“Because you were with that—”
“See? That’s an excuse. There is no excuse for that behavior, just like there’s no excuse for slapping Elle. I’m done. I’m not going to argue with you or try to explain. Go home to your wife. Try not to take this out on her.”
“Maisey. You can’t—”
“I can. And leave Dad alone while you’re at it.” This time, when I turn to walk away, I am not running from anything. Every step feels solid and right. My body feels more like it belongs to me, instead of a puppet dancing on invisible strings.
“You can expect legal papers in the immediate future.”
My smooth steps hitch. My right toe dips a little too far and catches on the sidewalk. A slow-motion recovery goes into play. Thigh muscles tightening. Brain zeroing in on balance.
I get myself back upright and keep walking. Don’t turn around or acknowledge his words. Dad is waiting on the other side of the door and opens it for me. When I walk through, Elle is standing there beside him. Nobody moves for a minute, or says anything.
Elle has a different expression in her eyes when she looks at me. I’m not precisely sure, but I think maybe it might be respect.
Leah’s Journal
I forgot all about leaving.
My life was Boots and the babies. I became grateful for being allowed to have this life. Grateful that he tolerated me. Grateful that he didn’t hit the girls. I took my beatings when they came to me. Took the time my husband deigned to share with me.
Of course there were other women. Why wouldn’t there be? I was damaged goods, no longer beautiful. Nobody else would want me, and yet he continued to love me. I believed this. Sitting here, thinking back on my years with you, Walter, it occurs to me that I should find a way to tell you how you have healed and restored me. Given me back my soul and a sense of myself as having worth. But these are things I can never bring myself to say. That part of me will always be broken, I guess.
It’s funny how life spins, how we go on for long stretches of time and nothing changes, and then all at once, in a single moment, everything is altered.
Things had gotten a little easier. The twins were two. They were sleeping through the night, potty-trained, able to feed themselves. I was sleeping at night. No longer breastfeeding. And as my body returned to being my own, as the haze of fatigue cleared from my head, I grew restless. I had glimmers of understanding that my relationship with Boots was wrong.
Those were dangerous glimmers. It was like he could see them in my eyes and immediately felt the need to take me down. It was during that time that he started breaking bones. My collarbone. My ribs. Both casualties of a brand-new pair of shiny boots and his brand-new addiction to cocaine.
Where he got the money to use, I don’t know. He never held a job for longer than a few months at a time. Maybe he was dealing. I didn’t ask those kinds of questions. But while he was away doing whatever it was he did, I began to do things. I got my GED, for one.
And then I landed a job, almost by accident, answering phones in an office for a female attorney.
Boots wasn’t happy about me working. What about the babies? What about him? Did I really think he couldn’t bring in enough money to support his own family? Maybe he knew in his head the answer to that one, because I kept the job and all I suffered in payment was a black eye.
My new boss was a woman, novelty number one. She was a lawyer. She dressed in power skirts and jackets, and nobody was beating her, that’s sure and certain. Her name was Hetty Johnson, and she became my idol. Thanks to Hetty I came to understand some truths.
Not all women are beaten. They can be smart and independent and make their own decisions. They can live in this world without a man.
Of course I didn’t believe that woman could be me. I never did come to believe that, Walter. I found my way to you instead. And I don’t regret it. I never wanted to go to college or run a business. But she made me think.
It wasn’t Hetty that set me free, for all that. It was one of her clients.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tony sits in his pickup in the dim, predawn light, wrestling with his conscience and his courage. The entire fabric of his careful control, the balance of penance and duty and family, is coming unraveled, and Maisey Addington is the unraveler.
What he wants to do is start up his truck and drive directly to her house, be sitting on the doorstep when she wakes, like a stray cat asking to come in. He’s tired, not just from lack of sleep, but from his constant vigilance.
Remember who you are, Tony.
Remember what you’ve done.
But that remembrance is fading around the edges. He keeps seeing himself in a different light these days, as if maybe he’s the sort of man who could be with a woman like Maisey. As if he might even be good for her.
He’s been to the shooting range twice this week, but his ritual with the gun is apparently not enough to keep him on the straight and narrow.
So he’s come to create a new level in his own private circles of hell.
The sun hasn’t cleared the mountains yet, and in the dim light, the graveyard looks bleak and otherworldly. He’s not given to fears of ghosts, but a little shiver tracks its fingers up his spine. If there were a time for ghosts to walk, this would be it.
“Coward,” he mutters to himself. “Do what you came here to do.”
The morning air is cool enough to raise goose bumps on his bare arms, and the mosquitoes are hungry and find him in seconds. He ignores both cold and insects and marches himself between the rows of headstones until he finds one that looks right.
It’s not his father’s, of course. That grave is across the mountains in Seattle. But he chooses a headstone that looks similar, and when he closes his eyes, it’s easy enough to see the inscription that reads:
ANTHONY MEDINA
BORN 1945
DIED 1990
And that’s it. No Beloved husband and father. Not even May he rest in peace. Not so much as a clue carved into the granite about the man who was Tony’s father.
