“This is deeper than Foster Hill House. Than even Danny’s death. Why did you become a crusader for abused women? Why did you put your own safety on the line, your marriage or so it seems, to stand between those women and the ones who hurt them?”
Kaine swallowed back a lump the size of California. She wrapped her arms around her body and bit the inside of her lip so hard she could taste blood. The grasses in the field outside were turning green, and she focused her gaze on them. New growth. New life, and yet she related to the dead oak tree in the distance. Not the one that had been Gabriella’s coffin at the turn of the century, but another. Another stark reminder that death always triumphed. It was the hunter, and man was its prey.
“Was it a relative who hurt you?” Grant pressed.
Lord have mercy! Kaine squeezed her eyes shut. How did he know? He was a counselor, that’s how. He could read people, read their faces, and Kaine knew she would be the first one out in a poker game.
“No.” She shook her head. The whisper hurt her throat.
“Danny?”
“No.” Kaine’s voice rose, vehement. No. Danny had done nothing but love her, and she had held him at arm’s length.
Grant didn’t press anymore. A tear trickled from the corner of her eye, betraying the truth she’d locked deep inside. She’d kept it buried for so long, she’d grown used to locking it away. Like it filled a place all its own. Every other secret had a way of slipping out, but this one was buried in such a way she’d need to excavate her soul to reveal it.
“It was my boyfriend in college. Freshman year.” It should have been Danny she told, not a man she’d known less than a month.
“There’s no shame in it.” Grant’s reassurance made another tear trace down her cheek.
Kaine swiped it away. “I know. Believe me. I preached that to every woman I’ve ever fought for.”
Grant nodded, the movement dancing on the edge of her peripheral vision.
“It wasn’t sexual.” Kaine had thanked God for that day after day. “But he was jealous. Possessive. If I even looked at another guy, he’d get jealous and shove me around later. Then he’d make me feel guilty, as if he was a victim and I’d ignored him, or hurt him by not being true.”
“That’s more common than people realize,” Grant said.
Kaine turned, but kept her arms wrapped tightly around her torso. She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “My sister and I were practically raised by my grandpa. He was kind but indifferent. I struggled in high school. I wanted to be safe. In college, it was as if . . . well, my boyfriend gave me that security. I didn’t want to jeopardize it, and I thought if I lost him, I’d never make it.”
“What happened?”
Kaine looked at Gabriella’s pages spread out on the floor. She took strength from the young woman’s handwriting. “One night I smiled at a waiter when he poured my coffee. Just a smile. When we got in the car later, as I was buckling my seat belt, my boyfriend lost it. He was in my face, yelling at me. Telling me I was cheating on him. That he was going to leave me and no man would ever want me because I was a—” she stopped then and let out a sigh—“I can’t repeat the word he used, not out loud.”
A muscle in Grant’s jaw clenched. He jammed his hands in his jean pockets.
Kaine continued, “The seat belt trapped me. I ended up in the hospital with two broken ribs, a black eye, and a few other bruises and scrapes. To this day, my sister, Leah, thinks I wiped out on my bicycle that I rode to class every day.”
“What ended it?” Grant shifted his weight to his other foot.
Kaine licked her lips, recalling the taste of blood on them after her boyfriend beat her. She remembered clawing at her seat belt, at his face. She was a fighter, she always had been. And that night she’d awakened to what she had settled for.
“I got a restraining order and I broke up with him. He moved out of town shortly after that. I found out a few years later that he died of a drug overdose. I fought back,” Kaine whispered, “and I won.”
A proud smile tilted Grant’s mouth. “Good girl.”
Kaine lifted her face to the ceiling and blinked fast to push away more tears. “No. I stuffed it all inside. It hurt my marriage to Danny. I couldn’t trust him. I buried myself in fighting for other women and teaching them to be strong, but in doing so I ostracized the one person who loved me the most.”
Annnnnnd here comes the tears. Kaine pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, hoping to stop the flow.
