Inside Out

  It hadn’t always been so. Her parents, especially her mother, had supported her through the time she was in the hospital and had even gone to court with her and Erin when Bill had been put on trial.

  That had changed though.

  She pulled up at the curb before taking a bracing breath. Before leaving home earlier, she’d stood at her open medicine cabinet, looking at the bottle of pills her doctor had given her to deal with the anxiety from the attack. It would have been so easy to give in to the lure of the chemical calm they brought her, easier to keep her emotions tucked away and protected.

  She’d realized she was finally strong enough to open herself to her parents in hopes that they could find their way back to each other again and recapture that closeness they’d had before.

  She knew they loved her. They just didn’t understand why she hadn’t moved back home. Her insistence at being independent and getting her degree had been perceived as a rejection of them and their attempts to help. They’d wanted to give her money, but it would have dented their savings, and they needed it now that her father had retired after an injury he suffered on the job. They’d wanted her to live at home while finishing school so she wouldn’t have the pressure of paying rent and having to work at the café.

  How could she explain that paying her rent, having a job, finishing school, making her own choices to make her way in her life gave her the sense of control she needed after having none for so long? They didn’t understand it when she’d made an attempt to say so, to tiptoe around how every day for a few years, someone had made every possible choice for her until she had nothing. Had made her nothing. Bill had told her what to wear, how to look, who her friends were, what party to vote for. Just paying rent with the salary from her job meant something to her in a way she felt impossible to get across.

  The small house in the nearby working-class suburb of Des Moines was the one she’d grown up in. Her father had been an ironworker, her mom stayed at home with her and later on, she’d run a day care. James and Moira Tipton were good people in the best sense of the word. They worked hard and raised a family—Ella, the baby, and Michael, also known as Mick, who was seven years older.

  Her family had given her all the foundation she needed to build her life from the ashes, and she never wanted to forget that. Perhaps it was time to say that to them.

  She let herself in with her keys and hung her coat in the hall closet. The house smelled of garlic and onions and the hint of cinnamon she knew was a result of her mom’s apple pie. This was what had built the person she was. Home and hearth and people who loved you and were happy to see you even when things weren’t perfect.

  “Hey there!” she called as she came through into the family room adjacent to the kitchen where her mother currently stood at the stove. Her father was in his favorite chair, so she leaned down to hug and kiss him. “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hey, sweetheart.” He patted her hand and smiled. “Glad you’re here.”

  She leaned in. “Yeah? That ’cause Mom wouldn’t let you have any roast until I got here?”

  Her mother hooted with laughter. “She’s got your number, James. You’ve got some color in your cheeks today, Ella. Come and let me look at you.”

  Her father got up as she did, moving to the table.

  Placing her package on the counter first, Ella hugged her mother, letting the pleasure of that simple contact comfort her. No matter the strain she had with them at times, a hug could always make her feel better. Keep that connection despite their disagreements.

  “I brought a pie, but that was silly of me.” Ella carried the platter of meat to the table as her mom followed with bread still warm from the oven.

  “A man can always eat more pie.”

  “Not if his doctor told him to slow down on the sweets.” Her mother shot him a look, and he snorted.

  “So, how are things, Ella?” Her father turned to look in her direction as she sat down.

  Gah! Dangerous territory right away. He was totally throwing her under the bus to get around the pie conversation. Sneaky.

  “Good. Busy, but that’s all right. I talked to Uncle Michael day before yesterday. He and Mick were on their way to some remote village. Sounded great. Mick got on for a few minutes. He’s met a new woman. She’s English, which he knows is risky and all.” She grinned at her mother, who tsked and rolled her eyes.

  “Why does that boy torment himself with Englishwomen?”

  Mick had been married for three years. Rebecca had been an aid worker too, but she’d wanted to get out. To move to London or Seattle and start a family. Mick wasn’t ready, and things had fallen apart. Mick took responsibility for it, and Rebecca had been a lovely woman. But they got divorced anyway, and Rebecca was now someone else’s wife with a toddler and a thriving medical practice in Virginia.

  Four years later, Mick was still single, but this new woman had possibilities. Even better, in Mick’s letters over the last eighteen months, she’d found a man who was maturing at long last, a man who seemed ready to start thinking about a family.

  “She seems nice, Mom. She’s an American; I was just teasing. Her father is English, but her mother is American, and she grew up here in the States.” Ella paused to butter the warm roll and sigh happily after the first bite. “So good. Anyway, Mick sounded happier than I’ve heard him sound in a long time.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it. He calls you far more than he calls us.” Her mother sniffed her annoyance. Mick did call her more often because he’d ended up on Ella’s side of this divide she had with their parents. He’d understood why it was important to her to do things for herself. Ella figured he called her more often to fill in the gap, make sure she felt connected and loved, even when he was out of the country.

  But Mick wasn’t her mother, and he wasn’t just a few miles away where she could see him all the time and hang out. She’d missed that ease and closeness she’d grown up with. The loneliness of it had been difficult to bear, and it wasn’t until the last four or five months that she’d begun to deepen her friendships with what she’d always thought of as Erin’s crowd. Now they were her crowd too.

