by Liliana Hart
Possessiveness clawed inside him and it was everything he could do to not go to her and hold her. To tell her that she didn’t need to say anything more.
“The first three months of our marriage were amazing. We traveled all over the world. I put my dissertation on hold because I was so caught up in being married. Then the season started. I wasn’t prepared for the grueling schedule.”
“Steve was focused on the race, every race, and that’s what he should have been focused on, but I felt like my world had just been yanked out from under me. We fought horribly, and he told me that I was just a naïve daddy’s girl that didn’t realize the world didn’t revolve around me. I apologized to him and gave him the space he needed to win. Because winning was what was important. I came back home with the excuse of my schoolwork and being tired of the travel for anyone who asked.”
Jake’s eyes were dark and patient. She wanted to get up, move away, so she wouldn’t feel like she should rely on the easy acceptance and support he offered unselfishly. But she stayed seated because it was important to finish it all and look him in the eye at the same time.
“He came home almost a month later as if nothing had ever happened. He was only going to be in town three days so we should make the most of it, he said. I’d missed him and I felt guilty for putting pressure on him when he should be thinking about the race, so I didn’t say anything. I welcomed him home. We didn’t leave the apartment for the entire three days, and then one morning he was gone. He’d packed his things and cleared out without saying goodbye. I saw him a week later on the news after he’d won the Daytona.
“That was a pattern we developed, and I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I didn’t want to see anything wrong with it,” she clarified. “Then I saw the first tabloid. The woman was from old English aristocracy and the pictures of them kissing and coming out of their hotel arm in arm made sure the world knew they were involved romantically. I was horribly embarrassed. Mostly because I didn’t want my family to know. My mother called and told me what she wanted to do to him and I just started to cry. When had I become such a wimp? I look back and realize I’d just never grown up. I was still a child in so many ways.”
“It was nothing you did wrong, Eve. It was his mistake.”
“A little bit of free therapy,” she asked, not unkindly, mimicking his words from a night not so long ago. She pushed little bits of food around on her plate to keep her hands busy.
“It was his fault,” she said. “But we’d developed a pattern. It’s one of the first things you learn in psychology, behavioral patterns and human nature. I should have recognized the signs. When he came home the next time I asked him about the pictures. He gave me some song and dance about the media always making more out of things than there really was, denying the whole business. We were yelling, and the next thing I know I just pounced. I knew he was lying to me. I wanted him to realize that I could satisfy him as well as any woman. Better. I wanted proof that he still desired me, even though I knew he was lying. He never complained or fought me off during the act. God, I was almost violent. In fact, he was different than I’d ever seen him. He wasn’t the gentle lover that I was used to, but he treated me like a woman. He took me with a ferocity that frightened me and excited me. When we were through he told me that men didn’t like for their wives to act like common whores. He left me half dressed on the floor, grabbed his clothes and left.”
The only reaction Jake showed was a tightening at the corners of his mouth. He’d loved her since the beginning, burned with passion for her through the night and still wanted her with an intensity that frightened him. Steve Slater be damned. If the man had still been alive he would have taken care of him himself.
“He changed you,” Jake said.
“Yes, to a point. I was no longer a girl. I’d been introduced to adulthood the hard way. With one sentence he made me self conscious and cautious. I never trusted him again from that point. I just accepted. I raced through my dissertation with amazing speed and a focus that couldn’t be interrupted by anything. I fed my sorrows with bean burritos and Hostess cupcakes and gained twenty pounds with equal determination. There were other tabloid pictures and news stories. I didn’t care. At that point we’d spent more time apart than we had together. I saw him occasionally. He’d come in and take me wherever I stood, not even bothering to undress all the way, and then be off again. He was angry. At me. At himself. He wanted a reaction, and I never gave him one.”
Eve took a deep breath. She had to get it all out at once before she crumbled. Things were only going to get harder, the shame and embarrassment she felt at having to bare this part of herself to Jake would make sure of it.
“There was a part of me that just withered and died. This wasn’t the man that I remembered from early in our marriage. He’d accused me of being a whore, so I decided that no involvement was better than that accusation. I’d just lay there. That infuriated him, so he’d add a slap across the face or an elbow in the ribs to see if he could get me to cry out.”
Jake felt helpless, cursing himself for demanding the answers she was giving him. He didn’t know how to help, how to soothe such a vicious caricature of what had been beautiful between them the night before.
She didn’t even notice the tears that streamed silently down her cheeks. She was reliving her own private hell. She took another deep breath and continued, her voice empty of emotion.
“A month before he died, I was standing in the bathroom about to get in the shower. He’d left the day before and bruises were already forming on my ribs and arms. There were raised welts on my thighs where I’d been pinched. I saw myself in the mirror and didn’t recognize the woman there anymore. I was a stranger, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own.”
