X's and O's

Violet – Chapter One

“You do realize there’s this thing called email, don’t you? It’s where you do the typey-type with your fingers, hit send, and then poof! Your message is instantly delivered.” Toby eyed me with an up-and-down glance. Like we’d time-jumped back to the 1800s and my dowdy workpants had suddenly morphed into a corset dress, complete with a hoop skirt.

All because I wanted to send some snail mail.

I ignored my best friend’s disdain and stopped at the mailbox on the corner.

“If I see you kiss that envelope, Violet Garrisen, I swear, we can no longer be friends. That would just be too tragic for words.”

Toby’s perfectly plucked eyebrows furrowed deep in the middle. His words might have been laced with his usual sarcasm and sass, but he didn’t frown for no reason. He didn’t want to have to pay for the extra Botox to repair the damage to his wrinkle-free forehead.

He was worried about me.

I loved him for it. Truly, I did. Nobody cared about me the way Toby did. But we’d had this argument a million times over the last year, and I wasn’t willing to have it again.

Toby didn’t want me sending the letters, and I wasn’t willing to give them up.

I couldn’t.

I ran my fingers over the handwritten text on the envelope and then glanced back at him. “You should probably look away now.”

He groaned dramatically, grudgingly turning around to face the street.

When I was sure he was no longer watching, I quickly pressed my lips to the paper and dropped it into the box for the mailman to collect.

I knew it was ridiculous and I was acting like a teenager, but the giddy, excited feeling swirling in my belly was so sweet I couldn’t have stopped myself, even if I’d wanted to.

Toby still sulked on the sidewalk though.

I tucked my arm into his and tugged him along the path. “Come on. Don’t be a grump. I’m happy. Please just let me have this?”

He held his frown for a few seconds longer until a long sigh slipped out. “Fine. Be all gooey and in love.”

I grinned at him. He was average height for a man, but I was tall for a woman at five eleven, so we were eye to eye. “I know it’s gross to be this happy.”

He flicked his brightly painted fingernails dismissively. “So gross. But it’s your life, girly-pop. You can buy me a bucket-sized caramel soy latte on your way home from work though, and all shall be forgiven. I won’t mention it again.” He shrugged. “At least not until the next letter I have to watch you smooch on.”

I chuckled, relieved he wasn’t really mad at me. I put my hand over my heart. “I wouldn’t dream of coming home empty-handed. I’ll stop by the café as soon as I’m finished at my next house.”

It was our ritual. He had a hot meal sitting on the table for me when I got home each night, and I brought him fancy coffees, which he called dessert, and somehow still managed to sleep before midnight.

I did not possess such skills, so I kept my coffee consumption limited to anything in the a.m. realm.

Though I could have used an extra today to prepare myself for the next few hours of scrubbing. I squinted at the street sign up ahead at the intersection. Olympic Drive was printed in metallic letters. “Okay, this is me. My job should be just down here somewhere.”

“New client?” Toby asked.

“Yep, first clean. So I might be late.”

Toby shuddered, understanding that first cleans often took longer because people let the grime and mess build up for a while before calling in help. Once we were in a cycle of regular bi-weekly cleans, it was a breeze to get through, but the first one almost always needed a lot of elbow grease and time.

“Hope it’s not too gross.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay if it is.”

Toby might have hated to get dirt on his nicely moisturized hands, but I was used to it. I liked knowing I was helping people. Whether those people were stressed business execs, who worked too much and just wanted to come home to relax in a clean home. Or exhausted parents with toys everywhere, who needed an extra set of hands. I even liked the houses nobody else wanted. The ones where there was dirt and clutter and filth everywhere you looked, but in the middle of that was an elderly person too frail to keep on top of it, or someone struggling with their mental health.

Who they were didn’t matter.

Just that I could help make their lives a little better in the one small way I was qualified for.

At the intersection, Toby waved, continuing on his way to a friend’s house. Though I was quite sure Toby and Devin were a bit more than just friends these days, they clearly weren’t ready to go public just yet, so I hadn’t pushed the issue. He’d tell me when he was ready.

But it made me happy to know he’d found someone.

Just like I had.

