2,886A/N: Special thanks to Fran for Betaing, old and new chaps. May and Unwritten Selene for pre-reading in its entirety. Bless them all.
..::.. Chapter 2 - Silent witness ..::..
It's Saturday. I'm taking it easy. It means I get to watch. Stake out. It's shameful, but I'm shameless. Jessica comes to visit sometimes and we sit at the table all morning or out back soaking up the sun. But she never once leaves here without taking a peek, too.
"You're obsessed," she said once. Yeah, I am. I want to figure him out. See the patterns. Document every move.
For a while I didn't care. For months when I moved in, the blinds were drawn and that big ol' house was dark. He was there. He inherited it. A two floor with a wrap around balcony upstairs, right off the master bedroom. I know where the cracks and the weak boards are. I've climbed the rigs a couple of times before. That was years ago. It's been so long I can barely see it in memories where dirty chucks, bikes and childhood bloody scabs reside. Now the house is old, faded and chipping away.
I left. Life was big and freeing outside of this stuffy town after high school. It's exciting when you're young, willing to thrive. Then you realize it was perfect where you started. With Mom gone and Dad off living with his new wife, I'm left with this big house and no real aim in life. No real aim aside from him outside my windows.
One day I woke up and there were no blinds in that mysterious house on this dead end street. It was startling. Edward. Alone. Just that single lamp illuminating his profile, morning and night. Never clicked off. A spotlight over his favorite chair. It became a routine to share breakfast, lunch and dinner with someone who didn't know where the world started or ended.
He was a different person, and I never questioned anyone about it.
The mornings he'd wear boxers, I couldn't peel my eyes away. Sweat rolled down his chest as he pulled his body up a pipe. It was dug into the porch out back for pull-ups.
The appealing part of this... situation outside my window is that Edward—as I still liked to call him, the other name never sits well with me—is not a crazy old decrepit man. This enigma is as young as me and my friends. Edward is fit and quick as a panther. Under that robe and grainy clothes he is lean and built just like his father. Just enough tone and definition to make you wonder why his body hasn't failed him like his brain has.
Yes, shameful, but shameless; I watch him move on from pull-ups to sit-ups and jump rope in a mesmerizing routine.
For a second he looks focused, normal even, like I could go and ask for a cup of sugar or ask about his sister Alice and the rest of his large family. I never understood why they weren't there to keep an eye on him. Always alone with his shadows.
The moments he seemed normal, calm, and peaceful, he'd quickly break the trance. Sometimes, after a few punches to a bean bag, he'd whip up scraps of metal left rotting around the yard and go nuts. He'd swing it this way or that, hitting anything in sight. He wouldn't stop until his hands would bleed. His tired body would barge into the house and plop on his recliner with a huff. Chest going, eyes dark and spent.
Some days his mood was lighter. He'd munch on snacks and let crumbs fall all over his chest and floor. Then he'd crawl around to find every crumb and sweep it right up. He'd make a perfect sizable sandwich and then segment the pieces at his chair and eat them one at a time.
He has a mint green rotary phone that sits by his chair. The curly cord reaches the floor, snaking under the vintage table. When he picks it up he barely moves his lips. Time and again it rings, day and night. The nostalgic shrill drifts through my window at night. He always picks up on the third ring.
I don't know who calls him so much or what he says. I wonder if it's Alice checking up on him. I guess it would make up for not being able to visit much. Her so busy raising four boys.
Since I've been back I haven't spoken to her. She was my best friend once. I didn't keep in touch with anyone while I was gone. I didn't even get updates from Dad. He never really talked much.
I tell myself I should move out, find a cozier place in town, start new. This house is up on a hill along with his. The biggest pair with a view over everything. The new addition in the back makes room for a sunroom. There's a new pool in the yard dad keeps maintained all year round even if he isn't here. He re-worked my childhood bedroom. He broke down walls, put a tub under bay windows. I can't complain or give it away. How could I? Dad put a lifetime of work into this place.
So, I give in every night and just live. I lie in bed facing the lace curtains grandma sewed years ago. I wonder how delicate his mind is. Is it like the strands of the detailed silk, complicated yet fragile? What does he think about? Where does he go when he sits for hours on his chair and stares out windows?
Then, I'd feel it. That feeling you get when you're being watched. No fear or odd feelings about it. This house oozes so much energy from the past, I never fear moments like this. I just keep still in bed wondering what he's up to and why he's up so late. I figured I let it pass since I'm always staring into his windows, he can stare in mine.
He likes to walk in the dark, inside and outside the house. His evening strolls are lengthy and daily. After dinner I watch him leave the front door open to walk around the hill. He has a pattern. He takes a left until he's out of sight. Then, he hops over his fence to the back yard. He walks across it as if he's measuring the grounds with wide strides. He'd stroll between both our houses until he reaches the front. But as he does all of this, he sings at the top of his lungs. He knows every Frank Sinatra lyric. His baritone voice is a handsome melody. His hair is erratic in contrast.
Sometimes I can't help but join in and hum the familiar song. Sometimes I laugh just listening. Then, I laugh harder remembering the first few weeks I got here.
After taking laps in the pool one Saturday, the sky opened up. I begrudgingly climbed out and grabbed a towel. I looked up and he was standing on the porch roof of his house watching. He climbed out of a window. It irked me. His blank expression stared back, no rhyme or reason.
I quickly got inside, but no later did I feel a canon ball drop from the sky into the pool. I turned to look and he made the jump right where he was—boxers, robe, socks and all. His long body stretched out as it floated under droplets of hot summer rain. The fabric was bubbled and fitted against his torso. That trail of hair making it's way down skin colored shorts, under those cut hip bones of his. A rainbow arched over the backyard just in time. It looked magical.
He sighed and sang my favorite Sinatra tune, like he knew, to add to the perfect moment. I left him to himself, though I itched to join him. It was a sticky hot day. I couldn't blame him.
Those were moments I kept in the safety of our hill. No one would understand, especially when he was suspected of committing horrific acts. The Edward I knew wouldn't have it in him to take a metal pipe to a neighbor's spine. A dislocated shoulder and a bleeding gash on Mike's head. His wife found him on their yard. Broad daylight. Mike wasn't talking after that, literally and metaphorically. Everyone knew he had a gambling problem... and a history of picking up children off their path home from school in the '80s. No one liked him. They figured he had an enemy and gratefully left it at that.
But I knew. Charlie was a smart, observant man who would mention a few things. But he was also a close friend of the Cullen brothers, Edward's uncles. There are three still living. Edward's father was the oldest of the four. Then comes Carlisle, Jasper and Emmett, the youngest. They pay Edward's tabs at local stores, but they also make sure he lives easy.
Sometimes they visit, mostly Jasper. When Carlisle comes into town, a posse flanks him. All in tailored suits, expensive shoes and trench coats. Carlisle sits in the livingroom while the others pace the front and back of the house.
Usually, when they do visit, someone is missing weeks after. Men would abandon their wives and kids, not to be seen again. Charlie would say they weren't deadbeats, but beat dead and six feet under. All anyone knew was the Cullens were dangerous and never to be messed with.
The night before they found Mike, I was looking out my window from my dark room. I saw that pipe stuck in the back porch was missing. That dark patch of ground turned over in his yard was suspicious. What had he done?
When morning came and the local station told the story, I knew. I was a silent witness shaking in her bones.
….