The Same {Cold Blood} As You

They say that your worst nightmares never happen to you. The things you worry most about, the ones you anticipate, don’t ever manifest themselves.

It’s the ones you don’t anticipate that you need to worry about, the events that seem so far removed from reality, so unlikely to become yours, that somehow shove themselves into your life and completely upend it.

Ivy would know. It happened—what, is she kidding?—it continues to happen to her, and unlike most people who can deal with it privately, her trauma has been flashed on the pages of every tabloid and newspaper, transmitted across the airwaves to radios and televisions. The Walthorpe name and prestige has pulled the family into the spotlight, the glare of it so bright and hot it burns. In peacetime, they thrive on it, but in this wartime, they have started to wilt, to seek the shadows, to resent its glow from ever landing upon them.

Ivy can’t help but see the irony of it all, the power that the family had held onto so tight now crippling them, and it’s a joke that the whole world seems to be laughing at.

But, being the butt of the joke, Ivy finds it torture to laugh.

Anywhere she goes, no matter where she looks, she can’t escape herself or forget even just for a second, the cruel, cold hand that fate has dealt.

Which is precisely why she hasn’t gone beyond the perimeter of this tall, white picket fence in at least two weeks—17 days if she’s counting, and she is. It beats the other places her mind likes to destructively deviate to. The bottomless spirals she can barely find her way out of. The images that have sewn themselves into the fabric of her memory.

The real: blood seeping through the rips in father’s shirt, coating her hands like the slimiest of paints, warmer and thicker than she had ever imagined.

The imagined but still very real: her mom braced over her father, inflicting the very wounds that marked the end of not only his life, but hers, Ivy’s, everyone she loved. Not that her mom was thinking that. To do so, she’d actually need to have the capability to care for another person beyond the superficial, and there was no room for that kind of love between the psychotic, narcissistic parts of herself.

The second her mother decided that death was a more suitable option than the divorce or loss of control, she proved that.

The hair along Ivy’s arms stands at attention and she draws her hands inside the sleeves of her burgundy sweatshirt on instinct. Her brain quickly tells her it’s useless. Although she’s outdoors and the seasons feel more like the fall a month away than the summer they’re deep in, her chill is not a product of it. It cannot be driven out by fleece. It’s in her bones, her soul, put there by her mother, not through nature but nurture.

From her right comes a jingle, the sound of metal pieces slipping against one another, getting incrementally louder with each second. While so much startles her these days, this sound does not, and she smiles when she feels fur brush against her legs. She opens her eyes, and at the edge of her navy Adirondack chair sits Kaia, a fluffy Samoyed Chow Chow Retriever mix Ivy has taken to, as her grandpa says, like ants to a puddle of melted ice cream.

“Hey, babe,” Ivy says, petting Kaia’s caramel fur. Nearly immediately, the stress compacting her muscles reduces its pressure by one, maybe two notches. Kaia is one of the few things that can bring about the reaction, Ivy’s self declared emotional support animal.

Another is Kaia’s owner, striding across the grass in a white t-shirt and heather gray basketball shorts, double fisting Capri Suns: Graham.

“You would never know I’m the one who takes her for a walk twice a day or feeds her. Couldn’t even care less about me anymore,” he says, laughing and raising an eyebrow in Kaia’s direction.

“That’s not true,” Ivy says, but as if Kaia is trying to contradict her, the dog nestles her head into Ivy’s lap, staring up at her with those big brown eyes, tail wagging faster than a windshield wiper fending off a downpour. “Okay, maybe just a little.”

“That’s what I thought.” Graham pats Kaia’s head, mussing her fur, and plants himself in the lime green Adirondack beside Ivy, long legs and bare feet stretched out in front of him. “I hope we didn’t wake you. Didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t,” she replies, shaking her head.

To wake her up, she’d have to fall asleep and that had been a struggle as of late.

The week before, it was hard to rouse her out of bed for more than a couple hours at a time. Now, she was lucky to get a couple hours a night, hence her frequent afternoon nap attempts. This was her day-to-day now, a life lived in extremes, constantly alternating back and forth, no stability to be found. “Besides, I like the company.”

He grins at her, the smile so wide his clover green eyes are reduced to thin slits. He interlocks his fingers with her when she extends them, their hands hovering in the gap between the chairs. His palm is warm—not the clammy kind that would make her hands perspire in reaction—but that has her wanting to merge these chairs into one and hope that he could shoo away the frigidity within her.

She welcomes Graham’s comfort and caring to ease the loneliness she so frequently feels.

You see, when you no longer have parents because your mom killed your dad, and when your mom’s side of the family is against you because you testified against her, and when your dad’s side wanted to move you three states away from everything you know, abandonment becomes your default feeling, appearing in regular intervals, sometimes every minute.

And yet, Ivy knows it could be worse, with no reprieve from the isolation.

Ivy thanks whatever luck she has left in life that she turned 18 two days before the trial ended. At least then she got to decide her fate, and her final choice was to stay with Graham, the rest of the Eaton family, and their summer house 30 miles away from the street she had once called home.

