False Step

by Victoria Helen Stone

  “The police aren’t watching me!” he snapped.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure! They’re out there trying to catch an actual kidnapper. What the hell would they want with me?”

  “You’re the only lead they have. Whether they want you or not, they’ve got you. So maybe hanging around a goddamn criminal isn’t your best move right now.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Give me a break, Veronica. He’s not a criminal.”

  “Give you a break? Are you kidding? I know exactly what Trey is, Johnny. Don’t you try to play it down. Why the hell are you so close to him again all of a sudden, huh?”

  “We’ve been hanging out at the gym! That’s all!”

  That’s all. Another stupid reassurance he thought she couldn’t see through. “And who else have you been hanging out with?”

  Another roll of his eyes. She wanted to slap them right out of his head.

  “Are you just selling,” she asked, “or are you using?”

  He laughed at her. He laughed right in her face. “Jesus Christ. You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

  “Oh, is that right?” She shoved her hand into her pocket. Curled her fingers around the phone, ready to yank it out and throw it at his stupid, thick head right between those stupid, rolling eyes.

  But why? To what end?

  She hesitated, the muscles in her arm trembling with the need to lash out.

  If Johnny and Trey were selling steroids at the gym again, it was par for the course. It had felt like an unbearable threat five years earlier, but Johnny had graduated to a kidnapping investigation, and now it felt like nothing. Just another hobby to keep her husband busy and out of her hair. No different from the woman on the other end of this phone. He was screwing around and dealing drugs and all of it kept his eyes off of Veronica.

  Why throw a bomb into the situation? Micah had asked. Why indeed?

  Her fingers eased their grip. Her lips curled back down to cover teeth she hadn’t realized she’d been showing. Johnny shook his head and shoved a straw into his smoothie.

  She hoped he choked on it.

  Her eyes slid down his body. Were his arms a little bulkier? His shoulders a little wider? She hadn’t truly looked at him in so long that she couldn’t say. But maybe.

  When the front door flew open, Veronica jumped, her heart and body both leaping with fear. But it wasn’t a police raid. It was only Sydney and Old Man bounding into the living room, leash jangling, music from an ancient iPod blaring.

  “Dad!” she cried out. “You missed Frisbee!”

  “Sorry, honey. I had work again.”

  “Movie night?” Sydney asked, and Johnny winced.

  “I’ll be out for a while tonight.” When her face fell, he hurried to reassure her. “Let’s catch up on The 100 while I drink my smoothie. Okay?”

  Sydney literally leapt for joy before racing to the couch. Old Man jumped around a little too, excited by the palpable happiness. Now Veronica was the only sour one in the house. It definitely wasn’t the first time.

  She closed her eyes and let the counter take the weight of her body again. Sydney’s happiness was why she was here. This was her whole reason for staying. And it was good and right, even if she wasn’t.

  A strange bell chimed softly. Frowning in confusion, Veronica glanced around the kitchen for some new appliance that might have appeared on a counter unnoticed. From the corner of her eye she caught Johnny’s movement. He reached for the front of his body, his hand sliding down his hip, then back up again.

  As she turned toward him, his other hand repeated the same movement on the left side. His eyes were round as quarters, his forehead stamped with furrows of shock.

  Oh my God.

  Her own hand moved before she could stop it. Her fingers touched the hard rectangle of the phone through the denim of her jeans. Johnny’s gaze fell. His jaw dropped, parting his lips into a little hole of fear.

  No. She’d decided not to do this. She’d decided to let him be. But now he was stepping toward her, one hand out as if to grab her wrist, as if stopping her from reaching for the phone would somehow reverse her knowledge of it.

  She tried to step back, but she was already against the counter.

  “Roni,” he said. Just that. Just her nickname like some kind of dire warning. His hand hovered so close to her arm that she could feel the heat of it. She pressed her fingers harder to the layer of denim against glass. The corner of the phone dug into the hollow of her hip.