“That’s not true,” Jake demanded harshly. “It wasn’t your fault. It was a man’s fault. A man who was old enough to know how he should treasure the precious gift that you are. It was his shortcoming and his sickness that made you a different person.”
“I know that, now,” she said softly. “I was ashamed. My family didn’t know what to do for me. I’d put on such a convincing act, you see. I called my mother and she came over and gave it to me,” Eve said smiling for the first time since she’d started. “She told me she didn’t raise her daughter to be any man’s punching bag and scandal be damned. How much good was I going to do people with my fancy degree if I was as sick inside as they were?”
“I think I like your mother,” Jake said, rubbing his lips over the top of her hand in a gentle gesture, needing to soothe them both.
“She’d like you, too. She went with me to the attorney’s office and I filed for divorce that day. I felt as if a load had been lifted. His family was scandalized, of course. They’re very old money. I believe your family is connected with them.”
“Yes. They probably suit each other very well. Old money, snobbish tendencies and a disdain for controversy.”
“Yes, well I received an enlightening phone call from Steve’s mother, demanding that I reconsider. Everyone has to deal with infidelity, she told me. It’s not grounds for divorce. It was my duty to produce Steven Bixby Slater III and let Steve live his own life. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the other things. It was humiliating enough for my own family to know. I told her I wouldn’t change my mind and hung up the phone.”
“Good for you.”
“Yeah, that was a piece of cake compared to what I’d been through already. A month later I received a phone call from the emissaries in Monte Carlo telling me that Steve was dead. I heard that he’d also killed his mistress on the news that night. The news came as a surprise to me, the same as it did with everyone else in the world. I was numb. I felt like a bystander on the outside of a glass wall looking in. We were still legally married, but he’d stopped being my husband long before. It was a hell of a Christmas. It’s the reason I started doing my Christmas Eve show, so I wouldn’t have to think about how empty the holiday can be. Anyway, I wen
t to his funeral and the media decided I was a heartless gold digger because I didn’t break down into hysterics like his groupies. He’d already killed everything inside of me. I had nothing left to give him.”
Jake pulled on her arm until she’d moved around the table and he could shift her into his lap. He felt her pain and confusion of wondering why she’d been deemed the guilty party when she’d been the victim. An innocent bystander. A matter of circumstance. She’d built her life carefully, brick by brick, after Steve Slater’s death. She was an admirable and courageous woman with a great capacity for love. He had no idea what to do.
“It’s all right, Eve. Let it go,” Jake said, softly. “I’ll carry the burden for you.”
She broke. Great gasping sobs that were wrenched from the very core of her. He offered no words of comfort, but gathered her closer and let her ride out the storm of tears. How could one person hold so much anguish inside for so long? All he could do was hold her and hope that in the end there would be peace and healing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The autumn air turned to an unexpected winter freeze the second week of December. The scent of snow was thick in the air, but the ground was still too warm for any flurries to stick.
The house, Eve was told, would be finished by the first of the year. Even now, they were working on purely aesthetic aspects and not structural changes. It was everything she’d ever wanted…and more than she could live with.
It hurt to realize she was going to have to sell it. Living in a house that carried so many memories of Jake would only be a punishment for her cowardice. He was already starting to pull away.
Life had gone on, much to Eve’s complete mortification, after she’d fallen apart in his lap. For a week she’d been wined and dined, taken on romantic walks and loved tenderly in the evenings when the night could cloud the memories of her stupidity. But he watched her with a look in his eye that she could never pin down. There was a distance between them now that had never been, even when she hadn’t wanted anything to do with him.
Her parents had been out of town for Thanksgiving, so they’d spent the day together, gorging themselves on the feast that Gretchen had provided, drinking champagne and falling into bed delirious with love. They’d gone shopping for antiques and seen movies and fallen into bed again. The passion between them only grew stronger as time went on, and she knew it would make life that much harder when it was time for the inevitable separation. The awkwardness from that day in the kitchen was still thick between them.
She knew life was full of changes. Expected it even. She’d resigned her position with the paper and started work full time on her book. The radio show was more popular than ever, and the week before Christmas they would begin reruns of previous broadcasts until she gave her annual four hour special on Christmas Eve from eight to midnight. But it was hard to accept the changes between them because she knew, without a doubt, that she was in love with Jake Murphy.
There had been no more letters or attention getting gestures from her admirer, or she guessed since he’d blown up some of her property that maybe he didn’t admire her as much as she’d first thought. She’d almost gotten to the point where she didn’t check over her shoulder every few minutes. She thought the anticipation of something bad happening was much worse than the actual letters had been.
Her picture was constantly dredged up in the newspaper, rehashing her life with the charming and talented Steve Slater. There was a new story on her every day, from her personal life married to a celebrity, the fact that she was being stalked and speculation on her new relationship with Jake Murphy, son of the Pennsylvania millionaire John Murphy. Even some of her callers had started asking personal questions about her life. In other words, it was hard to put her life with Steve Slater in the past where it belonged and focus on any chance of a future with Jake.
