by Karen Rose
“My dog. My youngest named her after Cindy Lou Who, who was not more than two.”
“Christmas gift, huh?”
Steven scowled as the dog drooled on his shoe. “Christmas mistake.” He raised his knee to Cindy Lou’s chest just in time to protect his suit coat from two dirty paws the size of dinner plates.
“You’re a grinch, Steven,” Toni said, laughing.
“I’m a man who likes clean clothing. Listen, I’m due at my son Matt’s piano recital in twenty minutes so I don’t have a lot of time to talk right now. I just wanted to let you know I heard from Spinnelli in Chicago. He sent a unit to Caroline Stewart’s apartment this morning, but she wasn’t home. Instead, they talked to a neighbor, an old man, who said Ms. Stewart left with a man thirty minutes before the unit got there.”
“Don’t tell me it was Rob, Steven,” Toni said, her voice heavy with dread. “Please.”
“Daddy!” A red blur tackled him around his legs and Steven scooped his youngest son up into his arms, trapping the cell phone between his shoulder and ear.
“Hey, baby.” He smacked a loud kiss on Nicky’s forehead, then hitched his boy up on his hip. “No, Toni, it wasn’t Winters. It was some tall guy with a cane. Old guy said his name was Max.”
“Did Max have a last name?”
“Spinnelli’s men asked, but the old guy said he didn’t pry into the affairs of his neighbors.” Steven snorted. “Chicago PD said the old guy practically lives on the stoop. I wish he’d pushed himself to pry just this once.”
Toni sighed her relief. “Well, at least she has someone to take care of her. I’d hate to think of her duct-taped to a bed in some sleazy motel.”
“Or at the bottom of a river. I gotta go, Toni. Call you later.” Steven hung up, slipped his phone back in his pocket, and swung a squealing Nicky up on his shoulders.
“Daddy, what’s at the bottom of the river?” Nicky asked, ducking as they passed through the front door.
Steven thought about Susan Crenshaw and the devastation Winters had left in his wake. A fresh wave of fear shook him as he thought of Winters sitting right in front of his house, mere inches from his precious baby. Then the fear became grim determination. No way in hell would that bastard touch his family. No way would his children live in fear. “Just that big grandad catfish that jumped off my hook last time we went fishing,” he answered his son. He swung Nicky down from his shoulders and sat him on the third stair of the staircase so they were face-to-face. “What do you say after Matt’s recital we all jump in the car and go fishing for the rest of the afternoon?”
Nicky’s smile beamed from among his freckles. “Really?”
“Really.” Steven shoved all thoughts of Winters back as far as he could, which wasn’t very far. But he made himself grin anyway. “I’m feeling lucky today.”
Nicky jumped to his feet. “Lucky enough to catch Ol’ Grandad?”
Steven reached out his arms and Nicky jumped into them. “Luckier.” He hugged Nicky tight. “Much luckier.”
Chicago Saturday, March 17
3 P.M.
Winters slammed the trunk of his rental car shut. Damned old man. Adelman simply couldn’t leave well enough alone. He just had to go checking on Three A Contractors. Just had to meet him at the door telling him there was no Three A Contractors and he was going to the police. That he knew Winters had gone into Caroline’s apartment when she wasn’t home. That nobody messed with the women in his building, especially the ones with no men to take care of them, like Caroline.
Caroline. The name stuck in Winters’s throat. She’d defied him. Lied to him. Run from him. She’d stolen his son and filled his young mind with lies. Turned his own son against him. And now he knew she was unfaithful as well. She’d come back this morning with the gimp with the cane. She’d been out with him all night, the whore. And she’d left with him again at a little past ten that morning, a small suitcase in her hand. Adelman had given him that much before he’d gasped his last.
Winters fingered the rip in his coveralls. The old man had put up a surprising fight. There really hadn’t been a place to hide him afterwards. Winters hadn’t planned this. It was one of those immediate necessities of life. So for now old man Adelman’s resting-place would have to be the trunk of his rental car. He wouldn’t be able to keep the car for too much longer. There wasn’t enough Brut in the world to cover up that smell once it got kickin’.
