Julia's Chocolates

  We all nodded. What could we say? I personally had a fiery attraction to Dean Garrett that darn well threatened to eat me alive. My vagina almost always felt on fire—as long as I wasn’t dealing with the terror of Robert. But men could be major assholes. Horrible assholes.

  Caroline gave me the joint. I almost cried when I looked at her. She looked so fragile. I thought about love. I loved Caroline and Katie and Lara, even though I’d known them for less than a year. They were the best, really the only friends I had ever had. But I didn’t want to kiss them.

  “Julia,” Caroline said, rocking herself back and forth, her arms locked around her waist. “If Robert isn’t here in Golden, he’ll be here very soon. Very soon. Maybe tomorrow. I feel his hatred, I smell his obsession, I can taste the revenge he wants. He’s lost it, completely lost it. His rage is uncontrolled. You are in danger.”

  I nodded. After Caroline had curled into a ball, and after I had smoked a little pot, I had had to crawl to the toilet and lean my head over it as everything I had eaten that day—and for, seemingly, six years before that—came up. A toilet can feel so cool and soothing, but I generally prefer not to curl around it, although I have experienced that particular position several times before in my life, twice after Robert insisted that I drink more alcohol than I’d wanted to drink.

  It was freaky and scary that he’d made me do that, but what was freakier and scarier was that I’d done it.

  “I’m not leaving.” The words left my mouth before I knew they were even there.

  Aunt Lydia’s fingers froze over the dried flowers. “Yes, you are, young lady,” she snapped. She never snapped.

  Katie said, “Oh! Oh! You have to go!”

  Caroline’s fingers loosened around the joint, and it dropped to the floor. I picked it up, but no one noticed.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” Caroline said. Wink, wink, wink. “He’s coming here. He wants to kill you.”

  Aunt Lydia nodded. “This wreath was meant to protect you as you leave Golden, my dear. As you leave. It’s to protect you until we see you again, after we’ve gotten rid of Robert.”

  “I’m not leaving.” I put the joint in the ashtray. I felt ill. What did I mean, I’m not leaving? I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump into a pickup and drive at a hundred miles an hour to nowhere, anywhere. I wanted to grab Shawn and Carrie Lynn and hide in a cave. “I’m not leaving.”

  “You are leaving, young lady,” Aunt Lydia said. “Or I will curse you.”

  I stared at Aunt Lydia. I am not superstitious, but I am not stupid. I did not want to be cursed. She wouldn’t really do that, would she?

  “You have to leave, Julia,” Katie said, tears falling. “I’ll watch Shawn and Carrie Lynn for you.”

  Caroline winked at me again and again and again. “He is coming for you. He is violent and furious. You are in grave danger.” Wink, wink. Wink!

  I shook my head. As much as I wanted to join an expedition to Antarctica, I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave Aunt Lydia when she was battling cancer. I couldn’t leave Shawn and Carrie Lynn, nor would I be able to take them with me. They were not even legally mine yet. And I could not, would not, leave the life I had finally built here.

  I liked living in Golden, a place where people knew my name. Some even seemed to like me. I loved living with Aunt Lydia and Stash. I loved this house and the chickens and the pigs. I loved my friends. I loved Dean Garrett. Yes, I loved Dean Garrett. So very, very much.

  I loved working at the library, loved Story Hour. I loved how the kids and their parents were always so happy to see me. I loved making and selling chocolate. I even liked my paper route.

  I loved that I had a life filled with caring people. I would not abandon them. I would not abandon this life.

  I got a little teary then. “I love you all. I know you care. I know you’re worried. But I’m not running away from Robert again. No. I. Am. Not. Leaving.”

  Aunt Lydia protested, but I saw the respect in her eyes, the pride.

  Caroline looked like she was about ready to faint again. She dipped a napkin into her water glass and laid it across her forehead.

  Katie cried. “Come and live with me, then, on Stash’s ranch. Dave and Scrambler will protect you.”

  “No, thank you, Katie.” I reached for her hand. “I’m staying here. Right here.”

