, Alexa could probably count on one hand the number of times she remembered it happening in her life.

  “Mom, I—” But the other woman cut her off.

  “Are you feeling like painting at all yet?” Tracy continued as though the last minute of conversation hadn’t happened, and since Alexa didn’t much feel like delving into anything either, she followed her mother’s lead.

  “I was just setting them up, right now.” She couldn’t help but smile a bit—it felt so damn good, just to run her fingers over the blank canvas in front of her.

  “That’s wonderful, Alexa.” And her mother truly sounded like she meant it. “What are you going to paint?”

  “A view of the prison.” The words left Alexa’s mouth unbidden, but she instantly recognized them as true. She’d intended to paint a landscape, some of the mountains and desert that were visible here, on the edge of town. But as she surveyed her view, she realized that the prison-scape was, in fact, what was catching her artist’s eye.

  “I don’t understand why you would joke about something like that,” her mother snapped in return, and Alexa felt her spine stiffen. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

  Again, the harshness was surprising. Because it was so out of character, Alexa held her tongue against the surge of angry words that threatened to overflow.

  “I hated that town,” Tracy said finally, her tone suddenly weary, alarming Alexa further. “I’ve always hated it. Please come home soon.”

  Then her mother hung up, again something quite out of character. Alexa was left staring down at the dead line in her hand, wondering what had just happened.

  Likely her mother really was acting out because of her unease over Alexa being away from home after the accident. That was logical. Rational.

  Yet, when Alexa turned back to her blank canvas, to the paints that held so much potential joy, she couldn’t deny that the entire conversation had made her very, very uneasy.

  * * *

  The unsettling conversation with her mother had left Alexa both confused and a little bit manic. She often felt the latter when she was entering a period of deep creativity. It satisfied a starving part of her soul when she was able to sit on the small balcony and channel the energy into art, her fingers creating a slightly abstract silhouette of one of the prisons in the distance, with a band of barbed wire stretching across the foreground of the canvas as the focal point. It was decidedly darker than anything she’d ever painted before, but it truly represented where she was in her life at that moment.

  After the need to paint had eased, Alexa had been left with a different kind of urgency—an urge she hadn’t been able to ignore, the need to find something, anything that proved without a doubt that s
he was who Ellie said she was. A starting point to research her past from.

  She still didn’t understand why, but she knew, she just knew, that if that one mystery was solved, she’d be better able to lay to rest the blankness of her car accident—she’d have built a solid foundation on which to stand through the uncertainty.

  That determination was the only thing that carried her up into the hard to access, dim attic that made up the very top of the building that housed the flower shop and the apartment. As the sun sank lower in the sky—early evening by the time Alexa packed up her easel—she wished that she’d thought to come up here earlier.

  She could go back down into the apartment. There was nothing that said she had to do this exploring now. Or even that she had to explore at all.

  “Yes, I do.” Alexa ignored the fact that she was talking to herself, rationalizing that she wasn’t crazy until she started answering her own questions. Frowning at her own thoughts, she pushed forward through the dust.

  The small space was half organized, one side neatly lined with symmetrical plastic tubs. The other was jammed with cardboard boxes of varying shapes and sizes, some sealed, some torn open and half empty.

  A quick survey told Alexa that most of those cardboard boxes contained items of little interest—vintage Tupperware going yellow with age, clothing that spanned fashion of several decades and smelled of mothballs, tangled Christmas lights and glass tree decorations.

  Her heart sank as she looked.

  Ellie had made mention of finding Alexa’s birth certificate in Estelle’s attic. Alexa knew that part of her had hoped it would still be here—or more, other parts of her hidden past, ones that Ellie hadn’t yet come across.

  “Ugh.” Settling back on her heels, Alexa ran a hand through her hair with frustration. It was getting harder to see, and nothing of interest was jumping out at her.

  Maybe because they didn’t exist. Maybe because this attic now held nothing more interesting than the remnants of the life of an old woman she hadn’t known. After the strange conversation with Mrs. Gunderson, Alexa was pretty sure that woman was in fact her grandmother, but for all intents and purposes, she was still a stranger. A stranger wasn’t likely to give Alexa any clues to... anything.

  The small circular window was the only source of rapidly dwindling light, and the bars that crossed through it, combined with the angle of the light slanting in, created a massive, shadowy X on the far wall of the attic. Alexa felt her gaze drawn to that exact place, the shadows marking the spot—though what spot, she had no idea.

  She followed the footprints through the thick dust that covered the floor, judging by their size that they belonged to Ellie. Here, where she hadn’t looked before, was a smaller cardboard box that she hadn’t noticed before, the top carefully folded closed.

  Alexa’s heart leapt. This. Yes, this. She just had a feeling that it was going to yield something that would change her life.

  Carefully she knelt down, slid her fingers beneath the flaps and eased the box open.

  It was empty. Completely empty.

  “Shit.” Pinching her lips together, Alexa tried to get a grip on an unexplained tidal wave of emotions. Her mother had always encouraged control.

  She couldn’t. The last few days—it had all been too much. So she slammed her fist into the wall, savoured the brightness of the bite of pain, and did it again. And again.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit!” She didn’t know who she was anymore, and it looked like she wasn’t about to. In that moment she understood why it was so vitally important to her that she understand more about her father, about the people she came from.