A smiled tugged at the corners of my mouth, and there was a definite spring in my step as I practically pranced along the sidewalk, checking the house numbers until I found the one I was searching for. 1258 Olympic Drive.

It was a neat house in the suburban area between the low-income housing in Saint View, where Toby and I lived, and the much more affluent town on the other side of the border. Providence was so far out of my league, I didn’t even have dreams of living there, but this part of Saint View, I would have given my eye teeth to live in.

A warm flush filled me, thinking about this being my home, tending to a small garden every day, a couple of kids running around in the backyard, and a man wrapping his arms around me from behind, murmuring sexy things in my ear that we could do while the kids were distracted.

The face of the man in my daydream was blurry, but that was temporary.

Soon, I’d know what he looked like.

But for now, all I knew was that his handwriting was a scratchy scrawl of cheap pen on thin paper, that he’d apologized for and hoped I could read.

I’d read every word of every letter what felt like a hundred times.

The door of 1258 Olympic Drive opened, dragging me out of my daydream. I smiled brightly at the middle-aged man standing in the doorway. His tall build filled the doorframe, a gray knitted sweater stretched tight across his chest and stomach. His cheeks were a bit pink, perhaps with embarrassment, as new clients often were.

“Violet?”

I smiled reassuringly at him and hurried up the couple of steps to meet him. I put my hand out. “Yes. That’s me. From Clean Sweep Cleaning.”

He took my hand, squeezing it with a warm smile. If I had to bet, I would have put money on this guy being a schoolteacher. Or maybe an accountant.

I tried to mentally recall the job details Francine had included on my schedule but came up completely blank. “I’m sorry, I think the agency only gave me a woman’s name. Your wife, I presume? Claire, was it?”

The man stared at me blankly, his fingers still wrapped around mine.

Seconds passed, each one feeling like a lifetime. I held his gaze at first, trying to be polite and make a good impression on a new client. But after too much silence and staring, an uncomfortable awareness swept over me. I pulled my hand free limply.

He blinked and gave a short laugh. “I’m sorry. Yes. I’m Paul. Clara is my wife.”

I took my phone from my pocket and glanced down it. The agency’s email was still displayed from when I’d searched for the address earlier. “Oh, I’m sorry. My company must have had her name wrong. I can update it on their system, so your invoices are correct.”

Paul didn’t respond, and when I looked up, he was staring at me again.

Great. He was one of those guys. The kind who made out like he was watching me work to be sure I was doing a good job, when really, he was just being a perv.

The only type of man I seemed to attract, apparently.

He wouldn’t be my first, or my last, client who acted like that, and I knew I just had to be professional and put up with it. I bit my lip, fighting back the urge to tell this guy to put his eyes back in his head and just let me get on with it.

He let out a mumbled noise I didn’t catch.

I strained toward him. “Sorry?”

He gave a short, sharp shake of his head. “Never mind. Please come in. Claire and I can go through everything we want done.”

My hesitation disappeared with the knowledge his wife was home, though I was more confused than ever as to whether her name was Claire or Clara. But it didn’t really matter. He’d have to quit staring in front of her, at least. I paused, my finger still hovering over the details of the job on my phone, then shrugged. It was my job to clean. The agency could figure out who to bill.

“Thanks.” I put my phone away in my purse and hung it on the coatrack just inside the door. To my surprise, the inside of the house was quite tidy. A typical-looking home for a middle-income family, with a soft couch, a rug, and a bookshelf with an ugly stuffed toy bear, some decorative knick-knacks, and a bunch of tattered paperbacks displayed.

I eyed them curiously, scanning the titles.

Paul shut the door behind us, then followed me over to the bookshelf, standing closer than seemed appropriate. “You like to read?”

I nodded, setting my cleaning caddy down on the hardwood floor beside me. “I do. You have quite a collection.”

Paul’s breath was warm on the side of my neck when he spoke. “I like the erotica ones, personally.”

Oh, ew. I loved erotica. Had a whole shelf full of it at home. And men were more than welcome to enjoy it too. But the way Paul had moved in too close and practically purred it in my ear? Nope. Just nope. I took a big step away, ignoring the warning bells ringing in my head because I didn’t want to appear rude. I couldn’t afford to get a customer complaint. The owners of my company had fired a girl just last week after she’d gotten one, and I’d had to watch her leave in tears, wondering how she was going to feed her kids that week.

