Parallel

The gun hovering in the air was not as menacing as the look of pure hatred on Ingrid’s face, Eliza thought as she felt as if her heart was trying to beat out of her chest. Ingrid looked the complete if looks could kill look at her. If Eliza had not sensed her hatred in her previous correspondence, her vitriol was clear in person.

Paralyzed with fear, Eliza could not move. Like being in a dream, she opened her mouth wide as a yawn and nothing came out. Was she even trying to scream? or was she just in a Edvard Munchesque frame at that moment? Ingrid waved the gun, and Eliza already watched her life pass before her.

The only image that stayed with her as a visual mantra, was the image of her wedding. Not her mother and her father when she was little, not even Jeanne and wondering what it would have been like to have known her sister earlier. It was marrying Rafe, as if that were the crowning achievement of her life. They had been so happy since then, had they waited this long for nothing? For this woman to take it all away from her?

Eliza charged Ingrid with strength she was not sure where it had come from. Actually she did know—it was rage. The gun fell, and off kilter, Ingrid could not grab the gun fast enough so Eliza grabbed it and held it with both hands. Rafe had shown her how to use a gun once, and she had hated it. But she let him show her anyway.

Thankfully.

Ingrid cowered now, and Eliza finished the phone call she had been going to make before she came in with the gun. Just not the way she had expected to…

At the police station, she again told Rafe how much she resented him for making her learn to use a gun.

“But you saved my life, I thought about you and you saved my life.”

He pulled her close with one arm, and she pressed her pelvis to him to anchor her connection to him.

When she texted Jeanne, that she would never guess she was in a police station again, Jeanne texted her a wide-eyed emoticon, and hinted at her own parallel hell…

More Wicked Wednesday here. You can read more about Jeanne’s parallel hell in my Fleur Friday post later this week.