Life without You...

Part 3 - Arrested

Letty's POV

That day, when I'd decided to skip school, I went to the garage and rolled up my sleeves and worked the full day. This was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Garage work suited me well and it was the only thing that had ever made me feel so serene and calm. It just made sense to me.

My day passed quickly and I walked home smelling of engine oil and rubber.

Tumbling in through the door, the atmosphere in the house was heavy. Dom was nowhere to be found and his Escort wasn't present in the driveway. Mia was sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands and I felt my heart stop. Something else had happened.

"Hey girl. You okay?"

"Let, he's been arrested," Mia gasped between sobs.

"For what?" My knees left me and I fell into the chair opposite Mia. Dom had been arrested.

Mia looked up from the table and I saw the redness of her dark eyes and her cheeks lined with tears. "You know, Kenny Linder, Dom beat him with a socket wrench today, he's badly injured."

Tears started dripping down my cheeks and I felt my heart sink into my stomach. Mia buried her face again and cried harder.

The next few weeks were silent in the house. I dropped out of school, deciding that it was better to leave than to stay on hating everything and start doing what I loved and make money doing it. No one was pleased I dropped out but school hadn't been good for a long time.

Once the dust settled I watched as Mia fell apart. In the space of a month her family was gone. Her Mother had died when she was so small she couldn't even remember her face. Her Father had been killed in a freak accident and her brother had watched the man who had loved them more than the world burn to death. In my view that was enough for one person to go through in their lifetime. Obviously fate had a different view for poor, sweet, gentle Mia. No, Mia had to lose her brother as well. Her brother wasn't dead but they'd been separated in a brutal way. Now she had to deal with the torture of seeing him in prison once a month with dead eyes and a crushed spirit. We both knew that prison was going to leave its mark on Dom but we didn't know what kind of mark that would be yet, or the scars it would leave. What if the damage was irreparable?

The night Dom was sentenced we returned to the house in silence. Due to the formal setting of the courthouse the pair of us had dressed up so we couldn't be condemned as shoddy looking. Once inside Mia kicked her heels off and they made a loud clatter as they fell into the corner. Her blazer followed and was abandoned carelessly on the floor. In surprise I stopped walking and watched as she yanked pins out of her hair and dropped them as she walked. It was so plain she was frustrated and hated the world.

I hated the world too, but this time I felt powerless. I couldn't do anything for Dom this time. My heart was aching, breaking. I didn't have a clue what to do. Right now I knew my job was to be there for Mia and put every feeling I had for Dom away into a box and lock it up tight and deal with it when it came to it. This time I couldn't get it out physically, this was a mental challenge for me. Usually I dealt with this sort of anger by punching the thing that had hurt me. This time what had hurt me was Dom's actions and actions aren't a being so you can't hit them. I could hit Dom though and now seeing the pain Mia was in I wanted to hit him more than ever.

Thumping on the stairs brought me back to reality, stood in the kitchen of 1327. I drew one sharp breath and picked the blazer off the floor and hung it carefully on the back of the chair. I took my own off and hung it over the other chair. I kicked my own shoes off and pushed both pairs into the corner. I closed my eyes and tried to think what I could say to begin her healing process.