by Lucy Score
“‘About to make’ as in, yes?” Aldo asked, hope so bright and fierce climbed into his throat.
She bit her lip, and he held his breath.
“Yes.”
And just like that, Aldo got his second win of the day. And this one was much, much bigger than the first.
41
The fireworks were a spectacular end to a day of surprises, Gloria decided. Her hand linked with Aldo’s on the blanket. This newness was both overwhelming and thrilling.
Harper’s charges, Henry and Robbie, were sprawled out with them. They’d peppered Aldo with questions about his leg and running and his tattoos. Aldo had answered them all without flinching.
Gloria could feel Harper’s smug smile and chose to ignore her. She didn’t want to explain that she’d forgiven but cautiously.
“Wow!” Henry gasped at a big, orange starburst in the sky.
Gloria smiled and let herself relax. All her weeks of work were over. She’d pulled together one hell of a Fourth of July. It was kind of like her own personal Independence Day. She’d shown the town something besides poor little Gloria Parker, and she’d stood up for herself to a man despite her very strong feelings for him. She’d drawn lines, set boundaries.
As the sky filled with color and sound, she allowed herself a minute to bask. Her hard work was starting to pay off. And for once in her life, she couldn’t wait to see what tomorrow held.
The finale drew the expected oohs and ahs from the crowd as every firework known to man lit the dark canvas of sky.
Aldo leaned in. “You did good,” he told her as the boys screeched their delight.
Gloria gave his hand a squeeze. “Thanks. You were pretty impressive today, too.”
The fireworks looked even better reflected in Aldo’s brown eyes. She felt a delicious shiver travel up her spine.
“I’ll walk you home,” Aldo said quietly as Harper and her crew herded the kids toward the car.
“You don’t have to do that,” Gloria said automatically.
“I want to kiss you goodnight.”
That thrill that had been buzzing up and down her spine turned into a full-on electric current.
“I just need to check on a few things first.” Before the kissing.
The way his lips quirked, Gloria thought there was a good possibility he was thinking about that part of the evening, too. “I’ll help you check on a few things.”
Together they tracked down Mack, factory maintenance worker by day and head of the Fourth of July clean-up crew by night. “You sure you don’t need an extra hand?” Gloria asked. He’d told her he was in it for the fleet of golf carts made available to the clean-up crew.
“Tents are already down, food stands are packing it in, and we’re halfway through the garbage pickup. We’ve got it,” he promised.
“You’re a dream, Mack,” Gloria yawned. She hadn’t realized how utterly exhausted she was until this minute.
“You did one helluva job, Gloria.” With a little salute and a peek in Aldo’s direction, he was peeling away in his electric golf cart into the night.
Aldo waited patiently at her side. They were giving Benevolence quite a bit to talk about tonight.
“I guess that’s it,” she said lightly.
He linked his fingers with hers. “I guess so.”
In mere minutes, Aldo was going to kiss her goodnight. The perfect end to the perfect day. A new start.
She turned to lead them in the direction of her apartment and stopped in her tracks. Adrenaline dumped into her system, jacking her senses into DEFCON 1.
Linda Diller, Glenn’s mother, stood in her path. Frail as ever, her shoulders rounded under a dingy white blouse. Her hair, mousy brown streaked with gray, hung limply around her face. She looked older than her fifty-five years. But years of abuse and poverty did that to a woman. Years of the belief that she deserved it.
“You!” She rasped, pointing at Gloria.
Gloria felt the weight of blame cast by that gnarled finger, those narrow, sunken eyes. She was painfully aware that the motion and activity around them stopped as neighbors paused to watch.
Another audience to another humiliation, Gloria thought bitterly. Would she ever escape?
“You’re the reason my son is in jail!” Linda hissed. “The reason the light bill is late and the fridge is empty.”
Glenn had sporadically provided for his mother. Groceries here and there. Sometimes cigarettes. Sometimes cash. And now there was no way for Glenn to provide for her behind bars.