  Aunt Lydia wound the flowers through the wreath, her fingers flying. “Damn well better get this wreath done for you, then. I’m going to imbed a knife in between the flowers, though, so you’ll always have it, along with the gun I insist you carry every day from now on.”

  “You need to be careful, Julia, very careful. All the time.” Katie said. “I’m so scared for you! I’m so scared!”

  “Some men only understand the power of a bullet,” Aunt Lydia said. “Only the power of a bullet.”

  I nodded. Robert would be one of those men. And yet I hated the idea of a gun. I hated the idea of anyone, even any animal, getting hurt, and I wasn’t sure I could shoot Robert. He was dangerous and sick, but shoot your ex-fiancé? Kill a person?

  “We will persevere!” Aunt Lydia interjected, her voice strong. “We will win this fight, female against male, good against evil, estrogen against dick-headedness!”

  “Or, we can just shoot them,” Katie said, wiping her eyes. “Just shoot the fuckers.”

  I had never heard Katie use that language before. Neither had Aunt Lydia, and her hands stilled. Even Caroline looked like she was coming back from the dead.

  We laughed. And laughed and laughed. Sometimes life is so lousy, so very, very bad, that all you can do is laugh.

  And so we did.

  Due to Caroline’s little premonition, Stash was taking me out to target practice every other day.

  I must say I got better and better. Perhaps the raging woman in me was emerging, or perhaps my raging fear of an imminent attack was simply helping me to focus.

  Whichever. I was now a darn good shot.

  Even Stash was impressed. “Honey, when you first started target practice I didn’t think you could hit the broad side of a cow from six feet away.” He put an arm around my shoulder and looked right down at me. His eyes twinkled. “Now I do.”

  25

  The stars must have been shining just perfectly for a few minutes because I got orders from three other stores for my chocolate. I was now working almost ’round the clock. In deference to the knee-wobbling fear that Caroline’s premonition had given me, I gave up my newspaper route. Reaching out to shove a newspaper into a box and having someone (Robert) reach out to strangle me had little appeal.

  I woke early in the morning, did my chores around the farm with a gun strapped to my waist, prepared my chocolates, drove to Story Hour, came home, cared for Aunt Lydia, and then whipped up those chocolate desserts, truffles, brownies, penises, and breasts until the wee hours of the morning.

  I paid a young high-schooler in town to drive the chocolate orders to Portland so I wouldn’t have to be away from Aunt Lydia. She had good days and bad days. Sometimes very bad days. She complained that she was a burden, and I always assured her she wasn’t.

  Because that was—is—the truth. Aunt Lydia will never, ever be a burden to me. It is an honor to care for her. I told her that, and she knocked me on the head with a weak fist. “Now you’re getting all sentimental on me, but I love you, too. Just quit with all that crap.”

  Dean called me at least twice a day to chat, to laugh, to check up on Aunt Lydia and the kids and Katie and Stash and Caroline and me. But it was in the late evenings, usually after Stash and I got Aunt Lydia settled, that Dean and I really talked. In one way, our conversations were routine. We shared what we had done that day, but everything I said, everything he said, seemed to be charged with that electricity, that awareness, that oomph, that makes being together so much fun, so exciting. I did not tell him about Caroline’s premonition, and I made the other women swear they wouldn’t, either. I also had not told him about the dea
d cat, or stabbed chicken, or the letters that continued to arrive, now one a day.

  He told me he missed my kisses and missed them so much he could barely make his opening statement in a trial the day before. He told me that he needed to hug me because nothing seemed right without one of my hugs. He told me that I was the first person he had been able to talk to in a long, long time.

  I wasn’t surprised by this. Although I could see how Dean Garrett would have many admirers, he was the lone-wolf sort.

  I happened to like lone wolfs.

  On weekends when he came out to Golden, we were together. He took me to restaurants, cooked me dinners at home, and invited Shawn and Carrie Lynn out with us for day trips. They were slowly but surely beginning to trust him, although Carrie Lynn didn’t say much. He taught them how to ride horses and run a tractor. I taught them how to make chocolate.