Winters slid behind the wheel of his rental car and pulled it from the alley. Great hiding place, that alley. If it wasn’t built just for hiding, it should have been. He wouldn’t bother staying here today. Now that he knew Mary Grace had packed a bag, he knew she wouldn’t be back until at least tomorrow. He looked up at the sky. The weatherman was forecasting rain for tomorrow. Today might be his last chance to get a clear view of Chicago from the top of the Sears Tower.
He had plenty of time to kick back and be a tourist for a few hours. He wasn’t meeting Evie until eight o’clock. His agenda for the evening included working Evie’s sympathies in the direction of “Tom’s” father. He was fairly optimistic that everything would work out just fine. By tomorrow he’d have Mary Grace in hand. Well in hand. By the time his son returned from his camping trip, Mary Grace would be more than willing to recant every lie she’d told over the years.
By this time next week they’d be a happy family again.
Well, at least he and Robbie would be happy.
Mary Grace would never know the meaning of happiness again.
When he got her home to Asheville, Mary Grace would have to answer to charges of unlawful child seizure. Perhaps she’d even do time for kidnapping his son. No prison sentence would be long enough to make up for the seven years of Robbie’s life she’d stolen, but perhaps it would be enough to put her back in her place for good. And if she didn’t do time, he’d just have to put her in her place himself. He glanced down at his hand and watched his fingers curl into a fist. That would be a hardship of course. The thought of putting Mary Grace in her place without killing her was becoming difficult.
He pulled out into traffic, headed downtown. He should get an awesome view from the Sears Tower on a clear day like this one.
Chicago
Saturday, March 17
5 P.M.
Max checked his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. Caroline had been in the restroom entirely too long. He was getting worried. In truth he’d been worried all day, wrestling with his own feelings—or lack thereof. He was still numb, still didn’t know what to think or say.
God. She’d been abused. Pushed down a flight of stairs and left to recover on her own. There was more, he knew. Everything that must have come before she was pushed that had put those shadows in her eyes and made her flinch if he made any sudden moves.
Max wanted to be angry. He wanted that cleansing burst of sheer fury. But he was just … numb.
And Caroline had been distant since they’d left her apartment that morning. Not once had she initiated anything. No conversation. No touching. Certainly nothing more intimate. And the fact that he wanted her made him feel guilty. Well, he thought, guilt was something. An emotion. A place to start. But how could he take guilt for something he’d had no part in and turn it into something healthy? Something that would make Caroline heal?
He was so unsure. Should he initiate something himself? Would she want him to touch her? He’d wondered through the morning even as Frank’s basketball skills workshop wound to a successful close. He’d agonized through the afternoon as he and Caroline had aimlessly driven around Chicago, with no particular place to go. And now he was terrified as he sat across from the empty seat at the restaurant they’d happened into. Neither of them had chosen the place. Neither of them had chosen anything to eat, each taking the top item on the menu.
He’d made no real choices today. He’d drifted. He was numb.
His brain was jerked out of the mist when a woman with a familiar voice said from behind him, “I don’t
need my own table, thank you. I’m with him.”
Max found he wasn’t the least bit surprised when Dana Dupinsky slid into the booth across from him and looked up at the waitress who’d evidently followed her from the front door. “Could you bring me a glass of water with lemon, please?”
The waitress looked at Max and he nodded. “She’s with me.”
One corner of Dana’s mouth quirked up sympathetically. “So how’s it going?” she asked, pulling Caroline’s plate closer to her.
“Not bad,” Max returned warily.
Dana dunked a french fry into a cup filled with ketchup and carefully inspected her work. “So she told you?” she asked, then lifted her eyes to meet his.
Max looked away, unable to come up with an answer to the unspoken question in her eyes. He nodded, incapable for the moment of any speech at all. His eyes scanned the far wall of the restaurant, looking for Caroline to emerge from the ladies’ room.
