But the museum wasn't open yet. It was still too early. Marie walked over to the security panel and turned the alarms off. She walked down the stairs that led to her apartment and went down into the mansion proper. It was quiet and dark, but Marie never felt afraid down here. The house was just too interesting to keep her away.
Barefoot she walked over the hardwood floor and ducked into the nursery. There were antique dolls and trucks and little trundle beds. In one corner was a small table and chairs all set out for a fancy tea party. Edith had raised eight children, all of them successes. It seemed everything Edith Hawks did was touched with gold.
She could be my saint, Marie thought as she walked through the house in her pajamas. Saint Edith of the museum, patron saint of women in hiding. She imagined Edith would have been proud of her for sticking up for herself the other day. Sure, it was no building a new town, but it was something. Edith would understand that.
She walked down to the parlor and looked out the windows. When the mansion was empty like this, she liked to pretend this was her house. The whole thing, not just the attic upstairs. She would move from room to room like a great lady of an old house in an Austen movie. She would be wearing an old-fashioned dress and sighing about the servants. She would have a gallant and handsome husband with perfect genteel manners.
At eleven o'clock she and Cate walked down to the park. The air was starting to get warmer. It was spring and soon enough summer would be here. They left their heavy coats at home and wore their lighter jackets. It was a bright day and the people of Harksburg were out in full force. They passed a group of ballerinas practicing in their open-air studio and a book club meeting with wine and cheese on a blanket in the park.
They walked past the gym, but Marie didn't see Axel through the window, so they kept walking. Her terribly hot trainer. He was so strong and almost graceful. She never saw him drop anything. The weights she struggled with were nothing to him. He had walked around the gym with such confidence. She wondered how he had come to own it.
She brought Cate to the park where to other kids from her daycare were already running through the plastic tubing of the equipment. Marie sat down on a bench and pulled out her burner phone. It was a smartphone with a data cap, but, fortunately, the park had WiFi and she was able to Google the name: Axel Connelly.
She wasn't expecting anything. When you search Marie De Santa all the results were for a biochemist in San Paolo. But Axel Connelly was another story. The first thing that came up was his face; it was a stern-looking picture with the title 3rd in the Northeastern League. He had an actual Wikipedia page. He was an MMA fighter and a good one at that. She scanned through pictures of his bruised and battered smiling face holding trophies and belts.
She looked around the playground shocked. She had no idea her trainer from the other day was a professional cage match fighter. She couldn't deny that the thought turned her on a little. She watched the last few minutes of his most recent fight. She watched as Axel and his opponent danced around each other. His opponent threw a punch and Axel dodged and returned with a sidekick and a punch right to the side of the other man's face. He went down in heap as the crowd went wild.
Why had he been training her? He was famous and well known and he owned the gym. Had her threat of a bad review really made him nervous enough to take her on himself? It seemed crazy. Marie stood up and stretched out her sore muscles using the bench to help her. The muscles in the back of her legs were tight and she felt a sweet sort of relief as she stretched them. She had worked harder than she thought the other day.
He had pushed her, really pushed her. But not like Austin. Axel had only offered her criticisms in order to help her. He hadn't been mean or short tempered; he had been patient. She had wanted to impress him – that was what kept her going. It wasn't fear or intimidation that pushed her. It was something else. It was a desire that came from inside. She wanted to impress him and even more she wanted to prove to herself that she could do this.
He had seen something in her. He had decided that she was worth training and he was an expert. That had to count for something. She stretched her arms high above her and smiled into the sunlight. Maybe she would become a kick-ass fighter. Then she would never need to fear anyone. If she saw Austin she could take him down herself. She wondered how long it took to get that good.
On her way back to the house Marie passed a clothing shop and, with an agreeable Cate in tow, she stepped inside. She had left almost all of her and Cate's clothes with Austin. She had taken only what she could fit in the trunk and left the rest behind. She was pretty confident Axel had destroyed all of it by now; her grandmother's quilt and her photo albums were probably nothing more than ash and smoke. But she could make new memories.
She walked around the store looking at the summer dresses and little black numbers, but stopped herself before she bought anything. She didn't have any plans to go out and the training sessions at Axel's gym were not cheap. She considered it a good investment, though. Being able to defend herself was worth any price. So she wouldn't be able to buy anything fun for a few weeks, but she noticed some items she might come back for.
She did grab a few workout clothes on sale. They were black and fitting and little bit more professional than her yoga pants and t-shirt outfit from the other day. She wanted to prove to Axel that she was serious about this. She was ready to work and learn. He could push her as hard as he wanted; she was ready.
Later that night, after she had tucked Cate into bed and the alarm had been set, Marie stood next to an open window in the mansion and looked down onto the little town below. She imagined what it looked like back in Edith's day. There would be no electrical light, only fires and candles. She would be able to see more stars. Trees would stretch in all directions and there would no real roads, only cleared tracks in the mud.
What would she have been like back then? Could she have done what Edith had done? Could she have built a town out of nothing? Probably not, but it was fun to imagine. She had another training scheduled with Axel and she was nervous. She didn't feel stronger. If anything, she felt weaker. Her legs and arms were like jelly and they hurt with every move. But she wasn't going to quit or pull a no show. She was going to get up and go and prove her worth.
Chapter Thirteen
There was no way he was going to get away with this for much longer. He didn't train people. Axel hadn't worked as a trainer in over five years. He made enough money from his fights and the gym that he didn't need to. So why was he standing at the juice bar in the gym waiting for Marie to show up? He was planning on giving her to another trainer, a female trainer. But when the time came, he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.
Marie wasn't ready yet. She technically shouldn't even be in the program. If he gave her to another trainer, they might send her away, or put her on a treadmill instead of a boxing ring. She didn't want to get into better shape. He understood without needing to ask that Marie wasn't interested in bikini season or slimming down to look better in photos. She wanted to learn how to fight.
Hayden was out of town; he was in Philly meeting with the promoters. There would some kind of press tour leading up to the fight with magazine interviews and television interviews that would need to be scheduled. It was a lot of work, but that was Hayden's job. Axel's job was to train and mentally prepare for the fight. Hayden didn't know about Axel's little training sessions with Marie and he was hoping he could keep this going a little longer.
She arrived five minutes early. Her long dark hair was pulled in a sleek ponytail. She was wearing tight fitting, black stretch pants and a black tank top. With a bottle of water in her hand she looked ready for a work out and he was going to give it to her.
"You're back," he said when she walked into the gym.
"Did you doubt me?" she asked.
"Not for a moment," he responded. "But you know it only gets harder from here on out, right? It doesn't get easier. The weights get heavier, the reps grow higher; it's an uphill climb the whole way." He didn't know why he was trying to scare her away, but he couldn't seem to stop himself.
"I'm ready," she said.
He led her back down to the boxing gym, which was almost empty at this hour of the day. "This is the heavy bag," Axel said, hitting the large punching black bag that hung from a heavy chain on the ceiling. "We're gonna work on this today. Now, I don't want you to just hit it. I want you to imagine it's an enemy. Imagine it's someone coming to get you, someone who's determined to fight you. You can't run away; you have to face it."