“Please, not here,” Gloria whispered to herself. Not when she’d worked so damn hard. Not when Benevolence had just started talking about her organizational skills instead of her black eyes or her limp.
“Here you are celebrating, cavorting, while my boy rots behind bars because of you,” Linda said, her thin voice shaking with whatever feelings she was still capable of.
The taste of shame was bitter on her tongue.
Aldo stepped up next to her. “Mrs. Diller—” he cut in, his voice cold with warning.
But Gloria stilled him with a hand on his arm. She could feel him vibrating beneath her touch.
Her battle.
“He fed you and clothed you and put a roof over your head for years, and this is the thanks he gets?” She was shouting now, and Gloria absorbed the humiliation as she’d been trained to do. All her work, everything she’d done to give her neighbors something else to see wiped out. Was she always destined to be humiliated?
“Gloria,” Aldo growled at her side. A warning that he was about to step into the fray to take care of things.
She shook her head.
“Mrs. Diller,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I made my choice to leave. We’re all responsible for our own choices.”
“I didn’t choose to have my son sent away! And now who suffers so you can be selfish?” Linda spat. “Me. My son. You ruined my family.”
Gloria felt something else pushing at the edges of humiliation and guilt. Something harder and brighter. And she clung to it.
“I don’t hold you responsible for your son’s actions any more than you can hold me responsible for them. He’s paying the price for his choices.”
“You owe me,” Linda hissed. “You owe him!”
“I owe you nothing. Glenn deserves to pay for his crimes.”
“It’s your word against his,” Linda yowled in despair. “My son was good to you. But that wasn’t good enough for you. No, you had to get rid of him so you could crawl into bed with this cripple!”
“Enough!” Gloria’s voice rang out. “Not everyone has to stay with a man who beats them. Not everyone decides that scraps are good enough for them. I’m not going to let you make me feel guilty for not wanting to be beaten for the rest of my life.”
“You’re a whore! Nothing but a whore,” Linda shouted. “And when my son comes home, he’s going to make sure you pay for what you did.”
Gloria felt her skin crawl. It was nearly word for word from one of Glenn’s letters.
She heard the whispers of the crowd. Benevolence loved to witness a person’s business. Now, they were getting a front row seat to the ugliness that had been her life for ten long years.
“You sound like your son,” Gloria said sadly. “I feel sorry for you.”
A police cruiser pulled up to the curb, and Ty climbed out. “There a problem here?” he asked.
“I think we’re done here,” Gloria told Ty.
She turned her back on Linda and walked away, shoulders hunched.
“I ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” Linda announced to Ty.
“No one’s sayin’ you did, Mrs. Diller,” Ty said, in full-on authority mode.
Gloria slipped through the crowd, avoiding eye contact. One pitying look, and she’d break like fine china on concrete.
“Gloria,” Aldo called after her. But she kept walking.
He caught her on the steps to her apartment. “Say something,” he said, reaching for her hand.
She let him have it because she wanted some sense of kindness to warm the cold within. She knew what she needed., She only had to ask. And trust.
“Do you want to come upstairs and drink tea and watch Pride and Prejudice with me? Because I need a friend.”
He grabbed her hands. “Is it the Colin Firth version or the Keira Knightly one?”
She felt the ghost of a smile play on her lips. “I have both.”
42
A kaleidoscope of color and pattern welcomed Aldo when he crossed the threshold into Gloria’s apartment. As many times as he’d walked by in the late hours of the night, he’d never imagined her home to look like this.
The couch, the color of ripe eggplant, was nearly buried under a mound of throw pillows in every shade of green imaginable. The dining room table, a scarred and rickety find, was accessorized with a tablescape of fat pillar candles. She’d grouped bold art prints and framed family photos on the walls, which were painted a rich gray-blue.
