Deadlier than the Male

by Sharon Sala

  “I’m of age, Mother, and that’s the last time you’ll ever lay a hand on me, so back off.”

  Lena reeled as if Haley had just slapped her back. The fury in her daughter’s face was so virulent, she didn’t know how to react.

  Bullard decided to let the issue go. “Then what happened?” he prompted.

  Haley turned her back on her mother as if she no longer existed.

  “Instead of going home, Stewart accelerated even more and rammed Mack’s bumper.”

  At that point the Brolins gasped and started shouting at Judd and Lena, blaming them for Stewart’s actions.

  Once again Chief Bullard was forced to intervene. Within seconds, he put out a call for two deputies. They quickly arrived, and with orders from Bullard were told to keep the families apart.

  “Now. If I have to calm you people down one more time, I’ll arrest the whole damn lot of you. Are we clear?”

  They didn’t answer and wouldn’t look at him. Once again, he chose to ignore them.

  “What did Mack do when his car was struck?” he asked Haley.

  She shuddered, remembering their panic. “Mack managed to keep the car on the road. The trouble came when Stewart rammed us the second time, even harder. Mack’s car started to skid sideways, and before he could straighten it out, Stewart hit our car on the driver’s side. I don’t think he meant to, but he was going too fast to stop. After that…we started rolling. I don’t know how many times, because I blacked out. When I came to, we were upside-down and off the road, and Mack was unconscious and bleeding badly. I saw his leg was trapped and tried to get him out, but I couldn’t. Then I couldn’t find my phone to call for help. I managed to unbuckle my seat belt and get out. Then I saw Stewart’s car. He’d hit a tree head-on. When I went to check on him, he was unconscious, too. I found his cell phone, and that’s when I called for help.”

  Lena was sobbing loudly. Chloe was weeping without making a sound. Both men were glaring at Haley as if she’d grown horns.

  “It’s ironic. The bitch causing all the trouble is the only one not to get injured,” Tom snapped.

  Haley flinched but didn’t acknowledge the insult, and then, before any more slurs could be cast, a surgeon suddenly came out of a doorway at the end of the hall and started toward them.

  “Is the Brolin family here?” he asked.

  Haley held her breath as Tom and Chloe and Mack’s sisters crowded forward, all talking at once.

  “Is he alive? How bad was it? Will he be able to walk?”

  “Wait…wait…let me explain what we did,” the doctor said. “First of all, he came through the surgery fine. We were able to stop the bleeding and save his leg. He’ll walk just fine.”

  “Thank the Lord,” Tom muttered.

  “But his athletic career is over,” the doctor added.

  “No…no!” his mother screamed, and leaned against her husband. Tom Brolin glared at Haley, then reached for his wife.

  The doctor began explaining the intricacies of the surgery, how many pins he’d had to put in the leg and the muscle damage, but Haley had phased out. All she could think was that Mack was going to hate her. UCLA wasn’t going to happen. His plans for a career in the NFL had ended before they began.

  She dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. She heard Retta’s voice, but not what she was saying. All she could think was, Why, God, why?

  Then she heard her mother cry out. When she looked up, another doctor had appeared in the crowd—the one who had operated on Stewart—and he was saying something to her parents.

  “No!” Lena screamed, and dropped to her knees. “No, no! Not my beautiful boy! If someone had to die, why wasn’t it Haley? I never wanted her. Why couldn’t she have been the one to die?”

  Everyone in the room gasped, then turned to stare at Haley. Even her classmates were stunned by Lena Shore’s words.

  Haley froze. God…oh, God, oh, God. Stewart? Dead?

  Judd spun, and before anyone could stop him, he yanked Haley up by the arm and began beating her with his fists.

  “Daddy! No, Daddy, no!” she screamed, then doubled over, trying to block his blows by covering her face with her arms.

  When she dropped to the floor, he fell on top of her and began pummeling her with every ounce of strength he had in him.

