The Runaway (6 page)

“It’ll help.”

With that she strode out of the door. He was still experiencing what was probably the dumbest moment of his life, when she shouted before heading down the stairs, “Nothing happened. I don’t take advantage of men in your state.”

Wait. Wasn’t that his line? He rushed to just miss her by seconds. He watched her car speed by the front door. How did she know where he lived?

“I see one of us has had a fruitful night”

“Yeah! You’d think!!”

Jim looked equally vacant, and tired sans the shock that was still tingling in Richard’s senses.

“And with
Brooke
I see. Some eye you have!”

He laughed. Well, what could anyone say in this situation. He was still
trying to get over those eyes. And then it struck him. What did Jim just say?

Brooke.

That was Brooke.

Crap.

On so many levels.

“Brooke Je
... Scott?”

“Yep! Lay of the century. The forbidden fruit of Applecross.”

Jim guffawed. Ignoring the comments which painted a rather disturbing picture of Brooke, he just stared at the empty roads ahead. If he had felt like even half a dimwit in front of her, now he felt like a total fool. He hadn’t even asked her name for courtesy’s sake – if he had – he would’ve known the girl in that hideous blue tank was the girl he’d travelled thousands of miles for. That sounded way too poetic in his mind than it should have. And it didn’t feel right to him. He tried piecing this thoughts together, to come up with some magic solution to make this right. Finding none, he stormed inside and slammed the door shut in frustration. He threw himself on the bed and concentrated all his efforts in going back to sleep again.

Brooke sped by the familiar streets of oak trees and lilac fields. It wouldn’t be a very cheerful thing to make the townsfolk meet her the first thing in the morning – it was always pretty clear she was never welcome. She was all that they taught
their daughters to not be in their Sunday school. She wasn’t complaining, but she tried her best to avoid trouble. That is what she was good at. For the past six years. Hiding, changing identities, running and waiting for the next danger signal. Normally she was the one who did the picking up from the Boot. She was not the type to be picked up by men – no it was Rachel. Wasn’t she the one that New Guy was fantasizing about when he accidentally grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the pub? She was so shocked that she forgot to complain or refute him. And then he was vomiting all over and could hardly stand. He looked so funny – with that cocky smile and green sick face, that she stayed back to laugh at him. When things got too much, she drove him back to Martha’s. Of course she knew where he stayed. Small town. Everyone knows everything.

She screeched to a halt in front of
the iron gates overlooking the small garden she had grown from scratch. Applecross was by far the only place she lived long enough for her to have a garden of her own.

She wasn’t surprised by the sheriff’s car parked a little away
on the dirt street leading to the gates. She locked hers and stopped by the orchids she had planted months ago. They bloomed lovingly – in all different shades.

“Brooke!
” the sheriff nodded.

“Ian!” She was getting exceedingly irritated by his frequent visits. She was doing fine, Paul was locked away. They could just leave her be. She had done a wonderful job of avoiding
social contact, relationships, and friends in general. It was a two way thing here – she prevented any confrontation, and so did the others.

“You didn’t come home last night!”

“Crime, is it? To exercise rights of being an adult, a consenting adult?”

She hated being rude. She hated his patience. She hated to lash out at him – but then he was the only person beside AFP and the Yard that she ever talked to. Erratic, spurious conversations with travellers or Rachel hardly made the list. She unlocked the front door and stood waiting.

“I was just checking in kid. Go in and rest.”

Yes, as she had so much to do and so little time to rest. She bit back the retort. It wasn’t worth it. He’d just look at her sadly and walk away. The townsfolk
at least resented her openly. She had moved past feeling for people, or forming connections. They tended to become unshakeable liabilities when you have to leave without goodbyes or addresses. She heaved a sigh. There was no moving past that – of no one to bid farewell, or no one to miss once you are gone.