“And now, this. Everywhere. A reminder. I can’t get away from it. It seems every woman I know is affected by it and I can’t see God’s light, or this hope that believers preach about. I mean, I believe. In Jesus. In faith. But, I can’t see His promise of a future—a good future.” Kaine waved her hand at Gabriella’s pages. “But she could. How? How, Grant?”
When she spoke his name, Grant pulled his hands from his pockets and reached for her, one hand closing tenderly around hers. “Look at this.” With gentleness, he bent and lifted a page from the floor. “I don’t think you saw this one.”
He showed her page 113 of Great Expectations, hidden under the floor by a young woman whose identity had never been discovered. The ink had faded but was still legible. Its words reached deep into Kaine’s soul, gripped it, and she knew they would never let go.
My eyes see beyond today, beyond my circumstances in a world jaded and scarred by sin. I see into Heaven. And it is beautiful. And it is good. It is my future. There is no despair in eternity, in God’s presence, in His perfection. There is only hope. He is my hope.
Chapter 30
Kaine palmed Ivy’s locket, thumbing the tarnished gold and the engraved initials. She nestled cross-legged on the bed in Megan’s brightly colored bedroom, cozy in her pajamas, with Olive resting on the floor between the beds. Megan sat at her desk, colored markers strewn around her. Occasionally, she lifted her head to give Kaine a lopsided smile. Megan was so innocent, kind, and untainted. She was the most pleasant roommate Kaine ever recalled having. A fierce protectiveness overcame her. Kaine would hurt anyone who tried to steal that perfection from Megan.
Her new cellphone with her new number pealed. She glanced at the caller’s number, her heart beating faster. Detective Hanson. Thank God. She’d already given the detective her new number, so if her stalker had somehow retrieved this number, she would probably lose her mind. The fact that Grant was in the living room, crashed on the couch and watching ESPN was comforting. If she needed him, he’d be there, along with Sophie the pit bull. She’d hardly talked to Grant since her emotional breakdown earlier in the day and her confession that left her feeling like a limp dishrag.
“Hello?” Kaine waited for Detective Hanson to reply.
“Miss Prescott?”
“Yes.”
“I know it’s a bit late there in Wisconsin, but I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to call you.”
There was something in the detective’s voice that made Kaine sit straighter. She let Ivy’s locket slip from her hand into her lap. “Yes?”
“We found him.”
Visions of the blood-colored handprints and Danny’s name on Foster Hill House’s window flashed through Kaine’s mind. “Found who?” She didn’t mean to be obtuse, but if her stalker from San Diego had followed her to Wisconsin, she wasn’t quite certain who Detective Hanson might have found.
“The man who took your husband’s life.”
Kaine’s stomach twisted into a knot, and she lost her breath for a moment, though not in relief. A thousand questions swirled in her mind. “That’s . . . not possible,” she protested weakly.
Megan looked up from her Strawberry Shortcake coloring page with a concerned expression. Kaine mustered a confident smile. The girl didn’t deserve to be touched by Kaine’s messy life.
She considered carefully her next words. “How? I don’t understand. Who is it?”
“I’ve been in communication with the Oakwood police, so I know you’ve had a recent
string of very unfortunate incidents there. But they appear to be unrelated. We have taken a Jason Fullgate into custody. I have a complete confession. He also came clean about breaking and entering at your condo, and leaving the daffodils.”
The San Diego police knew about the first daffodil, but not the subsequent ones that continued over the months. The ones Kaine never reported because she’d been threatened with filing fraudulent reports. This Jason Fullgate had made a confession. Was it authentic? Kaine’s breaths grew shallow. Was it possible to have two stalkers? What bad luck was that?
Anxiety increased the tremor in her hands as her brain struggled to process the latest occurrences at Foster Hill House and reconcile them with Danny’s murder two years before.
“Who is Jason Fullgate?” Kaine asked. She reached for Olive as the dog sensed her angst and nosed Kaine’s hand.
“Do you recall a woman named Susan?”
Kaine had worked with several Susans at the shelter, although one in particular did stand out.