Ivy doesn’t know why the Eatons agreed to take her in. After Ivy’s mom accused Graham of the murder to cover her own ass and pulled the entire Eaton family into that unbearable spotlight, Ivy wouldn’t have blamed them for closing the shutters, quadruple locking the door, hell, speeding out of their garage every time they saw her approaching. The Walthorpe clan would’ve done it, no doubt.

But the Eatons chose a different route. They were kind to her before her dad was killed. But after he was, after her mom was arrested, after plenty of people had slammed figurative doors in Ivy’s face, they literally opened theirs to her. Welcoming her when she needed an escape, hiding her when the flashbulbs became overwhelming and her mom’s side felt more threatening than heartening, treating her like she was family as she lost her own.

The Eatons were among the small handful of people who treated her like a human this year. It made her think of her dad asking her what was so special about Graham and his family that she would sneak around just to have dinner with them or watch a movie with Graham. This was what she saw: kindness, honesty, and consideration that went beyond appearances.

“Want one?” Graham asks, raising one of the Capri Suns.

“The drink of children and stunted adults? You know it.”

Graham smirks, peels the cellophane wrap off the straw, clenches the yellow plastic in his fist, and forcefully drives it into the pouch. Impressively, only a splash of fruit punch spurts out in the process, dripping a few droplets of red onto his shirt. And yet, the action is enough to return her to the kitchen, to her dad lying on the floor, and the spray of red across the white cabinets, and what seemed like a tidal wave of his blood all over him. The happiness drains from her, the emotional stopper within her ripped out.

How she wished it wasn’t so incredibly fragile, so easily dislodged.

Graham hands the juice pouch to her, and she balances it in her lap, staring down at the chrome package and the way the sunlight bounces from it. If only everything was so easy to refract.

“Are they still out there?” she asks.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the smile slip from his face, too, the elephant they were trying not to acknowledge called out and on display for all to see. “Yeah. My mom called the police, told them what was going on, but—”

“Since they’re not on your property, it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

Son of a bitch. 

That morning, fetching his newspaper, Mr. Eaton had opened his front door to find three reporters and a couple of camera crews waiting in their vans.

“We’ve heard that Ivy Walthorpe is living here. Is it true?” one said when Mr. Eaton asked them why they were there. He told them it wasn’t true and that they should leave, but they only multiplied, numerous paparazzi joining in the cavalcade before it was lunch time.

“I can go,” Ivy offers, lifting her head slightly, not to make eye contact with him, but with Kaia, whose tail continues to wag. “I can leave, go somewhere else.” To a hotel maybe, or an Airbnb, or, the city, where her face would be one in a crowd of millions and she could find some form of anonymity. She could go to her Aunt Emmy’s place in Kentucky, but that was an absolute last resort. Yes, she had lost control over many things in her life, but she didn’t need to willingly cede what was left of it.

“No, you’re not leaving.” Graham’s tone was final, definite, as was the shake of his head.

“You shouldn’t have to deal with this. This isn’t your fault.”

“It’s not yours. You shouldn’t either.” Graham rakes his hand through his honey hair, and it lands with a slap on the chair arm. “You didn’t do anything to deserve this. You shouldn’t have to live like this. You’re going through enough. They should at least have enough respect to leave you alone.”

“The Walthorpes sell, get clicks. That’s what matters, not respecting me.” She had seen it at work with her family’s media company, the way that journalists were forced to chase stories, not because they had much news value necessarily, but because people would read them, just like they would click on a picture of someone who never agreed to have their picture taken. “Besides, if they don’t pity me, they either think that I was my mom’s accomplice or sold her up the river to save you. They probably don’t think they need to respect me.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Complete,” she says and although she doesn’t mean for it to, her voice cracks. “I’m so tired of it.”

After Ivy’s father was killed, it was a matter of days before the national media began to pay attention.

It had everything people wanted in their stories: suspense, intrigue, wealth (but only if the wealth caused problems—no one likes a happy rich person, not unless they’re benefitting from them). Then, when you added in marital strife and blood lust with her mom’s arrest, it became a frenzy. Hundreds of hours were devoted to news coverage on Ivy’s family, and as the case went to trial, court updates landed in the top stories of the national news each night. It even went international.

With the coverage came the commentary and one long scroll through Twitter let Ivy know that she should never log onto it or any social media again. She told herself it fruitlessly day after day as she sat in court, watching the jury and the world turn against her mom. Ivy had too, obviously, but there was part of her that needed the jury to see something in her mom that Ivy didn’t and they would spare her a life in cement walls, and Ivy a life in her own prison. They didn’t, of course, and with good reason. There was too much evidence to ignore, and with the reading of the verdict, Ivy said goodbye to her, too.

Ivy had hoped that if she couldn’t have her family anymore, she could at least have peace.

That the gossip would stop, and the public would lose interest. But any addict knows how hard it is to quit something cold turkey and cut it from your life. The media knew it too. They understood their consumers and that if they kept enabling them, giving them the content they craved, the businesses would get what they wanted: viewers, readers, and in turn, money. The root of all evil.

