Bellmare

She wasn’t sure when she had drifted off, or what had lulled her into a restless sleep. The car smelled thickly of a black vanilla air freshener, the window cold against her forehead as they ambled along the highway. Eventually, the city faded away to pure green, the world’s last-ditch effort to feign life before turning an ugly brown.

Aubrey nodded off around Virginia and stirred at a rest stop leading into North Carolina. Her knee was throbbing and her head swam, because for just a moment, she figured that everything was normal. That this was a routine road trip with her sister. But then she realized her driver had a badge in the center console next to his gun, and she had heavy reading material in her grasp. Her palms started sweating and left a wet imprint on the manila surface.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

No, she didn’t’ think she did. They had been driving for at least five hours at this point and the stale soda she had gulped down at the burger joint they tried still hadn’t weighted on her system. But she nodded anyway, for a chance to get out of the car and stretch her legs. Grady rounded the car quickly and she gratefully accepted the hand he outstretched towards her.

Aubrey never needed help, not before all of this.

Her knee ached in a ghostly kind of way. It had healed; that’s what Sammy told her. Her shattered bones were glued together like a puzzle and it was up to her to learn to walk normally again. But it still burned like there was a bloody hole in what remained as she had just been struck with the leaden bullet once more. A phantom of an injury. Sammy said that would happen too.

She fought off a groan as Grady let her put most of her weight against him. He didn’t’ protest and let her take her time in the overly lit rest stop bathroom. She would have refused to use them once upon a time, even if it was miles away from the city.

They smelled of the same antiseptic that the hospital used and the seats were frigid. She didn’t’ make a move to open one of the stalls; instead, she walked to the sink furthest away from the squeaking door and flicked on the water. It took a moment to warm up, teasing her skin until it was raw and red. The soap was a foamy pink and smelled something akin to fruit, but she couldn’t’ place which one.

Aubrey looked pale; she hadn’t seen the sun in months. Her face was slim and her skin angry from the patches placed on her chest. She had peeled most of the adhesive away, but the shirt that they had provided her with left little to the imagination.

She thought about her younger sister for a moment; an overachiever in the same way Aubrey had always been. It was the first time that she could see a resemblance; the way that her jaw curved, how her skin was sweaty and sickly. Her sister cared even more than her, if that was possible, about things that didn’t’ seem to matter now.

Aubrey had finished staring at herself in the soap-speckled mirror, but she couldn’t get the face staring back to leave her mind.

In the four hours, it took to cross the border into South Carolina, the air had gotten thicker. Detective Marshall had rolled up the window somewhere north of I80 and resorted to cranking the air all the way up. It plunged them into silence- Aubrey had grown used to the purr of the engine and the uneasy feeling in her stomach.

She refrained from looking in the side mirrors, or flipping down the visor like she had done haplessly in the past to apply a generous coat of lip stain or mascara. She yearned for the days when the only thing she worried about was her appearance. Instead of thinking too much, she opted for not at all. Her stare was trained on the fast-moving scenery.

Dusk was approaching fast and after the billboards for Myrtle Beach turned into advertisements for firework stands and hand-painted signs for boiled peanuts and peaches, Aubrey started to panic. They had driven through small towns and ones that were closer to the ocean; she watched the blackened waves through the stretching hotels. They morphed into marshes, and then thickets of trees, and then nothing.

It was entirely dark by the time she finally got enough nerve to question Grady.

“You weren’t kidding about this being the middle of nowhere.” Her voice was hushed, and he turned down the air in response, trying to hear her better. She didn’t repeat herself, instead, giving him a moment to process what she had said.

“It’s not as hard as you would think to vanish completely. If you’re smart enough, you can get away with it for a long time.”

It wasn’t the answer that she was looking for. She didn’t know what she wanted. She supposed it would be easy to disappear. Her late-night binges consisted of true crime podcasts and Dateline specials. Everyone hell-bent on leaving their lives did. But she didn’t want that- she didn’t’ want this.

They passed another car on the highway and Aubrey blinked away the little blue spots that the headlights created. She had been gripping the folder of her new life like a vice. Its edges were frayed and damp with the sweat from her palms. She hastily watched as a sign pulled into view.

BELLMARE SC, EST. 1908

It was a nice wooden creation pooled in floodlights. She tried to catch the population but couldn’t. Her stitches pulled at her abdomen and she hissed slightly before giving up entirely. Aubrey waited for the large structures, but they only passed more marshes and walls of trees. It was another seven minutes before lights came into view.

She squinted at the inky water and thought that it looked endless. The rancid scent of fish leaked through the air vents and she considered it better than the paper mill in the city she grew up in- mingling with the gasoline. She leaned forward, trying to see what Bellmare had to offer.

It wasn’t much; she noticed a small pub tacked with Christmas lights and wondered sparsely if it was a design choice or laziness. Large trucks were surrounding the converted barn. The door was open and the sound of live music shook the car. She watched as a van treaded gravel to get the last manmade spot.