“Well, Susan is a young woman you helped get a fresh start. You helped her find a job, an apartment. She changed her last name to Gregson.”
Susan Gregson. Yes. Susan. The petite redhead had the fight and tenacity of a beat-up kitten. She’d arrived at the shelter one night with a broken wrist and so many bruises on her chest and legs, Kaine had contemplated enacting her own vigilante justice. Susan’s condition brought back memories of Kaine’s abusive experience, and she had taken Susan under her wing.
“Fullgate was her husband,” Detective Hanson explained. “When he couldn’t find Susan after you helped her relocate, he traced Susan as far as you. He confessed to spending time following you, learning who you were, your relationship with Danny, where you lived, even that your favorite flower was daffodils . . . all to see if he could find Susan.”
“But he never did.” Kaine knew where Detective Hanson was taking the story. She had replaced Susan in the abuser’s mind, because she became the obstacle to his twisted, abusive love.
“As fate would have it,” the detective went on, her voice dropping a bit, “your husband visited a particular coffee shop frequently, so Jason got a job there and eventually slipped the drug into Danny’s coffee. It resulted in his accident and subsequent death. Jason insists he didn’t mean to kill Danny, only to carry out some retribution for what you’d taken from him.”
Revenge.
Kaine slumped back against her pillows and drew her knees up to her chest. She squelched any tears for fear of upsetting Megan. How obsessive could one man be? To taint Danny’s coffee, to get a job at Danny’s favorite coffee shop and follow her, all out of love for a woman he’d beaten so many times? Were women merely belongings to him? Kaine rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. Yes. They were. It was a pattern that had traveled through history. If there was any link between Foster Hill House and Danny, it was that. Abuse. And it followed Kaine like a cancer.
One thing at a time, Prescott, she coached herself. Her body began to shiver. She pulled a blanket over her legs, and Olive hopped onto the bed and lay across her lap.
“And after Danny died?” Kaine asked. “What was his excuse then?”
“Fullgate is schizophrenic. He was diagnosed four years ago, and that’s probably what started the abuse against Susan. He was—is—still obsessed with her and how she disappeared. To his mixed-up way of thinking, you were to blame. He transferred that obsession to you. He was convinced you needed to feel as he did. Alone. Helpless. With your husband dead, he wanted you at his mercy, and in his mind the best way to do that was to instill fear.”
“Well, it worked. For two whole years.” Kaine dug her fingers into Olive’s fur. The dog twisted her head and licked Kaine’s wrist. “How did you find him?”
“I went through old evidence. There was a receipt for the coffee shop, and once we found evidence of Danny’s coffee being laced, we pulled the employee records to see if there was any connection to Danny or cases you had worked with. That’s when the dots began to line up. When we brought Fullgate in for questioning, he caved.”
The reminder of the photograph of Danny positioned in the middle of the floor in the third bedroom skittered through Kaine’s mind. Along with the weird phone call from the anonymous caller.
“When did you take Mr. Fullgate into custody?”
“I know where you’re going with this, and I hate to say it, but it was two days ago. The interesting thing is, he just recently started up on his meds. It wasn’t hard to get a confession out of him. The man’s completely broken.”
Kaine had little sympathy for the man who killed her husband, intentional or not.
The detective cleared her throat. “I have to close the case, Miss Prescott. Obviously, it’ll go to trial and we’ll need you back in San Diego at some point. I’ve contacted the Oakwood Police Department as well, and I know—you’re involved in your own new set of circumstances.”
Circumstances. That was a gentle way of stating it. Kaine looked up and met Megan’s eyes. The adorable slant of them and her rounded face created a stark contrast to the frightening realization that clenched her gut.
Detective Hanson voiced Kaine’s fears. “The incidents there in Wisconsin are unrelated to Jason Fullgate. There isn’t anything I can do to help with your investigation there.”
Kaine could hear the hesitation in the detective’s voice. “Yeah.” Kaine grimaced into the phone. “I know what you’re thinking, and I have no idea how this sort of luck followed me here.”