  “Roni, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  He dipped his head, his body curving to crowd hers. “What the fuck are you doing?” The hushed words scraped roughly against her ear, his mouth twisting them into a snarl. “Give it to me.”

  “No.” She hated the way his growl shivered through her nerves.

  “Give me the goddamn phone.”

  She glanced past his arm toward Sydney, but their daughter seemed lost in something on the tablet, and the TV was already blaring. “Get away from me,” Veronica whispered. She’d held this man much closer than this, but suddenly his body had transformed from familiar to an unknowable threat.

  Instead of retreating, he wrapped his hand around her wrist. There was no affection or comfort in his touch, only strength. When he crossed his other arm over to try to dig in her pocket, she jerked her body quickly to the side.

  “No!” She tried to say it quietly, but she caught the movement of Sydney’s head looking up.

  “Come on, Dad. Let’s start!”

  Veronica clenched her teeth and spoke as quietly as she could, though her fear made everything seem too loud. “Let. Me. Go.”

  “Give me the phone,” he growled back. Without loosening his hold on her, he cleared his throat and pasted on a smile to call out to his daughter. “Just give me another minute, sweetie!”

  “Okay.” Veronica could tell by the sound of Sydney’s voice that she’d already lowered her head again.

  “Whatever you’re thinking,” he murmured, “it’s not that.”

  Veronica couldn’t believe she managed to laugh, but she did. “Oh, really? What am I thinking?”

  His grip tightened until she winced. “We can’t talk about this here.”

  “No, we can’t. Take your hands off me and we can talk quietly in the bedroom.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he hissed.

  “Take your hands off me right now or I will call the police, and I doubt you want to discuss your secret phone with them. Do you, Johnny?”

  She’d meant it to be snide, but his face actually paled with fear. He let go of her, nearly tossing her arm away from him as he stepped back.

  His reaction scared her, but it thrilled her too. Because he’d frightened her with his strength and he deserved to feel small and helpless now. She stood straighter, and this time it was her body stepping into his as she sneered at his alarm.

  “Should I tell them about your phone, Johnny?”

  “Be quiet,” he ordered.

  “No? You wouldn’t like that? I bet you really wouldn’t like it if I showed them the fifty thousand dollars I found.”

  Veronica wasn’t sure what happened then. All she knew was that she was suddenly out of the kitchen and flying down the hallway, her arm locked in a vise, her feet tripping to keep up with Johnny’s speed.

  He yanked her into the bedroom and closed the door. His wild eyes rolled, checking the corners and the window and the door before he grabbed her by the shoulders and his gaze locked on hers. She stared back in utter shock.

  “Keep your fucking mouth closed,” he said.

  “Are you insane?”

  “Stop talking, Veronica.” He shook her. Her head snapped back. “Not another word. Just stop talking.”

  “Get off me!” she gasped, twisting hard to break out of his grip. She staggered to the side in panic before realizing she was moving farther away from the door.

  “We’ll talk about it later.”
>
  “What the hell?” she yelled, backing away. “Have you lost your mind? I find a bag of cash in the basement and you think we’ll just talk about it later?”

  “Stop!”

  “You stop! Stop lying! There’s fifty thousand dollars in—”

  She heard the crack before she felt the pain. Terror didn’t rush in when it should have. Instead she felt only confusion at how the room had shifted, and then there was the surprising flash of her hot skin as she raised a hand to touch her cheek.

  It wasn’t until she pushed up from her landing place on the mattress that she registered Johnny looming over her, his breath coming hard and fast, his face a blotchy mess of red and pale white.

  “I’m sorry!” His voice had lost the rage and soared high into panic. “I’m sorry. Just please stop talking!”

  Finally her fear revealed itself and slipped into her skin. All of her skin, all at once. Goose bumps rose, but she shrank into something smaller as she tried to squeeze more deeply into the mattress.