But Tony’s body remembers. Twenty-seven years since his father’s grave was dug. Twenty-seven years since the last time Anthony Medina Senior let a bottle fuel his always-simmering rage. And still, Tony can feel the blow that broke his nose. Can taste the warm salt of blood filling his mouth, pouring down his throat, remembers gagging and choking on it. He can hear the sound of fists on his mother’s flesh, hear his sisters screaming, taste the sharp smell of gunpowder.
This is why he came here, to make himself remember.
Who he is. Where he came from. All the times he failed to protect his mother and his sisters. All the anger that built up in him during the years both before and after his father’s death. Holes punched into walls. Fights with boys at school. Endless hours chopping wood and hammering nails into building projects, his mother’s solution to managing his rages.
He wants to run away now, as if he is twelve again and about to be beaten, but his legs don’t seem to belong to him. His hands are shaking. And his heart, oh, his heart is definitely his, beating out fear and pain and regret against his ribs.
The pain is physical, a deep ache that nearly doubles him over.
Not a heart attack, he reminds himself over and over again. Just panic. Just memory. It will pass.
But there’s a new intensity to the familiar pain. He’s already let Maisey under his skin. He’s tired of his rituals and rules, and holding the barrier is so hard. Years ago, he swore he would never risk becoming his father, would never risk exposing a woman to that sort of treatment.
He’ll hold to his vow. If he can help Maisey, he’ll do it. Protect her, support her, the way he protects and supports his mother and his sisters. But nothing more. No matter what his traitorous heart tells him. No matter that his body responds to thoughts of her, even now, with desire.
“I am the son of my father,” he whispers. “I swear on his grave that I will not forget it.”
Chapter Twe
nty-Eight
No hiding this time.
We have a table at the Emerald of Siam, right out front and center, where Marley can’t help but see us. Once again we show up plenty early to claim our table and order our food.
The waiting is purgatory for me, but everybody else seems contented.
Mia and Elle sit across from me, heads together, chattering. The two of them are dangerous, and I don’t want to know what they’re planning this time. I’m sandwiched into a bench seat between Dad and Tony, my heart rivaling the rapid tempo of the music playing through the speakers.
Dad is vague and confused tonight.
“Long way to come for Thai food,” he says, trying to navigate chopsticks with moderate success. “Why didn’t we eat in Spokane?”
“Marley,” I tell him. I like to say her name. It makes me feel sorrowful, but also real. Not my imagination. Not a thing I made up. “We’re here to listen to Marley sing.”
And to make it up to her for being left behind, if we can. But that I keep to myself.
Tony’s bulk beside me doesn’t help much. A little shiver of fear runs through my body. Not a shiver. A frisson. Such a wonderful little word. So underused.
A frisson of fear. And a big old bucket of nausea.
Normally the smell of lemongrass and curry makes me ravenous, but tonight it turns my stomach to acid. I sip at a glass of house wine, white, and wait, wait, wait, for what seems an eternity. By the time the band finally troops onto the stage, it’s all I can do to stay in my seat, fingers white-knuckled around the chair.
Marley doesn’t see us at first. She’s busy assessing the crowd as she launches into the first song. But her eyes, inevitably, find us. Her gaze lingers on the small blue bear sitting on a pink blanket. The taped-together photograph of our mother, a pink bundle cradled in each arm. Just for an instant, the hard shell cracks, and her face goes soft.
I hold my breath, realizing too late that springing this on her in the middle of a concert might seem like an emotional ambush. I will her to keep singing, not to fall apart here in front of an audience. So far, the sins she holds against me are my mother’s, but if I mess up her song, she’ll never forgive me for that.
I needn’t have worried. Her voice doesn’t falter. Her professional persona slides back into place, and she redirects her focus to other parts of the room. For the rest of her set, she avoids even a glance at our table.
Her sound guy, on the other hand, glares at me pretty much nonstop.
When the band takes a break, Marley comes over.
“Are you going to make a habit of this sort of thing, now? Groupies?” Her right hand, as if it has a life of its own, reaches toward the blue bear, stops, and falls back to her side.
“We need to talk.” I hear my mother’s tone coming out of my voice, and soften it. “Please.”
“I don’t understand what you want,” she says.
“You look like her,” Dad says. His eyes fill with tears. “Like Leah. I thought you would look like Maisey. I didn’t think—”
“None of you thought,” Marley snaps. “Or you wouldn’t be here. What is it going to take to convince you that I don’t want this?”
“You came to the funeral,” I protest. “If you don’t want anything to do with us, then why did you bother?”
Marley shifts her weight, one foot to the other. “Honestly, I wanted to know. What kind of woman abandons her child? That has always been the question.” Her eyes settle on me. “I used to worry about you, taken away by a mother who could forget her own baby. Can you imagine? Me, worrying about you. And all the time there you were with your awesome new dad and your beautiful life—”
“She told me you were a figment of my imagination! She sent me to counselors who told me I made you up. How did I know to look for you? To worry about you? You have to give me a chance.”
Her lips part. Her eyes soften. She strokes the bear’s ears with her fingertips. And then she shakes her head, more as if to ward off flies than to say no, but the meaning is the same.