The detective chuckled, then coughed to cover it. “Well, I wish you the best of luck and safety. It sounds like the department there is well qualified and you’re in good hands.”
Good hands.
It didn’t leave Kaine with any sort of comfort. She had thought that, once Danny’s killer was found, there would be resolution, that life would settle down, a new normal. Even if there was a forthcoming trial and a revisiting of her grief, at least the terror would be behind her. But it wasn’t. Not at all.
Kaine hung up with the detective and dialed Leah. She’d avoided calling her sister, not wanting to bring her into the current events. Having Leah panic all the way across the country wasn’t going to help quell Kaine’s fear in any way. But Leah needed to know Danny’s killer had been caught. At least it was one book they could close.
After saying goodbye to Leah, Kaine leaned back against the pillows again and watched Megan, whose coloring page really was a work of art. Blended colors, bright pinks and yellows, oranges and purples, created a beautiful kaleidoscope of happiness. It matched the joy in Leah’s voice when Kaine told her Danny could finally rest in peace. But it didn’t match Kaine’s heart, or the fact that her world was still as tumultuous as a puddle of gray-and-black ink.
“So everything is okay now, right?” Leah had asked.
“It will be,” Kaine replied, and left it there. She decided not to burden her sister anymore. Besides, being so far away, Leah could do little to help her. The reassurance she gave was interpreted by her sister as Kaine needing time to heal. Kaine let her believe that was the case. And it was—among other, far more intimidating factors.
Kaine fixed her stare on Megan’s sweep of a blue pen, but her mind was consumed by the events of the evening. Danny’s killer was in custody. Danny. She drew a shaky breath. In the end, it had been her fault, in a roundabout way. He’d suffered, for her. The truth was both startling and brutal. Tears burned her eyes. Who else would end up suffering because of her, caught up in the whirlpool trap of abuse that was her life, surging forth from the past and whipping its way into the present?
Chapter 31
Jvy
She knew where to find Joel. It was the same place that called to Ivy in the dark cavern of her own sorrow. A mist floated just above the ground, embracing the bases of the tombstones. Some of the markers were tilted from time and the earth settling the graves deeper into their eternal beds.
Joel’s broad shoulders were covered in a gra
y cotton shirt, with darker gray stripes that raced down his back to his trim waist. His shirtsleeves were rolled and cuffed, exposing his forearms. The trees that draped over the cemetery rustled as a light breeze awakened them. Joel dragged his hand across tired eyes.
Ivy’s heart twisted, the truth seeping into her conscience with the brutal sting of how wrong she had been. In her grief, she had drawn conclusions without understanding events. The years of harboring her defiant offense against Joel Cunningham, her dearest friend and the only one who knew her as well as Andrew, had taken its toll. But not only on her.
She watched as Joel squatted in front of Andrew’s simple white stone, reaching out to rest a palm on its top. A strange cough emitted from his throat, the kind someone made when fighting back tears. Ivy couldn’t fathom a man like Joel weeping. He would hold his grief deep inside and expose it to no one. He would do what needed to be done. He would exist and he would survive. He was strong, as evidenced by his broad shoulders that bore the weight of time and pain, that had borne abandonment, rejection, and her own bitter accusations. Yet, he was here. He had returned home, to her and to Andrew.
Joel rocked forward, his knees sinking into the moist ground. He rested his other hand on Andrew’s grave marker and bowed his head. Ivy hesitated as she approached him, as if to speak would break the reverent silence. Her foot snapped a twig, and Joel raised his head to look over his shoulder. The rims of his eyes were red as if he hadn’t slept. She hadn’t either. The debacle at the orphanage, ending in a visit and stern warning from Sheriff Dunst, was enough to put them both on edge. Beyond that, Mr. Casey’s revelation regarding the night of Andrew’s funeral exposed Joel’s vulnerability and Ivy’s ill-placed defiance. Sleep was a friend to no one in times such as these.
There was much unspoken emotion as Joel’s blue eyes bore into hers. He was obviously in pain, holding it deep inside, just as he had always done.
“I still miss him.” Weariness tainted Joel’s voice.
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