“David and I are looking forward to a bit of that spellbinding action ourselves tonight,” she announces mischievously. “I have to run.” She laughs and waves a few fingers at me. “Enjoy your night. I know I will.”
I sink back into my chair and watch the door close.
***
The sound of pounding on my door once again takes me from bliss to panic. I sit up in the bed, disoriented and groggy, and eye the clock. Seven in the morning on my first day off from classes.
“Who the heck is pounding on my door?” I grumble, throwing the blankets off me and sliding my feet into the pink fuzzy slippers one of my students gave me last Christmas. I grab my long pink robe that is not fuzzy, but does say ‘Pink’ across the back. More knocking has begun.
“Sara, it’s me, Ella!” I hear as I shuffle my way toward the living room. “Hurry! Hurry!”
My heart flutters because not only is Ella clearly in some sort of panic, but unlike me, who doesn’t like to waste a second of any day, Ella doesn’t get up before noon on days she doesn’t have to. The instant I yank open the door, Ella flings her arms around me and announces, “I’m eloping!”
“Eloping?!” I gasp, pulling back and tugging Ella inside, out of the chill of the early morning. She’s still wearing her clothes from the night before. “What are you talking about? What’s happening?”
“David proposed last night,” she exclaims excitedly. “I can hardly believe it. We’re flying to Paris this morning.” She eyes her watch and squeals. “In two hours.”
She shoves something into my hand. “That has the key to my apartment. On the kitchen table, you’ll find the journal and the key to the storage unit. If it’s not cleared out in two weeks, it has to be rented, or it’s auctioned off yet again. So take it and sell the stuff. The money is yours. Or let it go. Either way, it doesn’t matter.” She grins. “Because I’m eloping to Paris, then honeymooning in Italy!”
Protectiveness fills me for Ella. I don’t want her to get hurt and I’ve never even heard her say she loves David. “You’ve only known this man for three months, sweetie. I’ve only met him once.” He always, conveniently, got called away when we’d been planning to get together.
“I love him, Sara,” she says, as if reading my mind. “And he’s good to me. You know that.”
No, I don’t know that, but while I try to find the right way to say it, she is already reaching for the door. “Ella-”
“I’ll call you when I arrive in Paris, so keep your cell handy.”
“Wait!” I say, shackling her arm. “How long will you be gone?”
Her eyes light up with excitement. “A month. Can you believe it? A whole month in Italy. I’m living a dream.” She hugs me and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call and when we get back we’ll have a reception.” Her eyes soften. “You know I wanted you with me for this, don’t you? But David knew I had no family. He wanted to whisk me away so that it wouldn’t be painful.” She pokes at the tuckered spot that always appears between my brows when I frown. “Stop making that face. It’ll be wrinkled when you get older. And I’m fine. I’m perfect, in fact.”
“You better be,” I say, attempting my best teacher voice, but my throat is too tight to do much more than croak out the warning. “Call me as soon as you arrive so I know you’re safe, and I want pictures. Lots of pictures.”
Ella smiles brightly, “Yes, Ms. McMillan.” She turns and rushes away, giving me a last-second wave over her shoulder before she rounds the corner. She is gone, and I am fighting unexpected tears I don’t even understand. I am happy for Ella but worried for her, too. I feel...I’m not sure what I feel. Lost, maybe. My fingers curl around her keys, and I am suddenly aware that I have just inherited a storage unit and the journals I swore I wouldn’t read again.
Chapter Two
And then, the moment I know I will die remembering. The moment when the steel of a blade touched my lips. The moment that he promised there was pleasure in pain...
Those words written in the journal replay in my head early the next evening, the same day of Ella’s rapid departure. They haunt me to the point I feel downright icy every time I think of them. They are why I’m here, standing inside a temperature-controlled storage unit the size of a small garage, that at some point I assume the journal writer leased. Thankfully there is a dim light and the neighborhood is good. I stand here, unsure of what to look at first, uneasy about digging through a stranger’s things.