Chapter 7: One Month Later

Chapter 7: One Month Later

     One Month Later.

            With her knees pulled in tight, Danni swayed loosely on the porch swing. Winter was beginning to peek around the corner, and she shivered slightly as an icy breeze brushed past her.  Adjusting her hot pink snuggie and pulling it over her feet, she gazed on at her unwelcomed house guests. With a glassy stare, she just observed.

            Search warrant in hand, Detective Lauren Maaser watched as her apprentices searched the Gates home mercilessly. They left no stone unturned, no drawer unopened and no door locked. Privacy was no more.

            After hearing a load thud, Danni’s head snapped to the right. Peering into her bedroom window, she saw several men ripping her room apart. One grabbed her mattress and threw it over, while the others raided her drawers and read her letters.

            Her locked diary was ripped open, read, and thrown on the ground. It couldn’t have been protocol to be this careless, but who would dare question the tactics of the police. No possession meant anything to them. They didn’t treat anything as their own, but rather the dirt that plaques the bottoms of their shoes.

            A short stubby man spotted Danni’s wandering eyes, and quickly pulled the curtains shut. Through her nearly sheer pink curtains, she could still see the outlines of the men who stomped their way around, but she soon lost interest, and slid into her seat.

            On the porch in front of her laid a pair of beige sandals, and suddenly she felt sad again. They were her moms, and no one dared to even touch them since she died. Danni never really talked to her mom when she was around, but suddenly she missed her voice. Just knowing that her mom had a hot meal cooked every night was comforting to her. She had a routine that never changed over the years, and in a way, she became very predictable to her husband and children; but they secretly adored it. She wore the same perfume, styled her hair the same way, and used the same colored nail polish. She hadn’t cloth-shopped for herself in years, and all of her outdated clothing’s still hung neatly in her closet. At least they did.

            Danni didn’t know what condition the house would be in when she saw it again.  The officers were so rough and inconsiderate with everything. Anything that reminded her of her mom would probably be in ruins. The recipe she drew on the whiteboard in the kitchen, the hairbrush she left by the bathroom sink…even the laundry she folded and sat neatly and the end of Danni’s dresser.

            Slipping back into reality, she saw Jaime and Leighton standing next to the Detective (whose job was to keep them outside).  With their arms wrapped around themselves tightly, they shivered. How scared they looked. That was the only thought to cross her mind. After all they had been through, how could these people be so cold?

            Daniel Gates limped in circles in the front lawn, talking with his lawyer for nearly an hour. The cast on his left arm was getting heavy; Danni could just tell.  She felt so badly about the situation her family was in, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

            Watching her father, she saw him shiver just one time. He quickly shook if off, but she knew he was cold. Throwing her snuggie to the ground, she attempted to stand, being careful not to put too much weight on her broken foot. Her face still bruised slightly, she wobbled to the railing where a dark brown leather jacket laid. Bending down enough to pick it up with the hand that wasn’t in a sling, she swayed off the porch and to her father.

            Rubbing his arm twice, she flung it over his shoulders and without another word, walked away.  She could see the neighbors staring. Many boldly stood on their porches or lawns and watched in utter awe... while others were more discreet and peeked through the cracks they made in their living room curtains. Nonetheless, Danni knew she was being watched.

            Her family was one of the most respected in their gated community, and just a month earlier, everyone wanted to be a part of the Gates clan, but now? Now they were outcasts.  An uncontrollable string of lies and secrets seemed to continuously spill from every crevice after Roselyn’s death.  Things Danni could have never imagined were suddenly happened, and secrets she couldn’t have foreseen made themselves apparent.

            Noah was in prison, Jaime was suspended from school, Leighton was pregnant, Danni was moving away and Daniel stepped down from his place as mayor. Someone has a secret, someone else is too involved and one of them was the main suspect in Roselyn’s murder. Everything was not as it seemed.

 

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            Lying on her back in bed, Danni was perfectly still. Thoughts danced around her mind, and noise echoed in her ears.  Random radio stations played in the background, as she lazily reached over to change the station.  Periodically she could see intrepid footsteps tiptoe past her door, gently lit by the nightlight in the hall.

            “Danni?” a voice whispered from outside the door.

            She instantly recognized it as that of her older sister Leighton. Forcing her eyes shut, she pretended to sleep. Her sister couldn’t possibly want anything important. The only times she knocked on Danni’s door, was when she needed something, or wanted her to come wash the dishes.

            “Danni?” she whispered again, soon accompanied by three gentle knocks.

            Rolling over to her side, Danni pulled the covers over her head and sunk into her pillow. Soon, she could hear her bedroom door squeak as it slowly slid open, but didn’t hear another sound after that.  Nearly holding her breath, she peeked through a slit in her blanket, and could see a figure sluggishly coming towards her, nearly tripping on the neatly packed luggage that lined the wall.

            “Danni-elle?” she softly whispered as she sat on the edge of her bed, placing one hand on her shoulder. Leighton was never this gentle. Waking Danni up usually ended in a fight between the two, because of the rough way she approached it. She would spray Danni with ice water, or steal her blanket, but she never whispered her name repetitively. Danni found this very odd.

            Pretending to stir, she slid up to a sitting position, rubbing her eyes. “What’s going on?” she dragged. Once her eyes were opened fully she saw the expression on Leighton’s face. She was white as a ghost, and glared through Danni with a glassy stare. “What’s going on?” Danni asked again, only this time she was fully awake, folding her eyebrows in concern.

            Wondering why Leighton wasn’t responding, she looked down to see she was holding a phone up for Danni to see. She could hear a woman on the phone yelling “hello?” periodically. Immediately Danni saw the name on the caller I.D.

  Roselyn Gates

  267-555-8215