Page 65 of Intrepid

“Oh!” Sera scrambled to the other side of the bed and threw back the covers. “I didn’t … I wasn’t expecting you to pick her up by yourself.”

Jo looked around, maybe disoriented from the height, or something, and stared up at me as I set her down onto the bed. Still, nothing in her expression suggested she recognized me, at all.

“What happened to her?” I could barely push the words past the tight fist locked around my lungs, as I watched Sera tuck her into the blankets.

“Stroke. It’s been a long road for her, but she’s actually made some progress, believe it, or not.”

I’d suspected Jo had moved on with her life, maybe remarried and lived somewhere else. She’d always been a survivor that way. I had no idea she’d deteriorated so much over the years.

My gaze wandered the room, to the pictures set out on the nightstand, and in collages hanging from the wall. What felt like a wrecking ball smashed into my chest, and I willed myself not to crumble as I stared down at the many pictures of Eli. Healthy, smiling Eli as a baby, a toddler, and the teenager I’d last seen nearly a decade ago. The adoration in Jo’s eyes as she stared down at her son gnawed at my conscience.

Snap. Snap.

Eyes bolted shut, I looked away, while a tingling numbness seeped into my muscles. I clenched my hands into fists, suddenly unsure what the hell to do with them. I could feel myself slipping.

“Ty?” Sera tipped her head, guiding my eyes back to her. “Yo, earth to Ty. Is everything okay? You … look pale.”

“I could use some air.”

She nodded, setting her hand on mine, an action that triggered my muscles, and I jerked backward. “Why don’t you go downstairs, and I’ll grab my things and meet you?”

With one more glimpse of Jo, I backed myself out of the room as it began to close in around me. Suffocating me with the memories. My arm hit an object in my escape, and I pivoted just in time to catch the lamp teetering on the nightstand. I stumbled out of the apartment, down the stairs, and pushed through the front entrance, until I reached my bike.

My head urged me to get out. Get the hell out of there.

Sitting astride my Ducati, I stroked my skull, damn near rubbing it bald, trying to make sense of the last ten minutes. What the fuck had happened? Felt like I’d gotten caught up in some warped episode of reality TV, and somewhere an audience gasped at my ignorance. I needed to get the hell out of there, but my muscles had gone statue, feet glued to the asphalt beneath them.

What now? What the fuck do I do now?

A voice from the not-too-distant past echoed inside my head. ‘She’s the reason they snuffed the kid. The kid, your pop, they’d all be alive, if not for her.’ The last thing the Joker had said to me before I’d cut out his eyeball.

With a trembling hand, I slipped the key into the helmet holder lock and, at the brush of something against my arm, swung my fist back, knocking the keys to the ground.

Sera stood alongside the bike, holding a bouquet of flowers, eyes brimming with confusion and yanking me back to my present.

Splaying my fingers, I hid the evidence of the near punch she’d almost suffered, and fished for the key to the bike.

“Hey, you seem really jumpy. Did something happen?”

Yeah. Something happened. I’d gotten knocked on my ass by a whopping dose of reality that left the aftershocks still vibrating through my body. I took deep breaths and stiffly shook my head, the sound of engines winding down inside my skull as my body short-circuited. “That woman …. She reminded me of someone I once knew. That’s all.”

Sera’s lips tightened, and she brushed her finger over the roses, white roses, bundled in her hands. “Me, too. Do you want to cancel for tonight?” she asked, not bothering to look up at me.

Everything inside my head said yes. I should’ve said yes.

“No” I handed her the helmet and set myself on task to fire up the bike, to keep my hands from sitting idle, where she’d surely notice the tremble in them. At the very least, I needed to break shit off, but trying to form a coherent thought right then would’ve made it a joke.

“Damn, you’re persistent.” She chuckled and climbed onto the back, wrapping her arm around me and flinching my stomach muscles on contact. “You’re sure you don’t mind running the errand with me?”

Her voice at my ear shivered down my spine like a ghost whispering omens. As though my body had become hypersensitive to everything around me, I was hearing things, seeing things, and feeling things with twice the intensity. “Positive. Where we headed?”

“The cemetery.”

* * *

Mount Elliott Cemetery took up a decent chunk of land along Mt Elliott Street. I was very familiar with the place, since my father had been buried there, after the guys from his union hall had gotten together and given him a proper funeral. What remained of his body had been cremated and buried, with Devoted Father etched into his gravestone.

I followed behind Sera, through the old graveyard, maintaining a cautious distance between us. Shit hadn’t stopped feeling surreal since we’d left Jo’s apartment, and I kept waiting for the moment when I’d wake up. When reality would slide in from the periphery, and I’d be staring down at Sera’s lifeless face, my hands throttling her neck, and all the other crazy shit would be nothing but some warped flashback.