Placing two veggie pitas on the table between them in the little conference room Sara had booked, she sat, sipping from one of the two glasses of tea Sara had come in carrying.
“We haven’t had a meeting like this in well over a year,” the counselor said, her blue eyes piercing. “What’s up?”
“I’ve met someone.”
“Ahh.” The woman smiled, and her dark blond hair seemed to halo her expression.
“No...it’s not like that,” she said. “It’s not...we’re just friends. It’s Tad Newberry. He’s visiting, as you know, but we’ve been spending some time together.”
“I’m glad.”
Yeah, well, she didn’t need a go-ahead on that score, although she could understand why Sara thought she’d come for encouragement. Sara knew she hadn’t had a close personal relationship since Jeff.
“I keep having to bite my tongue not to tell him about my past,” she said in a rush, feeling like a criminal for even having the thought. “I mean, you know him. You know we can trust him. Yesterday we took Ethan to the beach and got to talking, and he told me some things about his past and I just... His mother was a nurse like I was. He lost his sister—and then lost his mom young like I did. I understood and I needed so badly to tell him that. And I couldn’t.” The words came pouring out of her. “I felt like I was shortchanging him. And me, too.”
Putting down the pita she’d unwrapped, but not yet bitten into, Sara placed her hands on the table. The counselor was familiar with trauma. She’d lived through some devastating stuff of her own. Which was part of what made her so supremely good at her job. She was also a natural calming influence.
Miranda didn’t feel at all calm. A little more so when Sara met her gaze, her tone dead serious as she started to speak.
“I want to be able to tell you what you need to hear,” she said. “But I can’t, Miranda.” Miranda, not Dana. Always. Sara knew her birth name. She’d never used it. Not once.
“For your own safety, and Ethan’s, there can be no ties. None. Particularly with law enforcement. When you left, your father had the entire state of North Carolina convinced he was to be revered, giving him a greater ability to find you than most abusers ever have. We’ve got no idea how far he’s risen now and no one here is going to risk looking him up, either, in case a search shows up somewhere and an IP address is traced...”
“Tad’s from Michigan.”
“It doesn’t matter. And I think you know that. You just needed me to know that you’re tempted, didn’t you?”
With tears in her eyes, Miranda nodded. She was fighting her battle.
And Sara was her arsenal.
* * *
Tad’s biggest takeaway from coffee on Tuesday was relief that he and Miranda were okay. Her eyes had met his a couple of times over the conference table during the High Risk meeting. She’d smiled at him once, as though they were sharing a private joke. And afterward, at the coffee shop, she stayed for an extra half hour after everyone else left—as had become their tradition.
On Wednesday all hell broke loose. As it had been told to Tad, Marie had called Miranda to ask about swelling and pain in Danny’s leg, asking for a doctor’s excuse to keep him out of school. Danny had missed so many days over the past year that they’d reached the limit legally allowed before authorities got involved.
She’d needed to see Danny before she could write such a letter, and told Marie to head straight to the office, and either she or Dr. Bennet would see Danny as quickly as possible. When an hour passed and she hadn’t shown up, Max Bennet called the police, who’d already been contacted by Ruby, Marie’s sister.
Tad was pulled into the loop when Detective Chantel Fairbanks called to find out if he’d seen Danny that morning. He’d already been by the school twice, but hadn’t seen the boy—not all that unusual, since Danny would’ve been in class. He also hadn’t seen anyone lurking nearby, which was what he was there to watch for.
Miranda called him a few minutes later, while he was still driving around the area, filling him in on the situation as she currently knew it. Apparently a friend of Devon’s had seen Marie at a gas station where she’d been gassing up her car before taking Danny to school and then going on to work. The friend begged her to call to keep Danny out of school, so no red flags would be raised. And then to go home and call him. The friend just wanted to FaceTime with Danny, and would be at a restaurant, where Devon could look on from another booth and see his son.
Danny, overhearing the request, begged Marie to agree. She couldn’t tell whether that was because he loved his dad and missed him, in spite of his rages, or because he was afraid of what his father would do if his mother didn’t comply. Maybe they were both intimidated by Devon’s friend, which was Tad’s personal opinion, and he further suspected that Devon had intended them to be.
Regardless of the reason, Marie had agreed to wait half an hour and then do as the friend asked. She called her sister, who was already at work, to tell her she was taking Danny home to make the call. And then she’d called Miranda to get a doctor clearance to keep Danny out of school. Neither of them had been seen since, and Marie wasn’t answering her phone. They were running a location trace, but so far had nothing. She could have turned her cell off.
Ruby had gone home immediately, hoping to talk her sister out of going along with wishes that had clearly come from Devon, and found the house empty. She’d called the police immediately.
No one had been able to locate Devon, either, but he wasn’t due at work until later that afternoon, so it wasn’t as if they could be certain he was involved in foul play.
“I’m finished with my morning patients,” Miranda told Tad, “and I’m just sitting here, worried sick about her. I wish there was something I could do.” He could hear the fear in her voice.