The throw rug was orange and white that picked up the tangerines in the two upholstered chairs pushed under the bow window. They should have been hideous with their floral print and tufted backs, but somehow, as part of the whole, they were charming.
The environment, the sheer, colorful happiness of it took the edge off the anger he was riding from the confrontation in the park.
The door to what Aldo assumed was the bedroom was cracked open, and his curiosity piqued. But she had asked him upstairs for comfort. And not the naked kind.
“You don’t think it’s too much?” She worried her lower lip between her teeth looking at the room as if she’d never seen it before.
He thought of his own beige walls waiting for a paintbrush and personality. “Not at all. You did all this? It looks professional.”
She brightened for him like the sun, and he vowed to do that again and again just to see that pride push out the shame in her eyes.
“You’re forgiven. You don’t have to kiss my ass,” she teased nervously.
“I’m serious. It feels like you in here.”
She studied him curiously for a minute. “So. Um. Ready for that tea?” she asked.
He flashed her a smile. “So ready.”
Gloria took a step back and smacked into the small table inside the door, sending a stack of mail flying to the floor. “Sorry. I’m flustered,” she said, fluttering her hands.
Aldo bent to pick up the envelopes. The one on top caught his eye. Mailed from a state correctional institution. He hadn’t yet calmed down from the confrontation in the park, and the anger sparked back to life. It was Glenn. He knew it viscerally.
She was already heading toward the shoebox kitchen without any clue as to the ticking time bomb she’d left behind.
Shit. He was new to this boyfriend thing. What was more important? Being there for Gloria after what happened in the park? Or getting to the bottom of the letter?
Conflicted, he followed Gloria into the kitchen and watched her fuss over the tea. She poured a small amount of hot water into two mugs. “Preheating the mugs,” she explained at his questioning look. She put the kettle back on the stove and rummaged through the cupboard for her collection of teas.
He said nothing, the letter still clutched in his hand.
She pretended he wasn’t there, walking through the steps of what looked like a soothing ritual, dumping the hot water out of the mugs and replacing it with tea bags.
“How good of a new boyfriend are you prepared to be tonight, Aldo? Because I think I want to talk.”
“I’m prepared to be whatever you need,” he told her.
“Let’s pretend for tonight that you’re my best friend and I need to vent.”
“Vent away. I’m here.”
The kettle whistled, and he watched her pour the water over the tea, steam rising up from the mugs. She was silent for a long minute. “It was like living with a hard-to-please parent. My entire life revolved around not upsetting him. No makeup. No friends. Only the foods he liked. But no matter how good I got at reading him, I still did things he didn’t like. I still got hit.”
Aldo’s fingers fisted, crushing the envelope.
“He controlled the finances, my car, where I could and couldn’t go. I knew that I could go home to my mother, but I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t try to hurt us both if I left. He wasn’t always awful. I think that’s part of the cycle. The short fuse, the explosion, the apology, the sweetness. A week before I left, he brought me a stack of paperbacks by my favorite author from the library book sale. It wasn’t all blood and bruises.”
She looked up at him, gaze earnest, and handed him a mug.
“I had hope for so long that after every apology, this would be the time he changed. He was a victim, too. His father beat him bloody every other week until he got big enough to fight back. He confided in me. He’d seen his father hurt his mother his entire life. It’s what he knew. The physical brutality, that was one thing. I could mostly heal from that. It was the emotional side of things. Whittling away at my self-esteem, one snide comment, one accusation, at a time. He hated you for some reason,” she confessed.
Aldo absorbed the statement, knowing the exact reason why Glenn Diller hated him.
“He accused me of having a crush on you, and I denied it. Even though it was true.” She shot him a sidelong look.
“You did?” he asked.
Gloria nodded, remembering. “Who wouldn’t have a crush on football star Aldo Moretta?”
Aldo needed desperately to move his body. To pace before the rage inside him erupted. Gloria stepped around him and led the way into the living room. She sat on the couch, gestured for him to do the same. He tucked the letter beside him on the cushion, still not sure how to approach it.
