Sweet Violet and a Time for Love (19 page)

Her earthly belongings, I assumed.

Yes, I would come back from time to time to see if she was here, to check on her; at least until I knew that someone else was looking out for her or until she accepted whatever help or resources I could offer her.

I was a social worker. My calling, not my comfort, dictated my actions, my being. Why didn't Leon get that about me? The thought bothered me again. Was I supposed to change who I was to make him happy?

There's a time for everything.
I recalled the woman's words. That's all Leon had been asking of me. Time. It seemed so simple, yet had been too complicated. Why couldn't I get this right?

 

I got home on my birthday at a quarter 'til six. My heart jumped, sped up a little faster when I saw Leon's truck sitting in one of our assigned spaces.

“I'm home,” I shouted as I entered the foyer. He was nowhere to be seen. The balloons, the flowers, the banner from the morning, had all been cleaned up, folded, moved to one side of a kitchen counter.

“Leon?” I raised an eyebrow when I entered our bedroom and saw him packing bowling shoes into a bag.

“Oh you're home.” He zipped up the duffel.

“Yes, ready to celebrate.” My son had promised a cruise for my fortieth birthday, I remembered, but we hadn't talked since Christmas. Random thought, wrong time. I swallowed it all down.

“I was invited to go bowling with Mike Grant, one of my old partners. You remember him?” He looked at me, looked down at his bag. “I figured you'd be working late so I told him I'd come. I had other plans for us, but I already canceled the reservation.”

“I'm sorry, Leon.”

“No, don't be.” He shrugged. “It's your birthday. You should spend it the way you want to.”

“I want to spend it with you. I just . . . had a lot to get done today.”

“I know.” He nodded. “Look, it will be a bunch of guys, but I'll see if any of the wives are coming. Maybe you can come too. We'll hang out. Make it a date.”

“Sounds good, Leon. Sounds good.”

He looked away, sighed. Shrugged. “Let's go.”

As he stepped out of the room, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was just beginning to show, my pregnancy relegated to the prenatal vitamin routine I'd established in the morning and the extra bottle of water I washed down every night. Nothing in my life felt real, settled, or easy.

Though I was finally going to spend time with Leon on my special day, I knew that I had messed everything up. I wanted him and wanted our marriage to work more than anything, but just couldn't seem to get it right.

Old habits, mindsets, fears die hard. I had to work on me, but wasn't fully sure how. Why couldn't I just let this man love me?

I didn't know how to be Mrs. Sienna St. James Sanderson, Sienna Sanderson, Sienna . . .

I didn't even know how to get my own name right.

Mentally. Physically. Spiritually. Emotionally.

Worn.

Yvette's small group session had been a breath of fresh air, but as I closed the door behind me, though I had walked outside, I felt as if I'd just enclosed myself into an airtight room.

The members of their circle had all said a prayer: a single, one-sentence prayer that kept anyone from taking over, and didn't allow anyone to feel out of place. The simplicity was comforting to me, necessary, as the rest of my life, my day, felt beyond complicated.

It was after ten p.m. now on what had to be the longest day of my life. The beating of my son, the supposed overdose of the attorney I'd been witnessing for, and now the mistaken arrest of my husband; one of these events would have been enough to topple a strong woman over.

And I didn't even feel strong to begin with.

I could hear my grandmother singing in my head, her strong soprano voice belting “Maybe God Is Trying to Tell You Something.” I believed it, felt it, knew it, that He was.

But what was He telling me?

About Sweet Violet? Or about myself? Maybe both.

Yvette had given me her car keys after I told her I'd caught the bus to her home. No questions asked, no explanations given. The last time she'd let me hold her car it had broken down in a rural area of Pennsylvania and become part of a crime scene. Leon's truck was back at the bakery. I guessed she understood that I didn't want to drive it around until I was sure we weren't being followed, or something like that. I could hear my own paranoia.