“Have you tried calling her? Maybe if she saw your number, she’d take your call.”
“Twice,” Miranda said. “It went straight to voice mail.” She was sounding less and less like herself. Like the Miranda he knew.
And more like a woman who feared forces that were stronger than she was. Could be she was putting herself in Marie’s shoes. Could be she was firmly planted in her own and living with the demons her ex had left her with.
He had to help her.
And to pretend he didn’t know how much she’d suffered...and why.
“You want to go to lunch? We can wait together.”
Expecting a refusal, he was surprised when she agreed immediately, asking him if he’d like to meet someplace or pick her up at the office. She mentioned a diner not far from the clinic and he headed that way, telling her he’d pick her up.
The fact that she’d even asked was a “tell” to him.
She was waiting for him at the door of the clinic and came out when he pulled into the lot. “I’ve got an hour,” she told him, settling her purse on the floor. In her cartoon character scrubs, with tennis shoes and her hair tied back, she looked as she did every Tuesday when she came from work to attend meetings, but there was something different about her, too.
A tightness in her face, lines near her mouth. She was definitely tense. Her hand was shaking as she buckled her seat belt. Or was he looking too hard? He didn’t think so.
He wanted to reach over to take her hand in his, much as she’d done for him a few days before on the beach. She gave and gave and gave.
He wanted to give back.
Wanted her to know how great it felt to receive.
He asked her directions to the restaurant; she gave them and then said, “I just feel we should be doing something. At least be out there searching for her...”
As a detective, he’d been out searching more times than he could count. “Do you have any idea where she might go? Where Danny likes to go? Anyplace she might hide?”
He didn’t think Marie was hiding. She’d have ca
lled for help.
Unless she’d been prevented from doing so.
“Danny likes to climb that little mountain on the south side. Out by the new housing development. Seer’s Point? He told me that’s when he’d know his leg was better. When he could get to the top again. Apparently Devon had been taking him there before he was old enough to walk. It seemed like a good memory for him.”
And something for them to do that felt more useful than sitting in a booth at a diner. “How about we go to a drive-through for some take-out food and head over that way?”
Gratitude filled her eyes, and she nodded.
Tad put the car in gear.
* * *
She could feel herself slipping. Knew that panic was close. She’d called the school to confirm that Ethan was in class and okay before she’d called Tad, recognizing the ludicrousness of her actions even as she did it.
Devon Williams didn’t know Ethan, and wouldn’t have reason to hurt him if he did. Unless he found out that she’d given Marie her number in case she needed help. He could be after anyone who was trying to take his wife away from him.
She knew how the abusive mind worked.
Maybe he’d somehow come across her number on Marie’s phone, or learned that she’d been involved in bringing Danny’s case to the High Risk Team. Maybe he knew Tad was involved, too, and had seen the three of them together.
“What sounds good for lunch?” Tad’s voice felt so close, while she felt so far away.
Eating in general sounded unappealing at the moment. But it was time to eat. She’d been hungry an hour ago. Acting normal was the way to beat the panic.
She felt anything but normal.
“Salad,” she said, naming a new organic drive-through salad place on the way out of the downtown area, trying to think about what she’d order.
Ethan was fine. He’d been at lunch the first time she’d called. At recess the second. If she called a third time she was going to look like a lunatic.
She knew he was okay. But she was scared to death for Marie, afraid her sister in victimhood hadn’t been as lucky as she herself had.
And Danny... At least Ethan had been spared violence in his young life.
She’d done the right thing. And she’d done it well. Her son was safe. Jeff would be proud of her.
Thinking of her best friend, of how incredible she’d felt the first time she made a comment about her father and, instead of doubting her, he’d asked some very serious questions and then sat and cried with her as she found a way to answer them.
She’d been lucky. So lucky.
Devon Williams had been a victim of domestic violence, too. By his father. It happened that way so often, the abused growing up to abuse.
But not with her. She’d never even come close to experiencing the white-hot rage she’d seen seething from her father.
Jeff hadn’t turned into an abuser, either. He’d been gentle. Kind. Funny and emotionally strong.
“Ethan’s dad was abused as a kid,” she told Tad. She couldn’t give him the facts of her life, but there were some things she could say. Things her father had never known. Things he’d never associate with her so things he’d never mention as an identifier if he was looking for her. “In his first foster home,” she added, when her gut clenched anyway.
It had actually been his birth home. And his birth mother. She’d been a single mom. An addict. She’d already been at her wit’s end with his older brother, and then Jeff had come along...the son of her pimp, he’d always believed.
Ethan would be back in class by now. She couldn’t call to verify. Had no legitimate reason to call.
They’d phone her if there was a problem. Reaching into the pocket of her scrub top, she checked her cell. Just to be sure she hadn’t missed a call.
And tried Marie again, closing her eyes as she waited for a ring, willing the woman to pick up.
“Voice mail,” she said, dropping her phone back in her pocket.