  “Roni, I’m sorry. Please. I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”

  She wanted to turn away from him, but she had to look. Had to watch his hands and his wide shoulders—they were wider, weren’t they?—so she could know if he was moving toward her. If he was going to hit her again. This man. Her own husband.

  So she watched him. Watched his hands clench into themselves. Watched tears well in his eyes. Watched him hunch closer until she flinched away.

  “You hit me,” she whispered past a throat clogged with tears.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Get away from me. I hate you.”

  “Don’t say that. Please.”

  “Don’t ever, ever touch me again.”

  “Veronica, please. You have to understand . . .” He went to his knees and started to reach for her, but he drew his hand back when she growled. At least she was looking down on him now.

  “You’re using again.”

  “No. No, but we can’t talk here.” His hands opened, begging with his palms. “I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid.” She shook her head, the skin beneath her fingers burning hotter. “Fuck you.”

  “Roni, please. I’m afraid they’re listening.”

  “Who?”

  He grasped his skull in his hands. Squeezed his hair tight between fisted fingers. He raised his tear-filled eyes and held her gaze for a moment before he mouthed two words. The police.

  The fear writhed and shifted inside her, sliding out from under her skin to curl into a knot in her gut. “What did you do?”

  He shook his head and kept shaking it until he let his face drop to the twisted comforter. The shaking moved to his shoulders then. He sobbed like a child.

  Veronica held the burning cinders of her face and watched her husband cry. “What did you do?” she whispered again, but he didn’t even raise his head.

  CHAPTER 21

  The world didn’t stop turning, no matter what happened. Even during the darkest tragedies life went on, unaware and cruel, completely unconcerned with whether you could manage to catch up.

  Veronica sat on her bed and stared at a dark wall as the sounds of a distant battle played out on the living room television. Johnny had kept his promise to Sydney and fired up their favorite TV show. Cars passed on the street in front of the house. The man next door yelled at his dog to get inside, get inside, just as he did every afternoon around this time.

  Veronica stared at the wall and waited. For what, she had no idea.

  Sydney had knocked on the door, and Johnny had scrubbed his face with his hands and whispered, “We have to act normal. We’ll go for a drive later. We’ll talk then. I promise.”

  We, we, we, as if she were any part of this. As if they were a team.

  Veronica just sat there dumbly, waiting for someone to tell her what the hell to do. Her hands lay open in her lap, her lips stayed parted in shock, but her mind was a tightly closed shell. She couldn’t access any part of her brain that might give her ideas.

  At least her cheek had stopped burning. Still, when she blinked, the corner of her left eye felt angry and injured. Each blink was a reminder that she was no longer a woman who had never been struck by her partner. He’d slapped her and she’d cowered there like every woman in every made-for-TV movie about abuse that she’d watched as a girl.

  One tear welled there and spilled over. Even with all her privilege, even being the one who paid the bills, the one who could walk out, she felt the suffocating weight of that shame. The immediate urge to hide it from everyone.

  But I can leave now, something inside her said, though it was just a memory of her previous self. She could leave now, but it would hardly be a triumph. Sydney would still be devastated. The only difference was that it wouldn’t be Veronica’s fault. Was that all it took to make it right in her head?

  Thirty minutes passed, or maybe sixty. The shadows shifted slowly around her body until finally something stirred inside her and she remembered she still had the phone.

  Tipsy with shock, she moved slowly and deliberately to tug it from her pocket. When she pushed the button, the message icon gleamed. Two messages. With none of the usual thrill of anticipation, she opened the app.

  Is everything cool at home?

  The first message shocked her so much that a sob exploded from her throat and immediately twisted into a laugh. No, everything was not cool at home. Everything was very far from cool, goddamn it all to hell.

  Then the second message: Don’t start second-guessing.

  That was more puzzling. Second-guessing what? An affair? Selling drugs? Or a kidnapping plot?

  She stared at the phone through a haze. Should she reach out? But how? Maybe she could say Remind me of everything that’s going on?

  She laughed again, that awful sound of pain, and clapped a hand over her mouth to stop it.