The foliage turned into a fully lit main street; the buildings were mostly brick. She tried hard to read the frosted glass with names carved in them. She noticed a bookstore, and a little boutique, a butcher. Most of the storefronts were vacant and the same realtors face graced the comically bright advertisements tacked in the windows, she wanted a clear look, a better idea of the woman.

She was sure Bellmare had a certain southern charm leaking in classic tradition. A classic tradition that she wanted no part of.

Grady continued to drive until main street faded away and large oaks dripping with Spanish moss took over again. They passed a few unmarked streets that could have been paths to nowhere and everywhere all at once. The scent of the ocean faded away and suddenly he made a sharp turn onto a dirt road.

“I know it looks a little dingy so far,” he stated, letting out a small grunt as they hit a particularly deep pothole. “Kind of like a horror movie, huh?”

Aubrey gave him a dry stare and gripped the handle above her head. “Too soon, Detective Marshall.”

He cleared his throat as the white dirt turned into gray gravel. Aubrey could smell the ocean again. There was a small turnabout at the end of the street, and he pulled the vehicle where the circle met the grass. She noticed the shadowy outline of a house- but even more, she noticed the dull yellow light leaking from the nearest window.

It was old and large and Victorian, that, she could tell from here. The white paint job caught the headlights until Grady flicked them off. She didn’t move for a moment. “Is someone here?”

He chuckled “You really didn’t read the file, did you?”

She hadn’t, not all the way through. Instead, she watched the ink smear from her touch. Aubrey let Detective Marshall help her from the car. The gravel was slick and the world was alive around them; she could hear the low hum of crickets and toads and other animals that lurked in the brush. There was a small break in the forest that leads to a grassy area, silver in the darkness. She could see a dock leading out to the water and a small boat tied to the rotting wood.

It took a few moments for the both of them to walk up the steps, Grady helping her along the way. He used a key on his ring to open the door, letting it creak and groan with the age that it possessed. “Honey, I’m home!”

She didn’t find the joke very funny but appreciated his lightness in the subject. She looked around the foyer- this place was archaic, but done up as much as it could be. It was warm and cozy and reminded her of a bed and breakfast, but not the home she desired. She craved the cool steel appliances and breathtaking view of her apartment in the city. And central air- how she missed that.

The detective closed the door behind him and put the keys in the dish. Who was he calling out to?

“It’s not the white house, but it’s pretty damn nice. I relocated a family to a town in Alaska once, god, that was absolutely horrid compared to this.” He frowned and cupped the back of his neck sheepishly “I get nervous with this type of thing.”

“You shouldn’t tell her all of your trade secrets.”

The woman who walked from what Aubrey assumed was the dining room was nearly a head shorter than herself, her frame was slight and delicate but her facial expression rough. Her hair was tied in a loose bun at her neck, strands falling from the elastic band. She was sweating too, that much was clear from the collar of her shirt. She eyed Aubrey for a total of four seconds before smiling genuinely at Grady.

“It’s about time you got here; I thought you stopped at some of the bars in Myrtle Beach.”

“Gross. No, I was just enjoying the scenery.” He shoved his hands in his pockets despite the heat. “It’s a little too late for me to head out tonight. That guestroom still open upstairs?”

“Are you okay to share a bed with a police scanner?”

“It’ll be more action than I’ve seen in a while.”

The woman snorted and shook her head before returning her attention to Aubrey. She felt like a little kid, waiting for her parents to stop talking so she could crawl into clean sheets and sleep until the sun had risen well past its peak.

“You must be Aubrey.” She lifted her chin, didn’t offer a hand “I’m Agent Beca Mitchell from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’ve been assigned to you as protection.”

She struggled to choose her words carefully, but they spilled out like vomit “I was under the impression that I would be alone up here. Won’t people notice an FBI agent?”

Aubrey had always cared a little too much about her job. She never leaned into the reporters that lined the courthouse steps or the radio shows that her firm forced her to speak to. Instead; it was about the client. The client she knew would be her responsibility.

The silence perturbed her “This all seems like a lot.”

“Was it a lot when you got shot three times?” The woman challenged her.

“Excuse me?”

“Alright!” Detective Marshall clapped his hands together “Aubrey and I traveled a lot today, and I’m sure she’s just as exhausted as me. I think we should get to bed. All three of us will discuss things a little more tomorrow.”

The agent steeled her jaw, but eventually, let her shoulders relax with a shrug. She said her goodnights and climbed the creaking stairs to one of the bedrooms. Aubrey didn’t’ exactly know which one, and she didn’t care to find out. Part of her wanted to request another agent, to request another stupid file that would take her to Alaska instead.

“People are going to question why we’re here.” She mumbled under her breath.

“That’s why we gave them something else to question.” Aubrey lifted a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, looking at the dumb expression on Detective Marshall’s face. “I know it’s a rocky start, but what’s a marriage without a little fighting?”