  “They’re in and out of service for satellite coverage. They don’t always have phones in the villages when the team arrives. He calls when he’s not out in the field. He knows I’ll tell you guys all about what’s going on.”

  Her mother’s mouth flattened a moment. “Neither one of you calls enough. Except he’s changing the world and you’re making coffee. You’re wasting your potential and working yourself to the bone trying to do everything when you could just let us help you.” Her mother buttered her bread with choppy little swipes. The tension began to build in the room. Slowly stealing the oxygen until the fight-or-flight reflex threatened to kick in.

  “I don’t want to have this argument again.” And she didn’t. She wouldn’t argue and wouldn’t defend her position anymore because they’d said it all, and it was time to move on. She didn’t want to be angry over it anymore.

  Her father put his glass down and began to eat. “You had a job interview sometime this week, didn’t you?”

  He remembered, and that made her smile again.

  “It went really well. I know them all since I’ve worked there for the last nine months. I’m already in training for the job, which really gives me a leg up. I’m good with the clients, and I really want this. That has to mean something. I’m not just doing this job until something better comes along. I want it.”

  She studied her father. He’d lost weight since his last back surgery, but his color was better than it had been just a few months before. He’d never be the vibrant man he was before the accident, but he walked with a cane and didn’t have to sit every few feet. He was making an effort, and she wondered how many times each of them might have extended a little bit more and the others missed it or were too angry or hurt to respond. Suddenly it all seemed very silly to not just try a little harder.

  “You look good, Pop.
I forgot to tell you that when I came in.” She squeezed his hand.

  Startled for a moment, he smiled back at her. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  “When will you know about the job?”

  She looked back toward her mother. The tension lifted a little bit. “A few weeks or so. They have an executive committee who’ll meet to discuss final recommendations, and they have special steps to perform to comply with the grants that partially fund the position. I’m training one of the part-timers at the café to take over for me and hired another two people for staff since Erin won’t be back for a while, and I’ll be gone.”

  “Good. Good. Well, so tell us then, what your brother and uncle are up to.” Her mother put another slice of roast beef on Ella’s plate, daring her to argue.

  She didn’t.

  Instead she filled them in on Mick and her Uncle Michael’s recent trips into the Bolivian interior to deliver medical supplies and run clinics in the villages, leaving out the part about the team getting shot at. They worried about him enough as it was.

  And for the first time in a long time, when she left, she didn’t want to cry.

  It had felt as if she’d finally reached the end of a long, hard road and could afford the luxury of pausing enough to look around. She liked a lot of what she saw in her life. She’d spent the last years putting her life back together. Slowly getting herself through one challenge at a time. Each one of those moments had been powerful in its own way. There were struggles to be faced and overcome. She knew she hadn’t seen the last of them in her life. But she did look forward to more normal struggles like dating.

  As Elise had told her just a few weeks before, she wasn’t alone. She had her friends, and that took the edge off a lot of crappy days. She was still smiling as she parked her car in the very well lit space near her apartment building’s front door. The stars were out, but the moon hid, glowing through the high clouds shrouding it.

  Summer had faded, and early fall was beginning to settle in. It got dark earlier and light later. The brilliant blue of the sky would fade as the rains made the bright red and yellow leaves stick to every surface like confetti. The rain would settle in soon, and like most Seattleites, she didn’t mind it. She worked around it and found ways to enjoy the weather because it was simply the price one paid to live in a place so verdant and lush.

  One small, dark corner of her heart hated it when it was dark so much. It brought the edges of her fear closer. It was the darkness and the way it could hide things. People. She paused at that last thought, remembering.

  She’d been walking back from her car. Had deliberately disobeyed Bill by staying out late with her cousins who’d been visiting from Maine. It had been dark and cold, though her cousin Sharon had mocked Ella. After all, Mainers were made of stern stuff and scoffed at thirty-eight degrees!

  She’d been smiling as she hurried toward their apartment. Earlier, before she’d left, she’d made him his favorite dinner. Pork chops, mashed potatoes and green beans. Sometimes such little things could keep him happy, and he’d let her infractions slide.

  It was then he jumped out from the hedges at the front door, screaming, grabbing her and dragging her toward the alley. Her heart had raced, more so after she realized it was him and not a stranger. He’d clamped a hand over her mouth then and told her, as she’d trembled and held back her sobs, that if he’d wanted her dead, he could make it happen.

  “See what could happen if you stay out after dark? No one would miss you but me. I’m all you have, Ella. Don’t you forget it. When I tell you to be home by eight, I’m being generous because it’s your family. And then you go and ruin it by making me worry.”

  As he spoke, he’d pressed her into the brick wall at her back, his hand around her throat. The world dimmed, the darkness at the edges of her vision encroaching more and more until she felt herself let go. For one moment there had been some peace, and then he’d slapped her hard, letting go of her throat.