  It took both deputies to pull him off.

  “Lena is right! If someone had to die, why wasn’t it you?” he roared.

  Haley crawled to her knees, then pulled herself up. Blood was pouring from her nose and mouth. She was too dazed by the assault to even answer.

  Judd Shore was still cursing and crying as the deputies dragged him out of the hospital.

  A nurse came to Haley’s aid and led her away, leaving Chief Bullard to see that Lena Shore was taken home. All the way out the door she kept screaming at God, angry that he’d let Haley live and taken her boy instead.

  Haley found herself back on a gurney. Her stitches had to be replaced, and another three added. By the time they took her to X-ray, one eye was nearly swollen shut, and it hurt to open her mouth. When they finally finished working on her, it was after midnight.

  The doctor who had been stitching her up stepped back to eye his work.

  “I think that takes care of it,” he said. “Where’s your family? I’ll have the nurse tell them you’re ready to go home.”

  Haley shook her head, slid off the gurney, paused a moment to steady herself, then headed toward the door.

  “No, Miss Shore. You need to wait for your family,” the doctor said.

  “I don’t have any,” she muttered, putting a hand to her rib cage as if to hold back the pain, and walked away. But she wasn’t leaving the hospital. Not until she’d seen Mack.

  There was no one in the intensive care waiting room except the Brolins, who were taking turns going in to see their son.

  When they looked up and saw Haley standing in the doorway, whatever anger they had left turned swiftly to shock. Her face was so swollen that, had she not still been wearing her graduation dress, they wouldn’t have recognized her.

  Still, she was the last person they wanted to talk to.

  “You have no business here,” Chloe Brolin said. “Go home, girl. Go home.”

  Even though it hurt to breathe, Haley wouldn’t let them know how deeply she’d been wounded. She lifted her chin, defying them to deny her when she said, “I want to see Mack. I have to see him.”

  “Well, you’re not going to, because he doesn’t want to see you. Ever,” Chloe snapped.

  Haley reeled, the words shredding her soul.

  “You’re lying,” she whispered.

  “No. I’m not,” Chloe said. “You need to go home where you belong.”

  Before Haley could stop them, tears suddenly welled and spilled down her cheeks.

  “I don’t have a home,” she said. “The only place I ever belonged was with Mack.”

  Haley stared at the Brolins, eyeing Tom and Chloe until, ashamed, they looked away, then her gaze slid to Mack’s sisters, Jenna and Carla.

  “You people…what’s wrong with you people?” Haley whispered, then she turned around and walked away.

  It took her an hour to walk home. By the time she got there, it was almost 2:00 a.m. She got the spare key from the birdhouse and let herself in the back door.

  She couldn’t believe how this night had ended. This morning she’d been on top of the world, and less than twelve hours later, that world had been permanently shattered.

  She paused in the kitchen, listening to the house. As she stood, she heard a slight pop as the water heater came on, followed by the hum of the refrigerator. There was a drip at the sink.

  She shuddered and sighed.

  Daddy never did turn the faucets far enough off.

  The ache in her belly deepened. Daddy. He’d tried to kill her tonight. If it hadn’t been for the police, he might never have stopped beating her.

  She took off her shoes and started t
hrough the house. There was a light on beneath her parents’ door as she passed it on her way down the hall. She didn’t bother to stop. There was nothing left to say to either of them. The fact that her brother was dead didn’t seem real, but she took no blame for it happening. He’d done it to himself, even after she’d begged him to stop.

  When she got to her room, she stripped out of her dress and underwear, leaving everything in a pile in the floor as she went into the bathroom. A short while later, after having showered and washed the blood and glass from her hair, she dressed in an old pair of jeans and her softest T-shirt, then pulled a suitcase from the back of her closet.

  Her face was expressionless as she began packing it with only the necessities, trying not to think of the things she was leaving behind: toys she’d saved from her childhood; her grandmother’s wedding dress, which had been bequeathed to her; all the things she’d been saving for her own home that were stored in her hope chest.