“I was shocked. Sure, looking back there’d been warning signs. Times when he was rougher than the situation called for or making controlling demands that felt like love at the time. When he hit me, I pushed him. Called him a ‘loser asshole,’” she recalled. “And he fell to his knees in front of me and cried. He begged me not to leave him. Apologized for hitting me. Said it was an accident that he’d never do it again. He told me his story. That all he knew was violence. But he’d change for me. I felt…powerful. I had the choice to stay or go, and he was putting it in my hands.”
“But he never changed,” Aldo said quietly.
She took a sip of tea, and Aldo did the same. It was soft and floral. A gentleness removed from the ugliness of their conversation. “No. But he did give me hope. Weeks would go by, and things would be fine. He’d be working. We’d have a little money. He’d laugh at my jokes. Then I’d ask him to pick up onions on the way home from work, or I wouldn’t wash his work shirt fast enough. Or he wouldn’t even pretend to come up with an excuse that involved me.”
Aldo suddenly got what true friendship was. As a man who was half in love with the woman bravely telling her story, hearing the details of her abuse was a kind of torture. But for Gloria, it was a cleansing. A healing. And that was more important than his own temper, his own discomfort. “Did he ever hurt you in other ways?”
“You mean rape,” she said flatly.
He nodded.
“Once,” she said quietly. “Though at the time I didn’t recognize it as rape. In recent years, I was more of a live-in housekeeper and cook.”
Aldo forced himself to take another drink to soothe the ache in his throat. He put the tea down and took Gloria’s hand. Squeezed.
“I stayed in hope and fear, in repeating cycles of both. I stayed because it was easier sometimes. Other times because I physically couldn’t leave. And I have to live with that. I have to live with the fact that I wasn’t strong enough to leave him the first time. I’m responsible for my choice to stay.”
“It’s not cut and dried like that, Gloria,” he reminded her. “Brain scans show similarities between victims of abuse and soldiers on the battlefield.”
She shifted to face him on the couch. “
Do you wonder if that’s part of our attraction? That we’re both survivors?”
Aldo let go of her hand and squeezed her knee.
“I think our attraction is…complex,” he ventured.
She looked at him, held his gaze. “So, then maybe you get why Mrs. Diller coming at me tonight, airing all of that ugliness, all of my weaknesses in front of everyone I was trying so hard to impress, rocked me.”
He stroked her knee. “You don’t seem rocked.”
“There’s a lot going on beneath the surface,” she admitted.
Aldo shifted and pulled her feet into his lap. He unlaced her shoes, tugged them off. When his thumb pressed into her arch, she let out a long sigh.
“I do get it. I was out there today doing my best to prove that I’m not a victim, to cover up my weaknesses.”
Her fingers touched his shoulder, traced a pattern there as if branding him. “I’m tired of being a victim. That can’t be all anyone sees when they look at me.” Exhaustion colored her words.
Her words resonated so deep inside him Aldo thought he might split apart like an atom.
“It’s not all they see. Yes,” he began before she could cut him off, “your relationship history is something that they won’t forget quickly. But there’s so much more to you than that, Glo. So much more. And if you keep giving them glimpses of who you really are, eventually no one will remember that Gloria.”
“Mrs. Diller will. Glenn will.” Her gaze slid to the table inside the door.
He pulled the letter out, set it on the coffee table. “I saw this on the floor,” he said.
She looked resigned, tired. “He’s been writing from prison. Vague threats. Ty’s pushing for a restraining order, but there isn’t much to go on. He’s behind bars, and he hasn’t come out and said ‘I’ll beat you to within an inch of your life when I get out.’”
Aldo swore. Thanks to him and his fucking snit fit, he hadn’t been there for her. He couldn’t imagine how she felt with Glenn reaching out behind bars to still terrify and hurt her.