  He’d been conciliatory then, taking her inside, making her tea and coddling her. But she’d never forgotten that lesson, and she’d never been late again.

  The dark was a reminder of that helplessness, and so, each time she confronted it, even if she broke out in a sweat at the very thought, she won.

  As she shook off the memories, she pulled herself back together again. Mainly she was past it. She had seen Erin’s therapist, a woman specializing in survivors of violent attacks. It had helped immensely, and Ella would be forever grateful for Erin, who made sure Ella’s insurance coverage would pay for the sessions.

  Erin had offered to pay at first. Because she had so much and Ella didn’t. Erin’s reaction was part of who she was. That had been touching, of course. But it was always Erin’s insight, the way she seemed to understand Ella’s need to do it herself and the way she helped make that possible—it was that sort of love that made Ella so loyal to Erin. They shared some common history with their past, the violence that had changed them totally. Facing the fear helped. Most days. But the thing about fear was that it ate away at your reason, made you smaller.

  It was her mini dare each day to come home to this place. To embrace normal and live her own life on her own terms, even if she was afraid. Her life was her own. She made it, and no one would take it from her again.

  This building, this parking spot, her nearby grocery and the Vietnamese restaurant two doors down were her prizes for living and being happy. It wasn’t big or new or even grand, but it was home.

  The front doors into the small lobby squeaked when she managed to get the lock unstuck. She jingled her keys, balancing the bag of leftovers as she headed inside. Choosing to avoid the ancient elevator, she took the stairs to the third floor, walking the long hall, loving the creaks in the ancient hardwoods and the curves of the often-painted ceilings and doorways. This had been a home in the months after the attack. The walls; the faded, once-glorious carpets in the lobby; the temperamental lock on the front doors.

  Two very sturdy locks unlocked, and her door swung open. She checked the entry automatically, still unwilling to say out loud that she lined up her desk chair in the way just to see if it had been moved. Despite feeling stupid, she put the bag down and locked up, including two additional inner locks. And put the chair back.

  It was almost like a tic; she felt safe in the building and in her apartment. She knew her chances of being attacked again were very small, and Bill was doing time. She knew these things and slept well at night most of the time. But still, she found herself putting that chair in the hall.

  After changing into fluffy sweats and washing her face, she headed to her bed where her tea and a few cookies awaited in the little alcove she pretended was the same as a bedroom. She considered writing in her journal but stared off into space for a while instead.

  As she settled back and sipped the tea, her gaze moved around the room. A framed picture sat on the small table in the corner. Taken just two weeks before at a picnic in Brody and Elise’s backyard. Brody and Elise, two of her favorite people. That weekend, those two wonderful people were having an engagement shindig of sorts, hosted by Brody’s brother Adrian.

  Elise was as tenacious as Erin was, and friendship with the woman had been inevitable. She’d been in the periphery of the group, though she’d been invited many times. Had watched Brody fall in love, had watched Elise become part of his life, of his family, and when Elise noticed Ella, Elise had simply been Elise. She’d reached out and in doing so had become her closest friend. Elise and Erin, she’d let in, had felt understood in a way she rarely felt with others.

  As if she’d been summoned, Elise’s text buzzed across the screen of Ella’s phone. Call me if you’re awake!

  Yes, a phone conversation with Elise would be a good thing. She dialed in the number, and Brody answered, making her smile.

  “Hey there, Ella. You looking for my missus?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “While I watch my lovely lady hop around and jiggle, I’m
going to continue to keep you long enough to ask how your hip is doing.” He’d nearly finished the tattoo she’d been getting in bits and pieces over the last year and a half. Each new achievement, and he’d add another piece. For a time it had been her secret. Only Brody knew about it. But after a while, she’d told Erin and then Elise. He’d just completed the last major part a few days before, roots and some drifting blossoms at her hip.

  Her first tattoo had been small, a silly little four-leaf clover he’d done on her inner arm, near the elbow. Something about it had filled a need inside, the need to mark her progress in an indelible way. It’s how she’d truly gotten to know Brody. He’d always been her boss’s older brother, friendly, but it never went very deep. He was good at his job, good at listening, and over time she’d poured out her story to him.

  She understood, totally, why Elise adored him, why her daughter, Rennie, now their daughter, lit up every time Brody came into a room. There were very few men in the universe who could hold a candle to him.

  “Good. Soreness is mostly gone, and now it itches.”

  “Coming along then. If you need me to, I’ll check it for you.”

  “Aw, thanks. But I think you might have more things on your mind than looking at a healing tattoo. You ready for the engagement party on Saturday?”

  “I’ve been ready to marry Elise for a long time now. I’m just annoyed I have to wait another few months.”

  She heard the smile in his voice and smiled herself. They were good together, a family. Unconventional, just like all the Browns were. But it worked, and it was genuine. They gave her hope that once she put dating back on the menu, she might find something like what they had too.

  “Stop hogging her.” Elise got on the line, and Ella heard the noisy kiss her friend gave her very sexy fiancé. “I hear Raven is asking to photograph it for that tattoo magazine she works with down in L.A.”