She closed the curtains in her room, undressed and slid into her bed. She wasn’t exactly tired – frankly she was surprised about how well she slept in a stranger’s bed after six years. The fact that he didn’t even make a move to touch her, or do anything inappropriate
, was bewildering enough. She was shocked at the physical contact of his hand grasping her thin arms and dragging her out. She hadn’t experienced that in a very long while. It was out of habit that she shirked away from human contact – which all the more made her seem weird to others. But he didn’t hesitate to just pull her along with him, and lean on her while he was busy being sick and not complain either when she drove him home. That’s his pickup style she guessed. She firmly closed her eyes and tried sleeping. She didn’t want the memory of sleeping in his bed stuck to her mind for a very long time. At long last when sleep finally claimed her, it was amidst murky visions of a cold sneer, damp walls and one open window that was just out of her reach.

Richard was ravenously hungry the next morning – he had almost for
saken food the previous day. He chose to be engulfed in the sense of uselessness and lost opportunity, he could sulk once in a while. After the ritualistic ablution of his worthlessness, he was raring to go find her today – just the fact that he still had no clue to reach her was what obstructed his shining path to glory. Jim was an utter disappointment in the information section – all he could gather from him was that Brooke seemed pretty infamous in the neighbourhood. It helped him in no way. He thought of asking Martha. He hoped she wouldn’t be the judgemental types – as he needed information and he was losing patience.

But then that was the virtue he strongly needed if he wanted to have his way. Saying that to himself repeatedly, he calmed himself down and settled on
a worn bench by the park. It overlooked Martha’s cottage, and he was sure, he’d see her get back from the grocery store. It was still quite early. Just close to 8, and everyone was up and about. The colourful bright school bus reminded of him of his school days – a loner at the back of the bus with a book, watching other kids wave their parents goodbye before leaving for school. He had never really been with his mother – she had withdrawn herself, after his father’s betrayal, and before he could freeze her memories in his mind for a lifetime. Eve was very young. And their father was distraught and lost most of the times– even to the responsibilities towards his children. Richard helped with more than his share of raising Eve, and as both of them grew, they knew they had lost their father much before either could realise, until their father decided to leave with Eve altogether. Growing up wasn’t fun – except the times he could spend in the mammoth library of his school. The librarian loved him – the best behaved kid she had to deal with – she hardly knew how he was outside that perimeter. He didn’t let the sad household scenario tamper with his adolescence in any way, even with an annoying sister tagging along. But the library durations were the only moments of solitude that he coveted – Thoreau, Wilde, even Shakespeare – he loved being lost in those.

He shook those memories away. He needed to be in the now. And the
now
was jogging right in front of him!!!

He blinked twice to be sure. The road on the far end of the park led into the woods. There was a cold stream of sunlight
that filtered from the huge tree branches, lighting up the mossy roads. She stood for a while to stretch her arms. He didn’t remember her from that fateful day – not quite well to recognise the softness in her almost curve-less form, of that cascading dark hair pulled up away from her neck. And even from a distant, he could make out those piercing blue eyes. She almost looked like an adolescent boy, all the more in tracks and a loose tank. He didn’t realise that he had was sprinting towards her. She gave a bewildered expression and started running away from the park. In no time he caught up with her.

“Hi! Again.”

He didn’t know if smiling would be the right thing to do. He just nodded at her, jogging steadily by her side. She stopped abruptly.

“Feel better now?”

“Yes.” He smiled. “Much better.”

“Now, I’ve asked you. Stop bothering me!”

What the hell..? Richard was momentarily stunned by her crude brush-off. Firstly, in his weird chauvinistic sense, only a guy could rudely dismiss one night stands in the way she did just now, and secondly, what the hell? He didn’t want to give up. Not now.

“I’m Rick, by the way.”

“And I’m not interested”

She sped up. She was pretty agile- but he was a former sportsman, and he was never out of shape for running. He laughed and caught up.

“Where do you stay?”

She was quiet through his tirade of queries. He wanted to test her limits – she set off his challenging side
unconsciously and he was enjoying himself. But the mask she put on never caved under the impatience at being interrogated by a stranger, nor did it show any other emotion other than mild irritation. After the umpteenth question, she stopped, breathing heavily.