“It’s too late. Not your fault. I see that. But I can’t do this now. You’re just going to have to accept that.”
“Marley—”
“Tell you what. You want to know this side of the family? I’ll introduce you to our father. And then you will leave me alone. Deal?”
“I don’t know if that’s wise,” Dad whispers.
It occurs to me that this must be hard for him on so many levels. He’s the only father I’ve ever known. Now Mom is gone, and I’m meeting this other shadow family. Maybe he thinks I won’t need him anymore. Of course I need him, will always need him.
But the need to know the secrets my mother has been keeping has become a driving force. Besides, I need just one more chance at Marley. One more opportunity to get her to agree to try to be sisters again.
So, wise or not, I nod. Yes. “Deal.”
She scribbles an address on a napkin. “Be there at eleven tomorrow. I’ll make the introductions.”
Without another word, she turns her back on me. I have been dismissed.
Leah’s Journal
She walked into the office with three solemn children trailing behind her. At a signal of her hand, they arranged themselves on the waiting room chairs while she came to speak with me at the reception desk. The oldest, a girl not more than ten, took the toddler on her lap and rocked her.
The fading bruise on the woman’s cheek was all too familiar, and I knew what her problem was going to be without asking. Still, I followed the professional script Hetty had taught me. “How can I help you?”
“I need to leave my husband,” she said. “I need help with the divorce.”
Hetty swept her away into the office and left me with those children. Not a one of them would smile. The littlest, safe in her sister’s lap, stared at me out of wide eyes and sucked her thumb. None of them fidgeted or fussed.
I could hear fragments of conversation through the closed door. Two of those fragments caught in my head.
The first was about a safety plan. “Where will you go, where will you stay, how badly will he hurt you when he knows you want to leave?”
These words, rather than weighing me down, sang to me, in that way it is when a bit of a tune gets stuck in your head. Over and over, all the rest of that day, into the night, and the days that followed.
Where will you go, where will you stay, how badly will he hurt you when he knows you want to leave?
Maybe those questions would have been enough to set me free, but it was the next bit about the children that changed everything. There they sat, unnatural in their silent watchfulness, like small animals, hoping they won’t be seen if they don’t move.
And in the office Hetty asked her, “Does he hit the children?”
And she answered, “No. I’ve taught them how to keep from being hit.”
Those were the words that took my breath as surely as a punch to my gut. Three pairs of watchful eyes on me, aware of my every movement. Three pairs of watchful eyes in a home where it was their responsibility to avoid getting hit.
I was so enmeshed in my own nightmare, I still might not have dared a break for freedom, but Boots, in perfect timing, chose that evening to come home, high and edgy. Probably he hadn’t slept since the last time I saw him. Certainly there was a craziness in his eyes.
The girls were tired. I’d been leaving them with Boots’s mom while I worked, and she hadn’t given them a nap. They smelled of stale cigarettes, and they were cranky and difficult. Dinner wasn’t quite ready when he walked in. Marley was whining, Maisey was crying.
“This is ridiculous,” Boots said. “You are not going back to that job.”
The world slowed down.
I watched both of my little girls respond to his tone. They went quiet and still. The tears stopped. The whining hiccuped once, then trailed away. They froze. And in that moment, even before the first blow came at me, I saw again the children waiting in the office, and I knew—knew—
I had to get the girls away from him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
We follow GPS directions, Tony driving slower and slower as we get closer to our destination.
“This can’t be right,” Mia says, when the too-cheerful GPS voice informs us we have arrived. “Maybe she wrote it down wrong.”
Elle consults the napkin where Marley had written the address. “This is what it says, all right.”
Tony pulls the car over to the edge of the road, and we all stare at a run-down single-wide trailer occupying a lot where weeds and garbage compete for space. The trailer itself is beat-up and faded. One of the windows is boarded over.
Two cars are parked in the rutted dirt driveway. One is burgundy with one black door and a rear bumper hanging at a crazy angle. The other is a nondescript hatchback, far from new but at least all one color and not looking like a kindergarten kid’s crazy drawing.
All of us stare at the trailer. I can feel Tony assessing the rest of the neighborhood. We’re out of the city, but here it isn’t suburbs. We’ve passed grassy lots with horses, goats, chickens. Even a small herd of sheep. Plenty of mobile homes, many of them well kept up, the yards clean, the animals healthy. If we were in a movie, this lot would house the psychotic murderer.
“Looks about right,” Dad says. “Are we going in?”
He has an expression on his face that I haven’t seen there before. It’s almost like Mom left her iron will lying around, and he’s picked it up and put it on. His mild features set in those lines of determination make him look foreign and strange. I feel adrift again, without anchor, but before I can restore my equilibrium, he’s opened the door and started unfolding himself out of the car.
“Wait,” I call after him, getting out of my own door. “Maybe we don’t all have to go in. You and Elle could wait—”
“Oh, I’m going in,” he says.
“Elle, you stay here with Mia,” I call back over my shoulder, taking a few running steps to catch up with Dad, who is moving faster than I’ve seen him since I got home.
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