Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(3)

“How long has it been?” he says cordially.

“Ten years. Two years of boarding school, four years of university, four years in the Army.”

“Long time.”

“Yeah.”

“Lotta birthdays.”

“Yeah.”

He lowers his voice. “You hear anything from her?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Not once.”

“Damn. You ever try sending something to her?”

My eyes sink to the floor.

“No.”

Frank sort of…rumbles, and those huge shoulders shrug. “Top floor. Menswear.”

I smirk a little, but that’s all I can manage. The doors open and I ask him.

“Is she even here?”

“Yeah,” he says, a little sadly. “She’s here.”





Ellie





There is a bridal party, but I’m not with them. I sit alone in my suite, brushing my hair, finely working it with just enough gel to keep it thick and heavy. First I comb it all over to one side of my head.

I have to put on my eye patch.

After the enucleation?there’s a word you never want to learn in context?I took to wearing a blank glass eye with a patch over it. I tried wearing an actual false eye, but every time I caught a glimpse of my reflection, it was my eye that bothered me the most. Mom paid top dollar for it and it matched my real eye perfectly but it didn’t move, it just sat there, or worse. It would start drooping.

The doctors say if I don’t wear one at all the tissues around my eye socket will collapse. So I keep a blank one in there and put the patch over it. It’s a padded medical patch, with four fine strings that keep it in place, not like a cheap Halloween costume.

My bridesmaid’s dress hangs in a garment bag beside the vanity. The other members of the bridal party will wear peach-colored strapless dresses and faux-mink stoles when we have to go outside. Mine is the same color, but has full sleeves and a high collar of lace that looks sheer but isn’t.

The scars start above my left eye and go down my neck, shoulder, and arm. There are both burns and lacerations. My face has the worst scars. From just beneath my left eye to my jaw is one big burn, and the grafted skin is warped and puckered. The way it healed pulls my mouth into a perpetual sneer, one corner always tilted up. My left ear is little more than a hole.

Besides all of those, there’s a long scar on my right leg where they collected skin from my thigh for the grafts.

My right hand is useless. I can bend my thumb and my first two fingers slightly, but nerve damage and burns left the rest fixed in place in a useless claw.

The worst part is the itch. It’s under the scars, and I can’t reach it no matter how I scratch. It goes away sometimes, and sometimes it makes me want to scream. When it gets bad enough I drink until it goes numb.

With my patch in place, I comb and brush my hair so it falls in a thick crimson sheet over the bad side of my face. Hiding scars like that always works in the movies. Real life, not so much.

Getting into my dress one handed is a struggle. Before I put it on, I tie a thick string through the tab of the zipper to help me get it up without bending my arm too much. My shoulder gets stiff, especially when it’s cold outside, or humid. My knee is a little better, enough that I usually don’t limp, but it clicks when I walk.

It’ll be time soon.

If I stand just right, I can’t see the scars in the mirror, only the straps holding my eye patch in place. As soon as I move, the illusion is broken. I’m very, very lucky that the fire didn’t take my nose. I lick my lips, wince, and check the time.

When I step outside into the chilly hallway air and take a deep breath, I close my eye and harden myself. I keep it pressed shut and pretend I can feel a fine layer of steel rising up from my toes, covering me, cold as ice and hard.

Let them look. Let them stare.

I take the elevator up one floor and walk to my mother’s room. I’ll be standing as her maid of honor at the wedding. I have to fight to keep my face still and neutral when the words slide through my head. The mask wants to crack. The steel wants to bend.

That which does not kill me makes me also stronger.

I knock on the door and Mom’s assistant opens it. Her name is Beth and she’s dressed professionally, but then she’s always dressed professionally. I slip past her and stride into the room.

While I was left alone my mother was surrounded by friends and family, helping her dress. She doesn’t have the veil on yet, but she’s in her gown with its long, flowing train, and she looks magnificent, even regal. She notices me as my cousin tugs a silk glove into place on her arm.

“Ellie,” she says, warmly. “Hello, honey. Are you alright?”

Of course I’m alright.

“Yes, Mom.”

It is a strange thing, to call someone Mom when you are an orphan.

My biological mother died when I was four years old. She developed a rare neurological condition. For the next two years, I lived with my father. Then he remarried.

He married Mom. I was forbidden to call her my stepmother. After Dad died she was all I had. She was there when I woke up in the hospital with half my face missing and my life ruined.

I still feel strange calling her Mom, just a little. She’s so young, young enough in fact to be my older sister more than my mother, only nine years or so older. My cousin, who is helping her dress, isn’t really my cousin. She’s close in age to Mom, only a few years behind. Her name is Laetitia.