“You mentioned Ethan’s dad being like Devon—”
“No!” she interrupted him, horrified at where his thoughts were taking him. Where her stilted conversation had led him. “He was nothing like Devon,” she said now, scrambling for safe words. “He was my best friend. The one you went to when the rest of the world was crashing in on you. He always made things seem a little less intense. I could tell him stuff I never told anyone else.”
All true. All untraceable.
And talking about Jeff, with Tad, calmed her in a whole new way.
“How’d he die?” She should’ve expected Tad’s question, especially after he’d told her how his mother and sister died. It still caught her off guard.
“He was in a car accident,” she improvised quickly. In reality, he’d been playing intramural football with a group of fraternity brothers. Had taken a slam to his left kidney. When they got him to the hospital, they found he only had one working kidney. And it had been ruptured.
He’d recovered. Was on dialysis, and waiting for a kidney to become available, but there was one complication after another. Six months later, they’d told him he wouldn’t survive a transplant, although he’d seemed fine at first, other than being tired a lot...
He’d already talked to her about his last wish. And they’d conceived Ethan while there was still hope that he’d live to hold his child in his arms.
“What would you like?” Tad had pulled into the salad place. She had to think a minute. Asked for the turmeric with rice and cranberry because she saw it on the menu board. She wasn’t fond of cranberries. But as she and Tad sat in his SUV at the foot of the mountain ten minutes later, she ate as much of the salad as she could.
“I’m worried sick about what he might be doing to her,” she finally admitted when the silence was rotting her mind again.
“I know.”
She put the lid on her bowl, noticing that he’d only eaten half of his roasted vegetable salad. “I can’t eat any more.”
“You want to walk?”
They’d already perused the small dirt parking lot at the foot of the trail. Not only was Marie’s car nowhere in sight, there were no other vehicles, either.
“Can you?” she asked him, looking down at the thigh she’d seen in an examining room without jeans covering it. She’d never seen him limp, but he’d told Danny that he still hurt sometimes, when he pushed things.
“I can climb the mountain,” he told her, looking up at the top of the peak. “I’ll probably have to limp down.”
Miranda couldn’t go far, had to get back to work and was in her scrubs, but she got out of the car. She figured they could walk until the trail started upward.
And when he reached out, offering her his hand, she took it.
Chapter 13
It took more emotional strength than he’d ever have guessed for Tad to do nothing other than hold Miranda’s hand that Wednesday afternoon. They walked the trail for about ten minutes, then sat on a cement bench. It was in the sun and Miranda had said she wanted to soak up some of the warmth.
What she’d done was look over at him, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her out in a deserted patch of nature, with trees and brush and the mountain ahead of them obscuring them from view. She met his gaze and then stared at his lips.
He could tell she’d wanted a kiss. Maybe as a distraction. Maybe to assure herself that she wasn’t Marie. That she was well and healthy and perfectly safe.
Or maybe because sexual tension had been buzzing between them since the day they met.
He wasn’t a guy who was good at figuring out all those nuances. He didn’t usually get himself in situations where he’d need to be good at it.
But he was a guy who knew that, even tempted as he was, hard as he was growing sitting there beside her, he couldn’t act on the desire pulsing inside him.
Not with the secre
ts standing between them.
She hadn’t pushed it. Hadn’t actually leaned over and kissed him. But she’d reached for his hand as they walked back to the car a few minutes later.
As though they were...a couple. Not just friends.
* * *
An alert was sent out to the High Risk Team late Wednesday afternoon that Marie Williams was safe and at home. Whether or not she’d let Danny make the phone call, seen her husband or just skipped town for the day, Tad didn’t know, but assumed he’d hear the details at the next High Risk meeting, if not before. He was asked to resume watch duty at Danny’s school, and sent a text to Marie reminding her that he was happy to help out in any other situations, as well, if she needed him.
He got a “thank you” in return, and nothing else.
Miranda also texted—to thank him for lunch. He called, wanting to see how she was doing, but she didn’t pick up.
Friday’s phone call couldn’t arrive soon enough as far as Tad was concerned. He wasn’t going to break protocol again and phone the chief unexpectedly. He respected the man’s position, the difficulty of his circumstances. And pissing him off or making him uncomfortable would be counterproductive to the goal he had in mind.
It was time to get Miranda and her father back together. To end a very long and difficult chapter in both their lives.
Where that would leave him remained to be seen. He’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he was entertaining thoughts about some kind of future in which he knew Miranda. Dana. Whether it would be back home in North Carolina or here in California, he didn’t know. He was open to various possibilities.
Once he had the older man on the line Friday afternoon, he got right to the point. “We were involved in an incident with another victim this week,” Tad told the chief. “Nothing notable with that case, except that for a while there, it looked like the woman and possibly her young son were in immediate danger. I was with Miranda. She was beyond frightened, Chief. It was difficult to watch. More so because she doesn’t have to live this way. I’m recommending that we tell her the truth. She deserves to know that she doesn’t have to live in fear. That her ordeal is done.”
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