Maybe Leon had a point. Maybe it was time that I stopped chasing my gut feelings all over the place. The only destinations my instincts seemed to bring me to were ones that were lonely and danger-filled. Terrible places to learn lessons.

I had no idea where Roman was. I didn't know who picked him up, where he went; and my sense was that was what he wanted. After praying, talking, and fellowshipping with the crowd at Yvette's house, I'd been encouraged to get rest. “We have your back on this one,” Yvette had told me as she walked me to her front door. “I'll call Skee-Gee's lawyer and see if he can help with anything.”

“But before you do that, let me wait to hear back from some people I know at central booking.” Mike promised to follow up with his contacts at the department, a small comfort that also disturbed me as he winked again.

Was I supposed to trust this man?

I just wanted my husband back with me. I didn't know what else to do, what could be done.

I went back to the hotel across from the courthouse: my home away from home for the past few weeks leading up to the trial. I'd been worried about the media intruding into my life, but obviously the threat to my person was bigger than just the flash of a camera or an intrusive microphone.

I could be dead right now.

The thought sobered me as I stuck the keycard in the hotel room door. Everything in me wanted to collapse. I wanted nothing more than my bed, my husband's arms, and my son's voice telling me that everything really was okay.

I entered the suite, flicked on the lights, and jumped.

“It's okay, Sienna.”

Leon.

Sitting on a couch that faced the door and dressed in a polo shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, he looked like he was about to go on vacation and not like a man just wrongly arrested for a crime he hadn't committed

“What? How?”

“It's okay, babe.” He put his finger to his lips to quiet me. “I was able to finally talk and explain everything to the authorities, but we need to turn the lights back out. We can't afford to let anyone know we are here.”

With the exception of the lamp I'd turned on, no other lights were on in the hotel suite. I noticed that even the appliances had been unplugged.

“What's going on? Leon?” I stepped toward him, ready to drop in his lap, cry, hold him, let him hold me.

“Not yet.” He gently pushed me away and stood to his feet. “We gotta get out of here. I would have called you, but . . . Listen, we just need to get out of here.”

He grabbed the suitcase that sat on the sofa and another bag I had not noticed behind the couch.

“It's clean in here,” I noticed just before he turned the lamp back off. The counters on the kitchenette had been wiped down, cleared off. The piles of paper, magazines, and books that had been scattered throughout the living area were gone. I had a feeling that the bathroom counters where I'd put all my toiletries and sundries were all cleared and wiped down as well. But I only saw the two bags Leon reached for.
Where are our things?

The darkness from the snapped out lamp was only temporary. Leon turned on a penlight and motioned toward an internal door that connected to the suite next to ours.

“What's going on, Leon? You're scaring me.” I followed him to the door and we entered the next suite, also in darkness. “Leon, talk to me.”

“We just have to get out of here. I'll explain in a moment, but we need to leave quietly.” He shut the connecting door behind us, pulling it until its lock clicked. As he led me through the next suite, I noted that he smelled of soap and aftershave.

“You've showered. Where are we going, Leon? Where are our things?”

He shook his head to quiet me again and then he tried another connecting suite door. “Okay, we're going to leave out of this one.” We stepped into a hallway, entered a stairwell, and went up a few levels. After emerging from the stairwell, Leon used a keycard to enter another room, this one an expansive penthouse suite that had several bedrooms and living areas. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the corner suite provided enough light from the nighttime cityscape that Leon was able to turn off the penlight. Or, maybe, he was afraid of someone seeing the light from outside the window. What was going on? I felt my heartbeat quicken as Leon led us to a private elevator in the rear of the penthouse.

“Did someone say we need to leave from here?”

Leon remained quiet as the soft whir of the elevator took us downward.

“Leon?”

“Nobody told us to go, but I'm not waiting either. You saw what happened today.”

“Sw . . . Sweet Violet?” I whispered her name.

“No, Sienna.” He frowned at me as the elevator continued its eleven-story plunge. “Please stop thinking that homeless woman is controlling your life and the people in it.”