“She won’t be back for about fifteen minutes,” Dana offered quietly. She laid her ketchup soaked fry on the side of Caroline’s plate untouched, then went to work dunking another one. “She asked me to come and talk with you.”
Max felt his whole face frown. “I didn’t think we’d met here by pure happenstance,” he replied, sarcasm making his words harsh.
“I didn’t think you did. So what will you do now?”
He chanced a glance at her face. Her expression was cautious, her eyes sharp and businesslike. Sudden understanding dawned. Dana did more than run a shelter for runaways. Dana sheltered abused women as well. She counseled. She helped women pick up the pieces. Occasionally she must do the same for men.
“She came to you,” he said. “You helped her.”
“She came to me,” she confirmed, then countered with a tilt of her head. “She helped herself. So what will you do now, Max?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I don’t have the first idea.”
“Then you’d permit me a suggestion or two?”
“By all means.” How ludicrous, he thought, a wave of anger crashing through the numbness of his mind. They sat here, exchanging pleasantries like the hellos of strangers on a crowded street when the real subject was … He swallowed and dropped his forehead into his hand. When the real subject was far too heinous and painful to consider.
Dana dunked another french fry and this time ate it, watching him as she chewed.
“I don’t know what to say to her,” he confessed. “All day, I’ve just been going through the motions. And then, when I look at her …”
She nodded. “Go on. When you look at Caroline what do you see?”
Max looked up at the ceiling, over at the bar, out the window. Anywhere but into Dana’s brown eyes that seemed to see more than he wanted to bare. “I see …” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I know what I think I should see.”
Dana smiled. An incredibly gentle smile that made him want to swear and cry at the same time. He did neither and she gave him another. “Self-control. I admire that in a man. As long as it’s within reason, of course. Max, what do you think you should see when you look at Caroline?”
“A strong woman who’s survived. I should admire her.”
She lifted her brows. “But?”
Max closed his eyes. “But I don’t see that. I see her lying at the bottom of those cellar stairs. Broken and hurting.” His lips trembled and he pursed them. “Scared.”
“I forget that imagination goes along with your chosen field. History,” she added when he opened his eyes to frown at her. “Evie tells me how you make her classes come alive. You couldn’t do that if your mind didn’t paint pictures. Sometimes those pictures can be liabilities.”
Max laughed bitterly. “Yeah. So what?”
“So you’re right. She was lying on that cellar floor, broken and scared. Tom found her like that. He was the one to call 911.”
Max winced, able to see that picture all too clearly as well. No wonder the boy acted like his mother’s bodyguard.
Dana’s hand came to rest on his wrist, initiating a soothing human contact. “But she isn’t there now. She isn’t lying on any cellar floor.” One corner of her mouth turned up. “She doesn’t even have a cellar floor anymore.”
Max stared, stunned. “How …”
“Can I joke about such things?” she finished. “Come on, Max, what’s the alternative? Depression that eats at you until you wish you were dead? You want to know who taught me to laugh when I wanted to do violence to the bastard of a man who hurt her? Caroline did. She came into my life seven years ago when I’d already been divorced from my own abusive spouse for years. I’d gotten my degree in counseling to make a difference, but I was so discouraged. One day the old director of the House told me to pick up a new client. I met Caroline at the Greyhound station, frightened but determined, holding the hand of the bravest little boy I’d ever met. I haven’t met any braver since. Tom drew that courage from his mother. Caroline taught me what true perseverance really meant. What true courage really meant. When I met her she still wore a back brace and walked to the bus stop with a cane. Did you know that?”
Max shook his head.
“She worked in a warehouse and she’d come home so tired … But she always had time for Tom. She’d tell him funny, cute little stories that kept him giggling long after she turned off his light. That was how she made it through. Indomitable will, the sense of humor of a troop of vaudeville comics, and more courage than a platoon of soldiers. That’s the woman she wants you to see. That’s the woman she is.”