A few weeks back, Ivy saw the photos they had snapped of her walking through a grocery store with Graham, trying to find a box of fettuccine alfredo, because it was her dad’s favorite meal and she was desperate for some connection to him. Against her better judgment, Ivy looked at the comments, and just like during the trial, people decided that she was theirs to feast on, everyone offering their opinion. Too fat, too thin. Clearly evil, clearly stupid, clearly boy crazy, clearly a bitch. She hated her mother, she hated her father. She didn’t show enough sadness in this aisle of the grocery store, like she didn’t in the gallery or on the stand, so she must be the killer.

But who did she owe her emotion to? The people watching her on their phones and TV screens who knew her no other way? The people on the Reddit forums dissecting her every move, looking for motive? The people who mocked her for her hair and her outfits, created memes out of her family, ranted about her on social media, acted as if the end of life as she knew it was their entertainment? Their soap opera, their movie, the horror they can judge from afar, believing like she once did that it would never happen to them? Those people? Fuck them. They deserve nothing from her.

Except to hear that from her.

“Maybe it’s time I give them what they want,” Ivy says, speaking to everyone and no one as she slowly lowers her Capri Sun into the grass beside her chair.

“What?” Graham asks.

She stands and marches towards the front of the house. “I’m going to go talk to them. Get them off my fucking back.”

From behind her, Ivy hears the jingle of Kaia’s collar, the thump of Graham’s feet as he speeds to catch up with her. “Ivy, don’t do it. It’s not going to go well.” The family lawyer had told her the same thing: to keep her mouth shut and ignore them, and one day it would come to an end; but she doubts if the roles were reversed, he’d follow his own advice.

“And not saying anything has been?”

“No, but this could be worse.”

“You just said I deserve better and I do. You do too, and until someone tells them that, they’re not going to change. This is done.” Fueled by fury, she quickens her pace to the run she had mastered over three years of track and field, pushes through the gate bordered by spiral shrubs, her feet transitioning from the soft blades of grass to the hard paving stones that lead to the porch and front of the house. Graham chases her, but he’s never been as fast as her, and by the time he finally catches her, she is to the sidewalk, photographers and reporters gawking, blinking like they’re not quite sure she’s truly in front of them.

“Cameras up, people,” she says, planting her hands on her hips. “I have one thing to say, and that’s all I am going to give you, and then you can leave me alone, okay?”

They don’t agree to her demand, but they do rush to grab their recording equipment as a breath breezes by her earlobe. “You don’t need to do this, I,” Graham whispers, and she shakes her head.

“I do. Go on the porch. Inside. You don’t need to be brought into this anymore.”

“I’m not leaving.” Tugging Kaia with him by the collar, he shuffles back a few feet, just to the left of her shoulder, transforming him from her boyfriend into her bodyguard. Considering how little she trusts the people before her, or the anger within her, she’ll take it.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Foot forward. 

“I understand people are interested in this case, but that does not make any of this okay. I am not a public figure. I didn’t choose this. I am an 18-year-old girl who is trying to figure out what it means to live my life without my parents, and as you should be able to imagine, it’s really hard, especially when one of them is responsible for taking the other, and you can’t understand why. There are days I don’t want to get out of bed. Sometimes I don’t leave the house for weeks. Sometimes I don’t want to be here at all. But you guys don’t care. For some reason, the world thinks I need to show them my pain, and when I don’t, I’m insulted, and berated, and stalked,” she says, gesturing to them with a wide throw of her arm. “Who cares that I’m grieving, right? Or that I cry myself to sleep every night and spend hours poring through my memories wondering if I would’ve noticed one thing, my dad would be here? Or my mom would be? Or that when I heard you all were out here this morning, my first thought was that I wanted to die?”

Her voice chokes and the tears well, the saline burning her eyes.

“As long as you get the story it’s all good, but you need to think of more than just yourselves. You need to think about the people you’re filming on your cameras and writing about in your stories and what you’re doing to them by never letting it go. You’ve called my mom cold-blooded, but what is this? Yeah, you didn’t murder someone, but if you think you’re not killing me every day by doing this you are wrong. So please—no, not even please. Just. Stop. Let me be. Let me live.”

Ivy finishes, breathless, and stares at the crowd in front of her, their phones extended, camera lights flashing, mouths agape, eyes wide. She pauses for a few moments, mostly to regulate her breathing, but also to wait for the questions that she is sure are going to come. Except they don’t.

“That’s it then. That’s all you’re going to get from me. You can go.” She spins on her heel, the grass giving way to a soft spot of mud below it and coating her skin. Like blood, her mind immediately jumps to.

Graham wraps her in his arm, giving her shoulders a squeeze in a silent good job. On the porch, his parents and brother have emerged, waiting for her too, his mom holding out an arm to fold her into.

“But Ivy—”  a reporter starts.

Ivy’s insides flare with heat, and she wants to whip around and scream at them, but chooses to keep her eyes forward. “No! We’re done. Leave.”

She doesn’t know if they’ll listen. Most likely they won’t, but right now, if she’s ever going to survive this, she can’t look back.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Foot forward.