Page 22 of Freed By Wrath

Fabien gathers the remaining picture frames from the shelves and also leaves.

The office feels different without them in it. Bigger, somehow, and the apartment falls even quieter after he disappears down the hallway.

For the first time since Valerie collapsed, I’m alone with my thoughts.

And what a terrible place to be.

I sink into the chair behind my desk, hoping the paperwork scattered across it will keep my mind occupied long enough to find the miracle solution this situation desperately needs.

Outside, trick-or-treaters shriek beneath the windows, high on sugar and pretending to be someone else for a few more hours before midnight demands they take off their masks.

I envy them. Because they get to stop pretending. We can’t.

My attention never stays on the paperwork. It drifts back to the same place it always does.

Halloween. Three years ago.

One stupid night that somehow lodged itself inside all three of us.

It’s ridiculous.

One evening shouldn’t stay with people this long. Yet it did. She did.

I stopped trying to convince myself otherwise months ago.

When Fabien and I agreed to tag along to Serena’s party with Slash that year, Valerie wasn’t even on my radar.

I’d heard her name before. Everyone in Greenbrook had.

Serena’s quiet cousin. The girl who’d been dating the same guy since high school. Pretty, polite but forgettable. Or so I’d assumed.

Except that’s not quite true either. I’d seen her sometimes, years before, at the pharmacy counter, arguing gently with the clerk about a prescription that had been rung up wrong, patient in a way most people aren’t at eight in the morning. I’d held the door a beat too long on my way out. She never noticed, I think, but I never forgot it.

I saw her more after that too. Well, I believe I started actually noticing her. But it was difficult because just like the beginning of that Halloween night, three years ago, she always blended into the crowds exactly the way people expected her to, standing beside Daniel with the practiced smile of someone who knew how to disappear while still looking present.

Then the party happened, and something in us… changed; hours passed, and people started drifting away. The music softened, and somehow, the four of us ended up outside on the veranda with cheap whiskey, melting face paint, and conversations that stretched until sunrise.

That’s when I actually met Valerie.

Not Serena’s cousin. Not Daniel’s girlfriend. Just… Valerie.

She talked. God, how she talked. Not because she liked hearing herself speak, but because she was endlessly curious about everything around her. She wanted to know how Slash had ended up becoming a cop after getting suspended twice in high school. She wanted Fabien to explain why he collected old vinyl records when he barely owned anything that could play them.

I remember the surprise of realizing she already knew that about Fabien. We’d barely spoken to her before that night, but apparently, she knew more about us than I’d expected.

It shouldn’t have surprised me. Years before, the three of us were pretty well known around school. Our names traveled through those halls faster than we did, along with enough stories and rumors to make strangers feel like they knew us.

To me, she asked about forensic psychology and somehow managed to make me forget I usually hated talking about work.

Every answer we gave her led to another question; every story we share made her laugh, and every time she laughed, the rest of us did too.

She had opinions about horror movies, about art, about old bookstores and about music.

She wanted to backpack through Scotland because she’d seen pictures of the Highlands online.

She wanted to learn pottery after watching a woman make mugs on YouTube.

She wanted to restore vintage dresses she found in thrift stores because “someone loved them once.”