  She didn’t remember, until she was looking for ID, that her diploma was most likely lying somewhere along the highway, with her purse. She would stop by Chief Bullard’s office in the morning to see if anyone had found it when they’d towed in the cars.

  Finally there was no more room left in the bag or her small backpack. She sat down on the side of the bed, then stood again. She was in so much pain she knew she couldn’t sleep. She downed a couple of painkillers, got her checkbook and the passbook to her savings account and added them to the rest of the stuff in the backpack.

  Just before she started to close the bag, she remembered Mack’s photo. She kept it taped to the back of her dresser mirror. She took it down, then removed a family photo from a frame on the wall and put Mack’s photo in it instead.

  Her heart was broken. Mack might not want anything to do with her anymore, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love him. She put the newly framed photo inside her backpack and slung it over her shoulders, then wheeled the suitcase out of her room.

  It made no sound on the carpeted hallway floor, and once she got to the kitchen, she picked it up and carried it the rest of the way out of the house. The last thing she wanted was to look at her parents again. As far as she was concerned, her entire family—not just Stewart—had died tonight.

  Her car was still in the garage. It had been a present from her grandmother on her sixteenth birthday. The title was in her name, which was good, because she was taking it with her.

  She tossed her things into the trunk, then backed out of the garage and drove away without once looking back.

  When the bank opened at 9:00 a.m. the next morning, Haley was waiting at the door. She’d already been to the police department, and recovered her purse and diploma. Chief Bullard had been kind and gentle, asking if she wanted to press charges against her father, which she promptly refused.

  She’d walked out of the department with a hand to her midsection. The more time passed, the stiffer and sorer she became. She knew what she looked like: as if she’d been through a wreck, which she had, and beaten to a pulp, which she also had. She felt shattered in every way that mattered, but she still had her pride.

  She passed through the bank lobby without looking to her right or her left, and walked straight up to the first teller she saw.

  “I want to withdraw my savings,” she said, and put her passbook on the counter. “I’ll take fifteen hundred dollars in cash, and the rest in traveler’s checks.”

  Stars Crossing was a small town. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. They knew her brother had died in a wreck last night, and that Mack Brolin’s athletic career had come to an end in the same wreck. And they also knew the only common denominator between them was the girl at the window.

  They also knew that her father had been arrested for assaulting her, and that her mother wished her dead.

  The teller’s heart ached for Haley, but there was nothing to be said.

  “Do you want that fifteen hundred dollars in big bills?” she asked.

  Haley thought about it for a moment, then said, “All of it in hundreds except for four hundred dollars. I’ll take that in twenties.”

  “I’ll have to get an okay to—”

  Haley stiffened, and then her voice rose. “An okay for what? It’s my money! I’ve spent the past seven summers of my life working for it. It’s in my name, and my name only, and I’m of age. You don’t need anyone’s permission except mine to hand it over.”

  The bank president heard the commotion and hurried to the window to put out the fire.

  “Do as she asks,” he told the teller, and then gently laid a hand on Haley’s shoulder. “We’re so sorry for your loss,” he said softly. Haley nodded.

  Twenty minutes later, she was in her car and heading out of Stars Crossing.

  She never looked back.

  Chapter 3

  Dallas, Texas

  Ten years later: November

  “E asy now, Mr. Wyatt… Let me move your leg for you, okay?”

  “’Kay, Ha-ley. I kee for-geh you in sharge.”

  Haley grinned at the elderly gentleman on her exercise table, proud of how far he’d come since the stroke he’d suffered six months earlier. His first trip to therapy he’d been unable to speak, and the entire right side of his body had been paralyzed. Now he smiled and spoke, albeit a little slowly and not always with perfect clarity, and he was making good progress on regaining mobility, however limited.

  Her entire life revolved around her patients, and when she wasn’t at the physical therapy facility where she was employed, she was usually making house calls.