“Haven’t they told you to stay away from me? That I’m good for a night’s fuck and that’s i
t. That I’m off limits for the good neighbourhood people.”

Wow. Brutal.

He forgot to retort. He just pretty much forgot to speak after her little speech. She had started running again. He followed her, dazed at what he just heard. After a while, he grinned, “A night’s fuck?”

“Rick. Enjoy your stay in Applecross.”

And he knew he was dismissed. At least for today. He stopped and watched her run deeper into the woods. He thought of following her to her home, but then, now he knew she lived nearby and it would materialise somehow. The address to her home. He walked back to Martha’s. The sun had risen completely over the horizon. The mist over the hills had cleared, making way for the dazzling sun to light up the meadows and the crisp pine trees.

Brooke took the longest route to reach her home. She was flustered and her legs were aching from vigorously running for more than a couple of hours. The garden needed tending - that
would help forgetting the morning encounter. She couldn’t shake a strange heady feeling whenever Rick or whoever it was, was near her. As if there was a connection somewhere. Unfathomable. She didn’t linger on it long enough – when you have caused a horde of young girls to die, you tend to learn to move on from pretty much anything in life. Otherwise you get stuck. On that instant of truth when the already fragmented world came crashing down. The man was annoying. Not to mention pushy. Men here were normally content with sleeping with her and forgetting the very next day – it was convenient to them, given her reputation in the neighbourhood. And she didn’t look for anything further too.

For so many months, it had been almost impossible to feel anything anymore – the dark night had seemed to stretch on forever. It was almost strangling her from inside – the screams of
the girls, and their parents’ bitter tears replaying in her head every time she dared to sleep. Or it would be her father, and that sly grin closing in on her. Or her mother cursing her and spitting at her for having stolen away her life from her. She was scared to even recall those days and the amount of fruitless therapy that Wattson had made her undergo. It had taken so much of painful efforts to try and forget those memories – or to stash them in an inaccessible corner of her heart, where they could harmlessly throb dully in the background but not actively destroy her life. But they had already taken a toll on her – she was withdrawn, inert and insensitive. What can make you care for any damn thing once you have been the former reason of a massacre of innocent human lives? Everything stops mattering after something like that.

She locked the doors and the windows in and busied herself in preparing a lavish brunch, with the speakers blasting in their highest capacity. Alone and noisy. She liked it best. When the haunting silence inside her was filled with artificial worldly sounds – yet she kept herself aloof. Just enough to never be involved personally in the noise, and be a spectator. As she sliced up the onions, her mind kept flashing back to the cold two storeyed home in Australia, her mother’s room that smelled like a hospital. She would tiptoe into the room and watch her
mother sleep. And slowly curl up beside her to sleep. She made sure that she woke up before her mother did to run back to her room. Her mother hated having her around. She could never really understand it back then- now she does. She stopped slicing to wipe her overflowing eyes. Damned onions! She washed her eyes carefully. And her mind was fast forwarding to the day when she died, and yet she wouldn’t even look at her. Brooke had cried and thrown tantrums to be with her. No one in school noticed her bloodshot eyes. No one noticed her anyway. Did the cops know that? Did they find out? They knew of the false death certificate claiming Anne Scott died when she was born. And then the next thing they knew was perhaps about her real death. If at all they did find a nameless grave near their house. None knew what lay in between. The screams, the slaps, the spitting and that hate on her face. And dad would come running to save her from mother’s wrath. And that would set her off more, and she would get terrible fits. All Brooke could last glimpse was her mother’s terrified face, and her father shutting their bedroom door. Sometimes she would wish her dad would teach mom a lesson for being so mean to her. Who is mean to her own child? She had heard Selena’s stories of her mom’s picnic lunches, and shopping sprees. Why did she never have those?

“Selena!” Brooke gasped. No. Not a good time for the panic attacks. She didn’t want to waste the day blaming herself more than she already did. She concentrated on the simmering onions and garlic. She set the table for one. She lit the candle and laid out the food. Yes. She liked being alone. Alone was all she ever had been – her comfort zone.