  Johnny knew that she knew about the phone now. This might be her last chance to reach out. But she couldn’t think. She couldn’t think at all, and what she wanted to type was HE HIT ME.

  She touched the H and then the E. Another H.

  Then she let her hand fall back to her lap. No. She couldn’t make it real like that.

  She deleted the letters.

  Just as she lifted her finger, the bedroom door swung open and Johnny was standing there in the gray space of the hallway. He’d shaped his face into regret, but that faded as soon as his gaze fell to the phone in her hand. Whatever peace offering he’d come to make was left in the hallway when he leapt forward to snatch it from her.

  Veronica flinched away. Disgust roiled her stomach, a burning, horrified hatred of him and herself.

  He checked the messages and then tucked the phone into his pocket. The loud music of a commercial drifted down the hall from the living room.

  “I told Sydney you and I needed to run an errand in a little while. We can talk in the car.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Nowhere. Just out of the house.”

  “I don’t feel safe with you,” she murmured.

  “Jesus, Roni! You know that’s ridiculous. We just need a safe place to talk.”

  “Safe for who?”

  He swallowed hard and dropped his eyes. Now that he had the phone, he was contrite again. “I panicked. I’m so sorry. I never . . . It won’t ever happen again.”

  “No, it won’t,” she said as if she were brave.

  “I promise. I wouldn’t hurt you, Veronica. I’d never . . . I just freaked out and lost my mind for a second.”

  “That’s all it takes, isn’t it?”

  He winced and nodded, then shook his head and winced again.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Ten more minutes in the show.” He walked out of their bedroom like everything was normal. Like it was an average Sunday evening with time to kill with his daughter. After all, he had his phone now. What did he care?

  Veronica wondered if she’d just lost her last best chance at getting to
the real truth. But she wondered it from a distance, still too numb to be invested in the future.

  But even through her numbness, she knew she had to watch out for Sydney, so she texted her mom. I’m going out with Johnny.

  The dots of a return message began immediately. Do you need me to take Syd? I was going to go out to the bookstore, but . . .

  No, we’ll only be gone a few minutes. Things are a little tense & we need to talk some things out. I just want you to know in case you call the house. Sydney won’t answer the phone if we’re not here.

  Are you ok?

  No. Tears welled in her eyes at her mom’s concern. No, she wasn’t okay. But she knew she’d hide it until she was forced not to. I’m fine, she typed. Things have just been so crazy. I love you.

  I love you too. Call if you need anything.

  She stood unsteadily, waiting for the room to stop its swinging before she went to the bathroom. A flick of the light switch and her face was revealed. Veronica stared in horror at the truth.

  She looked fine. A tiny hint of red at her cheekbone and the edge of her eye, but no swelling or bruising or scalding fingermarks against her skin. No proof of how profoundly she’d been injured. Her body had absorbed the hurt.

  She looked fine.

  “I hate you,” she said to her reflection. Her reflection looked unmoved by the admission.

  She brushed her tousled hair and pulled it into a ponytail. She washed her hands, though there was no reason to think they were dirty. Instead of drying them, she patted her wet fingers against her eyelids, then wiped off any remaining salt.

  She was ready for the truth. Or she wasn’t. It hardly mattered now.

  When Johnny came for her, he whispered that they should take her car, and that gave her a little comfort as she followed him down the hallway. They’d be in her space, not his.

  “Do you want to go to the duck pond?” he asked as she got behind the wheel.

  “Sure,” she said, sounding so normal, as if they were taking their little girl along just like they used to, loaded down with a picnic basket and a bag of stale bread to feed to the ducks and catfish. She’d still thought they might have the dream then. Nice cars, nice house, an annual trip to Disney World. A little debt on occasion, sure, but who didn’t have that? She’d thought Johnny would grow up soon and get a real job, but she hadn’t even asked him to. She’d wanted him to work through it on his own so he wouldn’t resent her. But then, of course, she’d resented him. Somebody eventually had to do it.