I might not have had kids, but I had rent, food, and utilities to pay. Not to mention keeping Toby supplied with caffeine. The cost of living felt like it was getting worse by the day, and decent jobs in Saint View were not always easy to come by. It had taken me three months to land this position after I’d left my last job because the boss was a creep. Toby had covered my half of the rent during those months, and though he hadn’t so much as whispered a complaint about it, I did not want that to happen again. I hated feeling like I was mooching off him.

I edged toward the kitchen, looking around for any sign of his wife. “I’d like to make a start, so if you have a list of things you’d like taken care of today, you can just leave that with me and carry on with your day. You won’t even know I’m here.” I forced a smile again to try to cover any impatience in my voice.

He cocked his head to one side. “I heard some cleaners work naked for higher tips.”

I pressed my lips into a straight line, biting back my annoyance. “Not me.”

I’d dealt with men like him a million times. I didn’t like the way they seemed to think they could be disrespectful just because I was a cleaner from Saint View, who got paid less than them. But I also couldn’t afford to piss him off.

It wasn’t fair. But it was the way the world was for women like me. We had to put up with this shit and do it with a smile.

Even if what I really wanted was to knee him in the balls. The man had a wife, for goodness’ sake.

“Pity,” Paul murmured. “I like a tall, naked woman in my house.”

Yeah, okay. I was done. I could put up with a lot, but clearly this guy wanted something I wasn’t going to give. If the agency wanted to fire me over this, then so be it. I’d have to throw myself at Toby’s feet and hope his manicurist salary could cover us both again until I found something new. But I wasn’t staying here with this guy, who clearly wanted some pervy fun while his wife was out.

Not that there had been a single photo of a woman on that bookshelf. I glanced around the open-plan kitchen and living area, and there were photos of Paul doing various outdoor activities like fishing and hiking, and a photo of him with an elderly couple who had to be his parents.

But no sign of anyone who could be his wife.

He hadn’t seemed to know her name either. Claire or Clara?

A different sort of worry prickled across my skin. Not the regular annoyance that came from a man who was just being a bit stupid because he was alone with a woman who wasn’t his partner, but an actual concern I might have walked into something premeditated.

I edged toward the door, where my purse hung, my phone inside. “I don’t think this is going to work out. I’ll let the agency know you’re after a different sort of cleaner.”

Paul moved around the furniture so quickly and smoothly he was like oil. “You left your cleaning caddy over there.”

I wasn’t going back for it. It had probably a hundred dollars’ worth of cleaning supplies in it that the company made us pay for ourselves, if we went through them too quickly. I’d only just replenished my kit, so there was no doubt in my mind they’d dock my pay to replace them, but my gut warned me I didn’t have a choice. I needed to get out of this house.

Paul cut off my exit right as I reached for my purse.

He caught my wrist, his long fingers wrapping around it with a viselike grip, one much tighter than his handshake had been.

I yelped, trying to yank my arm back with no success. “What are you doing? Let me go!”

He dragged me in close to his chest. I fought against him, but even though nobody would have ever called me petite, he was still bigger than I was. Fear and shock weakened my muscles, my entire body just wanting to curl up into a ball of terror.

Paul pushed his face into the side of my neck and inhaled. “You smell so sweet. And you came right to my door, like the good little girl you are. Just like the agency promised me you would.”

My heart thumped unevenly. “Stop. Please. Let me go.”

He pressed me up against a wall, his body crowding mine so I couldn’t go anywhere. “But you just got here, Violet. And we haven’t even begun to have any fun.”

I looked him in the eye, really seeing what was behind them for the first time.

And realized my mistake in not doing that earlier.

Evil lurked there.

I tried to get out a scream, but it was muffled down to a squeak by the cloth he slapped over my face. The toxic smell of whatever chemical he’d soaked the rag in filled my nostrils, burning the insides of them.

But the darkness that came with it was a relief. Because in the dark, I could pretend I was anywhere else in the world.

Including in the dark with one man I knew would never hurt me.

The man who wrote me letters.