Back pressed against the door, Astoria absently sliced her nail through the envelope’s seal. A beat and the sound of an engine turning over, tires squeaking against pavement filtered through the heavy wood. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, but didn’t move until the engine faded into the distance. Brow furrowed she pried the stack of pages free, so tightly packed they unfolded on their own. Her eyes bounced over the first page. A long exhale deflated Astoria’s chest as her fingers strummed through the corners of a dozen pages. Crinkled, crisp, the date in Kevin’s scrawl peeking out from each. A particularly fretted over page suck instead flipped. Fretted over, she assumed, wrinkled and smudged. Secrets. Did they matter anymore? Gnawing the inside of her lip, she flipped the page open.
Her stomach lurched, chill chased after the blood that drained from her face. Pages snapped shut and she stormed back into her office. “Fedex,” she offered as blunt explanation to her monitor, dropping the letter out of view.
“Expecting any more interruptions of my time?” her bespectacled father didn’t look up from his ledger on the other side of the Skype call.
“Reschedule an international client because my daughter asked?” Samuel looked up over the edge of his glasses, “Astoria, you told me you were done with your little game of house.”
“You are not a child, do not speak like one,” he cut off her dismissive laugh.
“Conduct this meeting and consider your future with this company if I could replace you with an intern and tell no discernable difference.”
“Yes, sir,” she swallowed and gritted her teeth.
Hours later the letter still sat ignored, but not forgotten. Work finished, dinner with friends, as her keys clinked against the counter half a thought of ‘Kevin should be home by now’ jutted through her mind. Without distractions or excuses the letter again drew all her attention. Still, it took another hour before she drug herself into the office again. Another twenty minutes of sitting in bed, flicking through the TV, nursing wine before picking up the stack of pages from the mattress.
She forced herself to read from the beginning. Not a quick skim and not shuffle through pieces ignoring context. He deserved that, she forced herself to remember, context. Context for raping people- “Jesus Christ…” she gasped to herself, realizing the train of thought she gave voice to. Already she hadn’t retained anything she read, started over, forced herself to read every word. And a third time before she finally calmed the twisting in her stomach enough to turn the page.
Once she started reading, she couldn’t stop. A lifetime falling apart scrawled before her. She could almost fool herself into believing this wasn’t the life of the man she fell in love with… save for the repeated regret naming his family, herself… and her own distant memories that verified reality.
That first deployment, she first met him soon after. A sixteen year-old who couldn’t believe her mother has schlepped her to a backwater town and every step she took was as though she was sifting through a minefield of dung. Taunting him relentlessly because he was charming in uniform and she could… when he had just killed a girl maybe four years younger then her, would have been in school with her…
Her lingering thoughts dashed with the turn of each page. She read and forgot to breathe, powering through, dread forcing her eyes to continue. The pages rattled in her hands before she finished, through the second time, by the third she could hardly see the words- his words. It was so much. Things she knew and didn’t, regrets for the past, regrets for the future he wished they’d had, organized as such across the bed spread. Knees drawn to her chest, Astoria eyes the pile that was beyond her scope.
In spite of the night drawing into early morning and climate control, her face flushed. Uncomfortable heat licked down her chest and soured her stomach as she picked up that section of the letter again.
So wrong… thought killing a kid was the worst thing I’d do… the guards… raped people… someone they set on me…
Anger flooded through her. Pages crumpled in fists only surviving when she threw them down onto of the rest. There was so fucking much. Texts started and deleted to Jay, Lina, even Rab. Instead she scooped up the letter, sorted the pages to face the same direction, remembered the dates. The first page suck out like a little omen, almost three months ago.
Her stream of consciousness flooded into the text to Kevin before she realized, stopped herself. Nothing good happened after three am and this deserved… an incredulous scoff puffed from her. Her jaw clenched, pulsing with each swallow as she ground out a single sentence.
[Sms; Kevin] Thank you for trusting me with this.
A long exhale dropped her shoulders. But her lip caught between her teeth as she found herself typing a second message, thumb hovered for a long minute before hitting send.
[Sms; Kevin] I will call you when I can.
Curled around a pillow, her eyes closed to soothe the burning pressure behind them.
A screaming alarm jolted Astoria awake. Confusion replaced relief. A pillow not a chest, fist full of paper not uniform, the scent of canvas and starch vanished as she scrambled for her phone. 6:34…am? Not the alarm?
It took a bumbling few seconds before she recognized the gate bell. Warning bells blared through her groggy mind. A year on without bikers or worse cropping up at odd hours, she still pulled the revolver from the beside. Fingers trembling Astoria clicked on the monitor just inside her front for. “Christ-“ she exhaled visibly deflating, bracing herself on the door frame. It was her idiot PA waving urgently up at the camera.
Gun stashed in a near by drawer she buzzed the girl in. When the key rattled on her front door Astoria wrenched the door open. “Good to see you still have the key.”
“Of course I do- you look like shit Astoria. Why are you up so early?”
“Gate alarm is loud,” she stared blankly, “You have the code for a reason.”
“Didn’t work for some reason this morning. Did you change it? Got your coffee and your schedule, starting at nine today by the way. You have-“
Snatching the coffee Astoria sludged to her living room and collapsed into an armchair. She did change the code. The fog of only two hours of sleep fell and the late night tumbled back. Bitter and petty maybe, but the code was changed the minute it occurred to her Kevin could let himself right back in. She couldn’t handle it, the possibility hadn’t gone back to Redding like she assumed. Claire followed rattling off things Astoria didn’t hear.
“You’re late,” she cut Claire off.
“Well yeah. I told you, gate code didn’t work.”
“Cancel all my appointments for the week.”
“What the hell is going on Astoria?”
“How much do I pay you? Just do it.”
Claire’s jaw dropped dumbfounded. It seemed like they had gotten close over the passed year at least she felt more friend then personal assistant. Astoria’s eyes screwed closed, nails dug into the corners of her eyes trying to banish too many thoughts and sleep, drawing on the coffee. Claire was still utterly bewildered when Astoria’s eyes opened.
“Off you go,” she grumbled.
“Right… um… I’ll let you know if there’s any issues.”
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