  We figured they would probably be cocoa farmers when they were older.

  When I was with Dean I felt safe. When he was gone, that old fear came back, like hundreds of tiny little, freezing-cold knives running up and down my back. The police patrolled in front of our house on a regular basis, and I made sure I stuck to well-populated roads wherever I went. I kept a gun in the top drawer of my dresser, and I knew where Aunt Lydia had hidden the other ones. We had to lock all of them up because of the kids, but I had the keys with me all the time. Stash spent every night at our house to help Aunt Lydia.

  I was on high alert, but living. Still living.

  But sometimes the living have to deal with evil, and my day was coming.

  A couple of weeks later, an exhausted-looking Stash took Aunt Lydia to the hospital. Her chemotherapy had made her ill and dehydrated, and she needed much more care than we could provide. Dr. Ray of Sunshine had ordered her in and, surprisingly, she agreed to do what he told her to do. “Dr. Ray of Sunshine is a demanding boy, a willful and stubborn boy,” she said, her voice so weak I could barely hear it. “I’m only going because he says he misses me.”

  I bent down to hug and kiss her and tried not to cry.

  “Wear your Protection Wreath,” she whispered to me. “Don’t take it off. The knife is imbedded on the right-hand side of the wreath, right by the orange bow. The orange is for courage.”

  I nodded my head, couldn’t speak.

  Stash and I had been up all night for many nights caring for Aunt Lydia, and I was so worried about her, I felt ill. There’s something about watching someone you love more than life itself go through cancer treatment, dealing with your own Dread Disease, and wondering when a psychopath will walk through your door that makes one a little crazed.

  It was my plan to finish my work on the farm, then head for Portland. Katie would watch Shawn and Carrie Lynn for the weekend. Scrambler and Dave would watch after the farm animals. Marie would take care of Alphy and the birds and, she reassured Aunt Lydia, she would spend time chatting with Melissa Lynn and the piglets.

  Out of respect for Aunt Lydia I wore the beautiful Protection Wreath she had made me, then went out to the ladies in their little barns. They clucked around my feet. I had spent some extra time with Melissa Lynn and her piglets that morning, as Aunt Lydia had asked. I knew we would not be eating any of them for Christmas. We would eat a Nameless Pig, as Aunt Lydia liked to say.

  I finished collecting the eggs and turned around to set the carton on a nearby shelf before cleaning up a little.

  “Hello, Cannonball Butt.”

  The words sent icicles shooting through my body. My breath caught. Even the ladies went quiet.

  And then, as if sensing my abject fear, they clucked and clucked as if they’d never clucked before and would never get the chance again so they had to get all their clucks out then.

  I turned and faced Robert.

  He was even better-looking than I remembered. Everyone had always been surprised when gorgeous Robert had introduced me as his girlfriend. What was a man who looked like Robert doing with me? I could hear them asking themselves.

  Tall, fit, black hair, hard jaw, piercing, cold gray eyes. He was magazine-cover gorgeous. But when you looked closer, you saw an alarming combination of shallowness, vanity, and rage. It was amazing how I’d convinced myself in the beginning not to see it.

  “Long time, no see, Possum.” He picked up a chicken and broke its neck. The ladies didn’t like this and clucked even louder.

  I had forgotten my gun. The knowledge hit me like a hammer to the gut. In the hurry and worry of getting Aunt Lydia off, I had left it in my bedroom.

  I backed up two paces as he took three steps toward me, then stopped. I would not back down to this Monster-Creep again, I told myself. Not again. The cold spread to every little atom of my body.

  “What? Can’t talk?” He kicked a chicken aside, as if he were kicking a football, the violence of his action at odds with the pleasant smile on his face. “I thought you would greet your long-lost fiancé with a little more enthusiasm. A hug maybe? Or a kiss?”

  I shuddered. “What are you doing here, Robert?”

