Everything was different all of a sudden. The dynamics in our family, the members, my role in it all. It was rapidly changing. It felt weird that throughout all of it, my room remained exactly the same.

My room had changed a minimal amount of times since moving in with my Tìo and Tìa. The child sized mattress with the cartoon bedding had been swapped out before middle school, my boy band posters ripped down after I grew tired of their music, and the goldfish bowl that used to sit on my dresser was gone with the fish long dead. Other than that, my room stood true to its original blueprint.

The dresser that stood up to my chest with drawers so deep that shirts went missing for months remained. The vanity with the velvet covered chair tucked under the desk and bulbs going down the sides of the mirror remained too. The bedside lamp that sprouted into a LED rose bud that lit the room in a rosy pink was still there.

I didn't mind the continuity of it all. It was dependable. The accessories I kept overall those years were what I wanted to get rid of. I wanted to chuck the heart shaped picture frames on my wall into the nearest trash can. I didn't want to see the patchwork duvet ever again. Those objects didn't belong to me. They belonged to Mickey before the wedding. Mickey before her brother in law was killed and her family became strangers.

The craving for change was like a pricking sensation on the back of my neck. It was a nagging feeling. I decided that I would allow myself to have this thing. I would spend the morning shopping.

As I walked to the main street of town, I thought about what exactly I was looking for. Was it a new style? Perhaps so. Things in my room felt too dreamy. Too idealistic. The pastel pinks and the whites nauseated me. I wanted things that oozed maturity and sophistication. I wanted to see the colors of the night, of bruises and of blood.

There was no use in pretending. When I laid in bed, I didn't see fluffy sheep. I saw my mother falling to the ground into a pile of limbs and Adonis being held at gunpoint.

I went to the thrift shop first.

It was warm inside, warm enough to make you break a sweat if you were ruffling through the racks too quickly. The fan hanging in the ceiling made a humming sound that filled the silence of the late morning lull. I set my gaze straight ahead so as to not get distracted by the rows of clothing. I came to splurge a little, not deflate my savings.

As I went through the aisle of decor, I found numerous items that called to me. There was a set of canvases with sketches of insects: a butterfly, dragon fly, and ladybug. They would go lovely in the spaces the heart shaped frames left behind. I especially liked the ladybug drawing. It was my favorite insect because they were lucky.

I needed some luck.

Though I tried to steer clear of the items I did not need, I found myself looking through the jewelry collection. Plastic earrings, leather bracelets and colorful sets of layered necklaces. I let my fingers skim over them all, imagining different versions of myself who would wear these styles of accessories. Then I saw a watch.

The watch.

I remembered it because it was the nicest thing Adonis owned. The band was made of black leather, the outside shell gold and shiny. The numbers of the clock were roman numerals and I vividly recalled the sound of Adonis's chuckle when he said it took him an embarrassing amount of time to decipher the time from it.

I picked it up and held it in my hands, the handle of my shopping basket resting on the crook of my elbow. I ran my thumb over the glass. It was cold. I shivered as I remembered all the times I had seen it on his wrist. He didn't wear it out much. Could it be his? Nancy had given away most of his things. Could have been holding what had once belonged to him?

There was one way I could tell. A few months ago, Adonis had come over to cook dinner with Nancy. He had taken his watch off and left it in the living room. It also happened to be the day my uncle was painting an accent wall in the living room dark green. A fleck of pain had gotten onto the underside of the clock and it never came off.

My fingers shook as I turned the watch over. There it was. The tiny strip of green.

Nancy must have given some of Adonis's things to the thrift shop when she cleaned out his belongings. I swallowed the urge to scour the store for more parts of Adonis. He was gone and no amount of his possessions would bring him back.

I couldn't take the watch home or any of Adonis's things. If Nancy spotted one of them, she would know what I had done automatically. She would despise me for it. I remembered how she yelled at me in the kitchen, over the flowers she had decapitated. Mine, she had said. He was my husband.

Wait.

Red. There was a streak of red, faint and rust like on the side of the band. I traced a finger over it. It was nothing like the paint streak and nothing like the food stains I found on Julio's t-shirts when I did his laundry. I knew very well what blood looked like. This was it.

I dropped the watch back onto the shelf like it was burning hot.

Had he been wearing the watch at the wedding? Had it been pried from his icey wrist to now sit on a shelf for some stranger to wear around?

I couldn't remember, not for sure. I tried to imagine it. I tried the image out in my head. The watch on Adonis's wrist while he said his vows, the watch on while he cut the wedding cake, the watch catching the light above my table as he asked me to save him a dance. It didn't seem right. But if it hadn't been on during the wedding, where did the blood come from?

A paper cut, a work injury, a nose bleed, I answered. Blood does not have to lead to something dark and evil all the time. Sometimes a little bit of blood was innocent.

I was no longer in the mood for shopping.

I took the few decorations I found up to the register and paid for them.

I sat on the bench at the bus stop for what felt like forever. I wasn't even going to take the bus home but my chest felt tight, like my lungs were recovering from having supported me through a marathon. Letting the wind scatter my inky tendrils of hair, I drank in the breeze. It was so crisp and rich. I took it for granted everyday. It was a thought I tried not to let invade my mind often but sometimes I wondered how close I had been to death the day my mother died. I was only a few feet from her when she dropped. How easy would it have been for my father to point the gun at me right afterwards? Would he have been given more time before the police showed up? And at the wedding, how close was I to being shot down just like Adonis had?

My phone rang from inside my purse. The sound was muffled but by the second ring it was in my hands. I answered the phone with much stamina ever since my encounter with the anonymous caller.

The number contacting me was blocked.

I knew it was them before I even picked up.

The distorted voice erupted through my speaker. I had to hold the phone away from my ear for a second as I lowered the volume. "Have you seen the man who was following you again?"

I had and the man, Mac, was a detective. They didn't know that though, did they? If they had to ask then maybe they didn't. Maybe I could lie and get away with it just like I did with Kimberly and Darren.

"No, I haven't," I said. "Where did you go last time? You hung up."

As I spoke, my eyes scanned the surrounding area. I looked at all the parked cars along the sidewalk, all the windows of the shops, all the people walking about. No one was on the phone. I wondered if this mystery person could see me.

"I had to take care of something." It was such a dry and empty reply. I didn't know what I was expecting from my pathetic attempt at interrogating someone who had much more ground to stand on than I did. "Anyone else following you? Staring? Acting strange?"

"I don't think so," I replied.

"Good."

I heard a slight shuffling and I knew by the tone of their voice they were about to hang up. I couldn't let them. I couldn't face Vincent and tell him that I got nothing from this call. I needed to prove I was useful.

"Wait! Who hired you? Someone did, right? Why?"

A disinterested groan. "Just watch your back, Mickey. That's all."

Anger shot through me. The tone had reminded me of all the times my family had spoken down to me, kept things from me though I was more than capable of understanding. "But why?"

The voice went silent for a moment. Then, with the same matter of factness they had given me last time, they said, "Because there are people who want you dead. Not your relatives. You."

The person had answered the question I and the detectives both had: Why was I the only one afforded protection? It wasn't because I was most loved by Adonis or whoever hired the protection. It was because I was the one in trouble. 

I couldn't think of anything to say in time. The line went dead. 

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