“Leon, the timing of it.”

He didn't say anything.

“Leon, what is going on?” I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate as the elevator neared the ground floor. “You haven't told me where we are going or why. Please, Leon.”

“Listen.” My husband pulled me close to him. Spearmint was on his breath. He'd been chewing gum. He only chewed gum when he was nervous. I felt more alarmed. “Sienna, listen.” He held my shoulders, shook me back to attention. “You are going to have to trust me right now.”

“We're in danger, aren't we?”

He didn't answer and instead stared at the elevator buttons.

“What do you know, Leon?”

He still didn't answer.

“If it's not Sweet Violet, than what is it? What is going on? They let you go and told us to get away? Wait, no, you said nobody told us to go. You decided that's what we need to do. Leon, you need to tell me something.”

“Why isn't our floor lit?” He still stared at the panel. He pressed G for the ground level again. It lit for a moment and then cut off once more.

“Leon, what—”

The elevator stopped with a sudden thud between levels one and two. The power went out.

“Sienna.” He pushed me behind him, reached for something in his pants. Did he have another gun?

“Leon, what's going on?”

I felt sweat pooling through his polo shirt as I pressed close against his back.

“Shhh,” he quieted me as the elevator returned to life, the soft whir returning, accompanied this time with a slight clicking sound. We reached the ground floor and the elevator stopped with a shiver and a bounce. The door seemed to hesitate before opening, but it finally did with a loud squeal.

We were in the underground garage of the hotel. A single light bulb flickered on a nearby wall casting shadows on a small parking area that served the private penthouse suite. As we stepped onto the parking pad, Leon kept me behind him, his eyes scanning over every corner of the enclosed parking space. A metal garage door was partially open at the end of a short ramp.

“Stay here,” he commanded.

“Leon, you have to tell me something. What's going on? Who's after us and are you positive it has nothing to do with Sweet Violet?”

“We'll go over details later.”

“So you're not positive.”

“Sienna, please,” he begged as he crept along the side of the cement wall. Though he had motioned for me to stay behind, I was right up on his heels.

I was not trying to be left alone anywhere, especially since I didn't know what was going on.

The garage felt humid, clammy. A loud drip echoed through the cavernous space.

“You have to tell me something,” I whispered as we neared the partially opened garage door.

“I need you to trust me. Look, nobody said that we were in danger. The incident back at the shop, they think it was a robbery gone wrong. The would-be robbers thought the place was closed and got spooked when they realized that it wasn't. That's what's being investigated.”

“Leon, you know that's not the case. It doesn't make sense. They said a reliable source called in a hostage situation. You were set up. How can you not—”

“Sienna, I have a feeling about something and you're going to have to trust me.”

“So, we follow your gut feelings and completely ignore mine. I'm just supposed to follow blindly behind you while you shoot down any thoughts or insights I have.”

“Sienna, not right now.” His whisper was borderline yell.

“I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I firmly believe that all of this, the murders, the court case, the incident with Roman, the shooting, your arrest, all of it is somehow tied to that woman. You know that my instincts are good, so I don't understand why you keep brushing me off, or demanding my silence. I should have just told the authorities from day one about Sweet Violet instead of listening to you telling me not to do so.”

Leon stopped in his tracks and turned to face me, the glint of his gun visible in his right hand. “I need you to trust me. Trust me.”

I looked in his brown eyes and I saw panic in them.

Rare.

Frightening.

“Leon.” I wanted to tell him that I did trust him, but that I needed him to trust me too. We were a partnership, right? We married each other because we valued each other's strengths, abilities, and perspectives, right? This is what I wanted to tell him, but something else took over the situation.

The garage door of the penthouse parking pad, which had already been partially open, began a slow, loud wind upward. The metal rattled and groaned in a sudden jolt. An alleyway was visible through the opening, but what had both silenced me and stiffened Leon's body was the pair of black boots standing on the other side.