2019-12-04 - Omissions

You, lying so low in the weeds, bet you're gonna ambush me.

You'd have me down, down, down to my knees... wouldn't you, Barracuda?

Lilith is parked somewhere conveniently out of view on the street between two curb-parked cars, but still with a sightline on the old Thorne house. Byron left to go out of town with the guys, and it's given her a little freedom to do some stakeout and stalking and watching of her own before driving to Tacoma for a shopping trip in the morning. She tells herself that she understands a number of reasons he'd be excluding the details of kidnapping and a problematic house, most of them decent and merited, perhaps, some of them pretty shitty. To be fair, it's probably a combination because people mean well, but they're also assholes, so balance, right?

Mostly, her sitting there trying to work through and rationalize everything in her head... it keeps Lilith from setting the house on fire and calling it a done day.

Plus, you know, she wants to know what the man-ganking bitch looks like before she tries to kill her, maybe. And! A house fire would cause a scene and it's a little rude to do that without ALL the details. But she has enough details to incense her if she thinks about it too much, at this point. The whole matter has went and festered and made her passive aggressive in her own right, with her own little secrets she's afraid to detail aloud, her own problems SHE thinks she can manage on her own because that's what he's doing. In fact, she's singing Heart in the SUV very loudly and deleting texts methodically as they come in from an Unknown number, trying to control the tight knot in her chest.

Lately, Lilith is terrifying levels of happy and content. Now she's starting to feel like life is already trying to steal that all at once. It's been like this a few days, ever since the night of their early Thanksgiving dinner when a few issues cropped up. They've been such busy bees lately, if Byron has noticed her sleeping issues or high flying fidgets to do things, he hasn't said anything or asked, so she hasn't given up the ghost. Why ruin the holidays? (She should say something, she knows it, but... to be fair, how many chances has she had?)

See, there's been control problems with her power lately, which she hasn't yet had a chance to detail to Byron. Something got notched open a little bit more, even Isabella noticed, and she's felt like a tumble and tango of urges and... anxiety about those urges getting out on accident. Lilith has also been deleting texts and Unknown Call history for over forty-eight hours at this point. They've been coming in with varying frequency since the night of the $250,000 wire transfer deposit into her bank account, also undetailed to Byron, much like the Overdraft alert that came in seven hours before the deposit was made.

Maybe what's keeping her in the car instead of going straight up to knock is the idea that she's playing mum's word too. But look, he did it first, she has these things under control (or will, eventually), and is it really worth getting him worked up? Grant Turner is not LOCAL like this... whoever this is that lives here in this stupid house now. Not to mention, Lilith's recent money issues are HER issues to deal with, not something for him to throw money at, and she will FIND a way to manage and contain this sudden crop up of too much goddamn power to house properly. Adjustment period, right?

Mostly, she's just decided to shop the problems away tomorrow at a Nordstrom's and use a credit card and worry about all this other nonsense later. Maybe she'll tell him when he gets back, it will help her sleep better, she knows that rationally. But irrationally, her pride is at flare about it and this is her perfect Christmas up and coming, goddamnit.

Also stalking is fucking boring. Seriously. She doesn't have the patience for this. Lilith repeats the song and sings along while deleting another text with a forceful tap after her phone goes off. If she makes it a game of how fast she can delete them, she won't have time to get pissed about what they say. It's all running together at this point anyway.

Fifteen more minutes. No, ten. No, fuck this, five minutes, she's giving this five minutes then she's going up there to look in the windows or something. That's crazy. Lilith doesn't precisely care, though, and figures she can pull it off just fine being the trailer park scamp that she grew up as. Her father taught her to sneak thief and break into and case places and grocery store aisles when she was five. One time he even sent her into a small open bathroom window into one of the other trailers to steal something from a buddy that owed him cash.

But she's not that girl. She's not going to be a sneak, she's either going up there to knock and look at someone dead in the eyes and threaten them within inches of their life or leave. (Or accidentally kill them, given the knot in her chest, maybe she'll factor that in too.) Her phone keeps going off. Now it's ringing. She silences the buzz with a knock of finger against the side button and slaps on the steering wheel with her free hand in frustration three times fast, gripping it with a resounding yelled, "FUCK!"

She's yelling because there's nothing she can actually do about this house or the woman inside it, not in any right kind of way. She's yelling because there's nothing she can do to stop the calls and texts on her phone, she can block them, the number just changes. She's yelling because the tightness in her chest is expanding and she wants to explode with all these feelings touching the urges that reside inside her ever since her power amped. She's yelling because she KNOWS she should call Byron right now and tell him everything and just ASK him about the house and the woman, regardless of what he wants to talk about.

Lilith also knows she shouldn't go shopping alone tomorrow morning. She should ask Erin or Isabella to come with her as a deterrent to unexpected and unwanted company, but honestly, the man is shameless, it'd just be more people needing an explanation of her stupid problems and the past coming back to bite her if he shows up.

Besides, she's just going to Tacoma, not Seattle. Lilith will take her gun. Lilith will do her shopping. Lilith will come home perfectly fine before Grant Turner can even track her down.

Lilith will be just fine, she'll shop, she'll come home, and maybe Byron will be home by then.

Old habits die hard, don't they? Lilith loves Byron desperately and resolves to tell him everything because one tiny sentiment suddenly warms her blood-- Lilith doesn't need to handle everything alone anymore.

But then Lilith's phone goes off just as she's pulling away from the curb and as she rolls by the old Thorne house, she shoots a glowering side-eye that way.

The most prominent landscaping all dies at the root.

Petty? Maybe. Given the season, those dead plants won't be obvious right away. It will be annoying to replace later, though, and ugly in the meantime. Better than fire, though, isn't it?

Besides, Lilith is humming along to music again as she pulls to turn onto the next street.