  He laughed, the sick laugh you often hear in horror flicks, a laugh that indicates the evil murderer has completely lost it. “Well, I came here to reclaim my fiancée. It’s that simple. And now that I’ve found you, I think we’ll go. I can’t stand farm life. It’s dirty. It smells. It’s so low-class. I can see why you feel comfortable here. But it’s not for me, which means it’s not for you, either.”

  He was now about five feet away. “It’s for me, Robert. And I’m not leaving.”

  “Sure you are, baby. You sure as hell are.” He picked up another chicken, then dropped it on his swinging foot. The ladies were now officially flipping out. Cluck, cluck, cluck!

  I wanted to kill him. I loved those chickens. I felt my own anger rising, the cold in my body receding at the sight of his cruelty to the chickens.

  He smiled again, the smile spreading across his features. The eerie look in his eyes made the smile sickeningly scary. I stifled a sob.

  “Did you honestly think that you could run away from me, you bitch?”

  “Yes, I did.” I started edging toward a shovel I knew was always hung on a rafter to my right.

  Robert laughed. “I always knew you were stupid, Julia. You get that from your trailer-trash background. That damn slut of a mother of yours. But you’re wrong. You can’t escape. I found you, didn’t I?”

  “Get out of here, Robert. I don’t want you here. I don’t want to see you again.” The words were brave, but I cursed the way they wobbled their way out of my mouth. Panic does that to a person, though. Words wiggle wildly. I almost laughed at my clever alliteration, but as I could see I was soon going to have the shit beat out of me, the semi-hysterical laughter was lost somewhere in the muscles of my throat.

  He lunged then, and I turned to run, but he caught hold of me, both hands encircling my throat, the Protective Wreath I’d sworn I’d wear falling to the ground. I grabbed his wrists and pulled, but he just squeezed my neck harder.

  “Let go of my wrists, whore,” he said, so pleasantly.

  “No,” I whispered. “Let go of me.”

  He squeezed again.

  I could feel my eyes starting to bug, my air supply constricting even more. I dropped my hands.

  He laughed then, cocked his head. The look in his eyes said to me, I can kill you with my bare hands. And I’ll enjoy doing it, too.

  “You cunt. You think that you can humiliate me the way you did? Walk out on our wedding day without any consequences? Walk out on the love we shared without getting a payback in return?” He smiled down at me, then bent his head. I turned my face at the last second, and he kissed my cheek.

  As a punishment, he tightened his hands. I tried to kick him as hard as I could in the shins, but he saw it coming and kicked me back. He was wearing boots, so when I heard a crack in my own shin I wasn’t surprised. When I put weight on that leg I had to slam my teeth together, the pain ricocheting right up my body as if a knife had sliced me in two.


  “Don’t ever do that again,” he whispered. He kept one hand around my neck and with the other he ripped my shirt from top to bottom, the buttons flying off into the darkness of the barn.

  He studied my boobs, heaving in a new pink lace bra I had bought—just in case I disrobed again in front of Dean. It was silly to be wearing that bra to the barn, but I had taken to wearing pretty bras. For the first time in my life I felt like celebrating my boobs, although not at that exact second. Between the excruciating pain in my shin and the pressure on my neck, I was not in a good place. Not good at all.

  And then out came a knife, glinting like silver fire in Robert’s hands. He released my neck, then pulled at the front of my bra, slitting it right open.

  The watermelons fell out, and I instinctively wrapped my arms around my chest.

  “Don’t hide from me, Cannonball,” he soothed, taking another step closer. I backed up until I was against the wall of the barn. He put the knife back into a holder, then shoved a knee into my crotch. I screamed in pain, but that didn’t slow him down. He held my wrists behind my back with one hand. I struggled and he laughed, hitting me across the face with an open palm.

  I saw those stars again, but it was not my good fortune to slide into unconsciousness.

  “I have missed your breasts, baby,” he said, taking one breast into his vile hand, kneading it with his fingers until I cried out. He laughed again, then bent down to my nipple and bit down on it. I instinctively struggled, tried to kick out at him, while tears streamed down my face as if I’d turned into a darn waterfall.