Sufferable Acceptance

Thirteen

Theo

After breakfast I made my way to Amelia's room to give her everything I had on the letters. I knocked, but received no answer. After a few seconds of silence I slowly opened her door to see if she was in there. I found an empty room.

The lights were off, the bed was made and Amelia was nowhere to be found. I headed to my dad's office in hopes of some answers.

"Where is she?" I asked him.

"Where is who?" He asked like he didn't already know who I was talking about. "Where is Amelia? We have work to do. Did she quit already?" I asked.

"Amelia has some work to finish up. We talked this morning, and I gave her the morning off to close some jobs for her clients. We both agreed it would be better for her to give her full attention to our issues, and she couldn't do that with open jobs." My dad explained to me.

"How long is she going to be gone?" I asked out of curiosity.

"I have no idea from what she told me it sounded like she would be busy all morning. I wouldn't plan for her to be back until the evening. Why do you have a problem? Is speaking to her urgent?" He asked me.

"No, I just had a few things to give her. I'll wait 'till she gets back." I said before walking out of his office and back to Amelia's room.

I walked into Amelia's room and dropped the letters on her bed. I planned to turn right around and leave, but I thought this would be a good time to learn more about who this person was.

I was unsuccessful in my search. Amelia carried less information on her than what I found on the internet. I found no pictures, no sign of friends or family in her life. A small notebook in her nightstand contained contacts and coordinates of something important, but nothing useful to me. A small photo fell out of the notebook while I was reading it. In the photo was a teenage boy who I assumed was Alfie based on the similarity. The girl next to him had to be Amelia, although she showed little similarity with the girl in the photo. The only thing recognizable in this photo were her eyes. The same eyes in the photo were the ones I had been dreaming about most nights.

Her closet was stocked half full with clothes and shoes and other storage she had brought to the house. Behind a few boxes I found a large duffel bag. I was shocked at its contents when I unzipped it. It was stuffed with guns and small weapons. It was quite the collection. In the assortment of knives and guns, was a small medical pouch. I opened it to find dozens of small vials of who knows what, and needles. Another small bag next to the medical pouch contained torture tools. Finger traps, hammers, pliers, large clippers and other disturbing instruments.

What the hell was this? How could I have been so blind to who Amelia really was? When we met I just thought she was shy, and didn't want to share too much of her personal life, but this. It was all too much. I tried picturing Amelia using anything in this bag and it gave me goosebumps. I thought we would have never worked out because our lives were too different from each other, but each day she was starting to fit into my world more and more and it scared me.

I quickly put everything back the way I found it and headed back to my room to work until Amelia came home.

*****

A few hours later I heard my mother and Amelia having a conversation about tonight's dinner, and shortly after excusing herself she walked up the stairs.

She was wearing tight black cargo pants and a black sweatshirt. With her she carried another duffel bag, but this one was smaller than the one in her closet.

"Where were you?" I asked her.

She walked right past me to her door and answered "Work. I had some loose ends to tie up."