  Not being able to remember a tragic event that had almost killed her—it had managed to steal some part of her identity, the security of knowing who she was a person.

  She’d given up hope of remembering the accident—and wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to, at any rate—but understanding all of this, this that had been kept secret from her?

  She thought that it might help to fill that hole inside of her, the one that almost dying had torn open. And that explained her absolutely bitter disappointment at not finding anything, not one single scrap of information that she could use as filler in that gaping chasm.

  “Damn it all to hell!” Alexa thumped her fist against the wall one last time, wincing, knowing that the flesh was going to bruise.

  From somewhere above dropped a leather bound book. It flopped gracelessly to the ground at her side, its impact raising a cloud of dust that made Alexa cough even as she let out a small shriek and jumped, clutching her hand to her chest.

  Looking up, in the direction the thing had fallen from, she noted a rafter arching above—the book must have been sitting on the plank of wood. She frowned down at the book.

  Odd place to keep something like that. Especially if it had been Estelle’s. In her experience, the elderly weren’t much given to climbing around like monkeys to store things.

  But... maybe this was that thing she’d been searching for so desperately? A folder holding her birth certificate? A photo album?

  Pulse accelerating, Alexa cautiously picked up the book and studied the outside—not real leather, like she’d thought, but vinyl of some kind. A skinny, generic looking binder with a slender piece of twine wrapped around it like a present.

  Her heart thudded in her chest as she unwrapped that piece of twine. She ignored it and turned back the black cover.

  The binder was jammed full of photocopied pages, single sided and haphazardly hole punched. The pages were crammed with spiky, blocky printing that Alexa had to squint to read. One line jumped out at her, and when she read it, then re-read it, certain she’d misunderstood, she felt a sickly spike of adrenaline surge through her flesh.

  I’ve been watching her.

  “No.” Heart pounding, she slammed the book shut, though even she thought that the reaction was a little bit extreme. But that one line—those four words—made her feel ever so faintly sick.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Alexa chided herself, fingers clutched tight on the book. It was just that—just a book. She didn’t even know yet if it had anything to do with her family, her background.

  Gritting her teeth, she opened the book, again settling on the first page, searching for the line that had made her jump.

  The words that surrounded it didn’t make any sense.

  My whole life, I’ve wondered what it would be like to have complete control over someone. To hold their life in my hands, mine to command, to control.

  I don’t want to wait any longer... but I’ve waited long enough that it has to be perfect. And I’ve chosen the one that I want.

  I’ve been watching her. And she doesn’t know.

  “What is this?” Alexa sank back on her heels, her muscles stiff with tension, making her movements jerky and awkward.

  This... well, it could be anything. But the fact that it had been hidden in Estelle’s attic—in Ellie’s attic—gave Alexa a very, very bad feeling.

  An echo of some memory chose that moment to waft its tendrils into her mind. Nothing concrete—and image of a woman, overlain with that barbed wire. Like she’d read about something like that in the paper, and this... journal... or whatever it was, had somehow connected to that distant thought.

  It creeped her right the hell out. She’d been searching for something, but this wasn’t it. Those few line she’d read... she didn’t think she wanted to read anymore.

  Alexa sat still for a few minutes, the book lying open in her lap, the lines she’d read seeming to float above the page.

  The wisps wouldn’t leave her alone, grabbing at her until she felt sick.

  That made up her mind. It didn’t matter why this book was here, in this attic.

  She wanted nothing more to do with it. And so she dragged over a folding ladder, climbed up to the top. Stretched to her full height, and replaced the book on the beam from which it had fell.

  It was none of her business. So she was goi
ng to pretend that she’d never found it at all.

  Chapter Six

  Nate woke up with his heart hammering against his rib cage, cold sweat drenching the sheets, and a raging thirst that water wouldn’t quench.

  Sucking in great ragged breaths, he stared up at the ceiling and tried to will his pulse to slow. Reminding himself that reaching for a bottle would only make him feel worse, no matter how clawing the need.

  Closing his eyes again, he let his heavy frame sink down into the mattress. It was lumpy, not very comfortable, but he hadn’t expected much more from the cheap motel where he’d chosen to live.

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford something better, a nice apartment or even a small house. He knew, deep down he knew, that he stayed here because he felt like he didn’t deserve more.

  Worse? It was the truth.

  The early morning light shining through the crack in the ugly patterned curtains was painfully bright, insisting on dispelling the darkness when every last part of him wanted to wallow in it. To let it twine its arms around him and pull him down, down into a place from which we would never climb out.

  The alcohol would help him with that—would add its welcoming weight and help him sink so far that he might never come back. Every time it happened, the depression descending, it was harder and harder to remember to live.

  The darkness was seductive. It was a daily battle to not have a bottle of whiskey sitting on his bedside table each day. He’d never considered himself an alcoholic, not really, but he’d scared himself enough to cut alcohol from his life, aware that it was making him worse and that the end of the day, he wasn’t the one who’d died.

  The reminder was enough to have him rolling over to his side, though the movement took way more energy than it should have.

  This was the decisive moment, the one that always came. Did he pull it together, try to stumble his way out of the grey? Or did he just close his eyes and let it all go?

  Shifting his weight, he stared aimlessly at the battered alarm clock that sat on the cheap bedside table. The red, blinking numbers told him that he needed to get up, get moving, but no matter what his brain commanded, his body was heavy as stone.