Roommates

Chapter 8

Aurora took Evangeline's address from her messages, plugged it into Google Maps, and got into her car. She looked in her rearview mirror at the scene she was escaping. Officers lined the fire lane and were parked in every direction, blocking the entire complex. Their LED headlights blinded her while the flashing red and blue lights brought on a fire-and-ice effect within her. She was cold from the rain but burning hot from her anger.

Sam had called them about twenty minutes before Aurora arrived home from work. She got dragged into this mess for no good reason. While he was forcibly evicting another tenant, Sam caught the eye of Aurora and began harassing her, too. Provoked by his unnecessary anger, she lashed out at him, and the story escalated out of control.

She couldn't piece together how things got out of hand so quickly. It was as if she blacked out in her engagement with Sam. All she knew was that soon the officers were breaking the lock to her apartment and searching the house, while she was detained in the parking lot in nothing but her pajamas and some old shoes she found in a box by the door.

She had done her duty to report her statement to the police, now the only thing she could do was to wait until tomorrow to pack her things and get the hell away from this apartment complex. She would do anything to get away from Sam right now. If he didn't care that she still had a few more days to move out, then she didn't care either. To hell with him!

Aurora began sobbing uncontrollably. She hit her head on the steering wheel, gripping it tight enough to pop her white knuckles. Fuck you, Sam! she screamed internally.

Amidst the tears, a haunting memory surfaced, its vivid images merging with the pulsating lights of the police cars. It transported her back to the night her dad had kicked her out of the house—a cruel mirror reflecting Sam's unrelenting hostility. Her father, much like Sam, was an unkind man, a figure of authority with little regard for compassion. Everything was his way or the highway—literally. He possessed none of the patience or empathy that should accompany fatherhood.

Talking to Daniel was like talking to a brick wall adorned with a blond beard. Aurora couldn't even recall the color of his eyes; in her mind, they were simply soulless black pits that met hers only to invite punishment. Looking into her father's eyes was a forbidden act, a rule she dared not break. She was safer looking only at the ground.

That was exactly how she spent that night. She had just celebrated her twenty-first birthday, and she had come home to a fight. She remembered the slaps he gave her and his loud cursing, but she didn't remember ever looking up from her shoes until his batting left her lying on the wet grass outside the house, looking up at the hazy stars. 

The bitterness in his heart festered into anger, a sentiment that perennially circled back to his profound regret of raising his wife's affair child. Aurora, to Daniel, was a permanent reminder of the competition he could never measure up to. He wasn't half the man that deadbeat fling was, and Daniel knew it. It didn't help that Aurora was a brown-eyed brunette in a family of blue-eyed blonds. She even had a darker skin tone than her parents and sister, and she was taller than all of them. Her appearance served as a constant visual reminder of a past Daniel could neither accept nor forgive.

An officer broke her from her wallowing. He knocked upon her window. "Ma'am, I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. Mr. Gibbs would like you to vacate now, or he has called for your vehicle to be towed. My guys have pulled their cars out of your way, so you can leave the parking lot. If needed, I can quickly offer you a few directions to safe houses and shelters for the night. You may return after ten am to gather your things. On behalf of the King County Sheriff's Department, we would like to offer you our deepest condolences, Ms. James."

Aurora recognized the script; she had heard these lines before. It was an unnecessary formality, a disingenuous attempt at empathy. They didn't care. They couldn't possibly care about a single individual when their job was to serve and protect a community of over two million people. Her biological father had been a cop who responded that night, and even he couldn't extend enough empathy for his own flesh.