  She rarely thought about her life before Dallas, and when she did, it was only briefly. Even now, after ten long years, the pain of what she’d lost was brutally real.

  A short while later, a timer went off and Haley eased Mr. Wyatt’s withered leg down slowly, then helped him sit up.

  “That’s it for today. How do you feel?”

  “Re-dy ta dans.”

  “Dance? Wow! Then I’d better warn Millie to shine up her dancing shoes.”

  The old man laughed. Millie lived at the same nursing home as he did, and he’d informed Haley months ago that Millie was his girl.

  Haley marveled that at their age they were still optimistic enough to want a romance. She’d decided long ago that relationships weren’t worth the effort it took to keep them alive and thrown herself into her job instead.

  She helped Mr. Wyatt into his wheelchair, then pushed him back to the lobby, where a driver was waiting to take him back to the nursing home.

  “Here you go,” she said. “Do your exercises like I showed you. Stay out of trouble, and I’ll see you again in about a week, okay?”

  The old man grinned and winked, and then he was gone.

  Haley glanced at the clock as she turned back around, and then frowned. Where had the afternoon gone? It was already quitting time.

  She moved to the employee lounge, clocked out, gathered up her things and then, with a casual wave to another employee on her way out, she was gone.

  Haley had decided years ago that Dallas traffic at five o’clock in the afternoon was, most surely, the road to the ninth gate of hell.

  By the time she pulled up to her apartment building and parked, it was dark. She paused inside the car long enough to ensure that the path to the apartment building appeared safe, and then she got out.

  The air was cold and felt damp, like it might snow. She pulled her coat collar up around her neck as she started toward the front door—her long legs making short work of the distance.

  Once inside, she nodded to the security guard.

  “Hi, Marsh…how’s it going?”

  Marshall French, a widower from Austin, had retired twice, but at sixty-seven, had been bored staying at home and had taken this job for something to do. He admired this tall, elegant woman with green eyes and thick, dark hair, but he didn’t know anything more about her now than he had the day he’d taken this job two years earlier.

  “Fine,
just fine,” he said, then handed her her mail. “Have a nice evening.”

  “You too,” Haley said, then put the mail under her arm and walked into the elevator without looking back.

  She chose the seventh floor, then leaned against the elevator wall as the car began to move silently upward. Once the door opened, she took a right and within ten steps was at her door. She thrust her key in the lock almost without looking and, once inside, turned and locked the door behind her—turning all three locks before she even took off her coat.

  She never felt safe. Not since the night when the world had abandoned her. Even though she had no reason to fear living alone, she did. The three locks were her security blanket, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

  It was the sound of those three metallic clicks that signaled safe haven for Haley. She hung her coat in the hall closet, dumped her bag and keys on the table, then scanned her assortment of mail.

  There were a half dozen envelopes and a couple of magazines—Taste of Home and her favorite, Southern Living. She tossed everything on the kitchen counter as she passed through on her way to her room. She did nothing at home until she’d shed her scrubs and showered. It was a mental “putting aside” of her professional self so she could relax.

  Afterward, dressed in old sweats and a long-sleeved tee, Haley was leafing through the rest of the mail as she poured Coke into a glass full of ice when she noticed the postmark on a legal-size envelope.

  Stars Crossing, Kentucky.

  At that point, she froze. Coke slopped over the top of the glass and onto the counter, bringing her back to reality. By the time she’d cleaned up the mess, she had braced herself to open the envelope.

  All she knew was, whatever it said—whoever it was from—it couldn’t be good.

  Your father is dead.

  Haley staggered, then braced herself against the cabinets, shocked that she felt any kind of emotion at the news. What was left of her family had been dead to her for so long that she hardly ever thought about what had come before Dallas—except for Mack. No matter how hard she’d tried, he still haunted her dreams. Her response to this news had taken her completely by surprise. She pulled herself together and looked back at the letter.