Jake had gotten into the habit of following her to the station, and he had talked to the security guard personally to make sure she made it to her car safely every night. Everything was so polite between the two of them. Almost too polite. She knew he was trying to protect her, to keep her from any future pain, but they weren’t being themselves, and she missed their arguments. They had things they needed to talk about. An understanding they had to come to. She had to be an adult about this. She was willing to give him her love for as long as he wanted it. And she’d be content with that much. Or she’d damn well give the illusion.
Her love for Jake wasn’t a girl’s love as it had been when she’d married Steve. It was a woman’s love. Filled with bouts of joy so full she felt she’d overflow with them, followed by pockets of heartache so intense she couldn’t understand how true love could be healthy for anyone.
Eve threw the letters she’d been trying to read all morning on the desk and stood up to pace.
She’d chosen the west wing tower for her office. The octagonal room was complete, soft blues and creams contrasted with dark cherry wood furniture and scattered rugs on the newly refinished hardwood floor. Paintings that she and Jake had found at a gallery on one of their forages into the city were splashes of color on the pale walls.
It was elegant and beautiful, she thought, as she looked around in pride and frustration. She hadn’t gotten one bit of work done since she’d come up earlier that morning after Jake had left the house to check on a few other jobs. Her mind had been focused on him. They were practically living together.
“Men,” she huffed out, irritated at the constant distraction. “Nothing but trouble.”
She gave up on doing anything productive and went downstairs to see what Gretchen had stocked in the refrigerator. She should have known that Jake would charm the woman into always having a meal ready for him. His appeal was hard to resist by any woman, young or old.
She’d barely gotten started when the back door slammed open, startling a scream out of her and wondering if she should grab a knife from the butcher block or take cover under the table.
“Whew, it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey out there,” Ruth declared through several layers of red scarf that wrapped around her entire head.
“Can you believe this weather? Last year I had the air conditioning on at Christmas. I’m surprised the earth doesn’t explode into little bits of matter with all this hot, cold, hot, cold. I think I’ll have my ashes shot into space. What do you think about that dear?”
“Umm…Ruth?” Eve asked, not sure that the whirling dervish under several layers of wool was really Ruth Murphy.
“Of course it’s me, girl,” she said unwrapping herself. “Jake, get those things in here so I can show Eve her present,” she said, yelling out the door.
“You got me a present?” Eve asked, touched at her thoughtfulness.
“What have you got in these bags, Gran? You weren’t gone long enough to shop this much,” Jake asked, struggling to get the bags to the kitchen table.
“It’s payback for shipping me off when all the action was here. Don’t think I didn’t realize what you were doing. I didn’t even get to see the wreckage up close before you had me carted away.”
Jake looked up at Eve and rolled his eyes. It always took a few minutes to adjust to the fast paced way of life that Ruth seemed to do everything in, so Eve didn’t notice the woman’s shrewd stare when Jake came over and kissed her gently on the forehead.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing I caught the Greyhound back here.”
“You rode a bus on the way here?” Eve asked, eyes wide in surprise, imagining any number of things that could happen to a ninety year old woman who wore a three thousand dollar watch on her wrist.
“Oh, yes,” Jake said, giving his grandmother a dirty look. “I got a call from Edward, who was on his way back after he arrived at her friend’s house, and discovered she’d already left. I found her standing on the corner at the bus station giving tips on sexual techniques to a couple of prostitutes.”
“I think those girls were new. They didn’t seem to know
very much.” Ruth threw her coat on the counter and collapsed in a chair. “My feet hurt like the dickens.”
“Did you have a nice visit with your friend?” Eve asked, putting coffee on. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Ruth was as old as she was.
“It was all right, I guess. I stayed at my friend Lorena Watkins house. She’s the only one still alive that remembers me when I was beautiful, so I like to stay in touch. But I don’t think I’ll be visiting her for long periods of time anymore. All she could talk about was burial plots and how it was thievery to take dead people’s money that way. Depressing as hell. Anyway, I had a dream last night that I was needed here,” Ruth said like it was a totally reasonable explanation to do what her dreams told her to. “And I can see I’m not a moment too late. Young people have a way of messing up things that should be so simple.”
“Gran,” Jake said in warning.
“Well, it’s obvious the two of you finally did the deed. And you must be doing it right, and I assume you are since you’re a Murphy,” Ruth said with a critical look. “She’s got roses in her cheeks and love in her eyes. I haven’t felt this much sexual tension in a room since I had that affair with that Spanish Count in 1950. He was so romantic. I’ve always had a soft spot for foreign royalty.”
“Hmmm,” Eve said, unsure what Emily Post’s protocol was in situations like this one.
“But like I said, I can tell y’all are screwing this up. I’d like a great-grandchild to bounce on my knee next Christmas. You wouldn’t want to deny an old woman’s dying wish, would you?”