“How long did she stay with him?” The question came out before he could stop it and he could only be grateful Caroline wasn’t sitting here to hear it.
Dana didn’t flinch. “You’ll need to ask her that question, Max. I will tell you that women stay with abusive men for many different reasons. Many of them were probably true for Caroline during the years she was with Rob.”
Rob. A name to put with the virulent hatred that bubbled up from some dark corner of his heart. His hands clenched into fists.
“Women stay with men for many reasons,” Dana continued, and Max watched as her eyes dropped to his fists. He immediately relaxed them, flattening his palms on the table. She lifted her eyes back to his and nodded. “They tend to leave for only a few.”
“Their children.”
“That’s number one. In Caroline’s case there never was a time when a child didn’t factor in.”
“She had Tom when she was sixteen,” he remembered.
“Yes.” Dana covered the back of his hand with her palm.
“Max, you’ve told Caroline you love her. Is that true?”
Max nodded, his throat constricting once again. “Yes.”
“Then you’ll need to realize first that this discovery isn’t something you package all nice and neat and file away under ‘E’ for ‘experiences you care not to remember.’ Caroline is more than a former client. She’s my best friend. I want her to have a normal life more than I want to breathe. If you’re the right man for her, I’ll support you in working through this. Get some counseling, but not one-on-one. Join a therapy group with other men whose wives or girlfriends have been abused. The others in the group will not allow you to feel sorry for yourself. Ever.”
It was a suggestion he could live with. “Okay.”
“And secondly? When you think about her lying bruised and broken and scared, picture her getting up and getting away. Because that’s what she’s done.” She picked up another french fry, and studied it intently as if she were weighing her next words with care. “And Max? Don’t fall into the trap of treating her like spun glass. Especially when the situation is an intimate one.” She abandoned the french fry and slid from the booth. “It’s the absolute worst thing you can do.”
Chicago
Saturday, March 17
8 A.M.
Sitting on the sofa where they’d made love not twenty-four hours before, Caroline watched Max kneel at the fireplace a
nd poke at the kindling fire with the old poker that had belonged to his grandparents. There was proof of his family and their ongoing legacy everywhere she turned. It made telling him the whole truth even more daunting. She now had so much more to lose if he turned her away.
“It’s nice that we can have a fire this late in the year,” Caroline commented, more to break the silence than for any other reason. The silence during the day had been excruciating. They’d picked at their dinner when she’d returned from her twenty-minute visit to the ladies’ room. Dana had been there, talking to Max. Caroline didn’t even need to ask to know it was true. A) because Dana had promised she would and B) because Caroline found mounds of ketchup-soaked french fries on her plate. Dana was a fry-dunker. Always had been. Especially when she was nervous or agitated.
Max had tried. Really tried. But it was an incredible shock to a man like him—a man whose parents had loved one another and their children openly and without restraint. Caroline hesitated over telling him the rest. If he became so upset over the abuse she’d told him about that morning, how upset would he become when he heard the rest of the story, including the little matter of falsified documents and her ongoing marital status? Little problems, those.
Max looked up from the fire. “Yes, it is nice. I remember my grandmother letting us roast marshmallows over the fire way into the early summer. We’d make s’mores and drip the chocolate onto the floor.” He ruefully looked down at the ancient carpet. “I’m wishing now we’d been a little more careful with Grandma’s things.” He smiled, but it never really reached his eyes.
Caroline smiled with him, then drew a deep breath and patted the space on the sofa next to her. “Come sit down, Max. We need to talk.”
Slowly he pulled himself to his feet, using the cane to keep his balance. “It’s time?” He met her eyes as he crossed the room and in his she saw real fear. But he sat down next to her nonetheless. “I’m ready. Let’s have it.”
Caroline reached up to caress the hard line of his jaw. “It will change how you think about me,” she began and he abruptly grabbed her wrist, his eyes blazing. He didn’t grab hard enough to hurt, but she was startled all the same.
