The gifts I made them weren’t expensive or exotic, but they were one-of-a-kind and from my heart.
When she read the note, Abigail lifted her hand, rested it lightly on her chest, and actually got a little teary-eyed. “Thank you, Ivy. This is just about the nicest gift I’ve ever received.”
Liza loved the jelly bean theme. “These are so cute! They actually make me want to cook something just so I can use them.”
“Pink and green are my favorite colors. How did you know?” Margot asked, adjusting the new pink and green knitted scarf she wore around her throat. I just laughed.
Ever the quilting teacher, Evelyn lifted her placemats close and studied the stitching. “Just look at the points on those stars. They meet perfectly!”
Like I said, they weren’t fancy gifts, but everyone seemed to like them and I was glad. After all they’d done for me, it was nice to be able to return the favor, if only in a small way.
When everybody was done opening the gifts, I looked at my watch. “Yikes! It’s almost nine. I’ve got to scoot. I told Karen I’d be home by ten after. I’ll take the dishes downstairs and wash them.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Evelyn said. “You go pick up the kids. We can take care of this.”
I hated leaving the mess for everyone else to clean up, but I really did have to go. “Are you sure?”
Margot started collecting the empty wineglasses and plates. “It’s fine. Go on. We’ll be right behind you.”
I gave everyone a hurried hug and headed for the stairs. “Wait!” Abigail called. “You almost forgot something.” She folded up the quilt and handed it to me.
“Thanks. I can’t wait to get home and hang it up. Thank you all so much. Really. I wish there was some way I could…” My voice caught in my throat.
Abigail fluttered her hands like she was trying to shoo away a pesky fly. “Enough of that now. Go on! Go pick up your children.”
“Okay.” I smiled as I ran down the stairs and out the rear door into the back alley where I’d parked. I locked the door, double-checking to make sure it was secure. The others all lived close enough to walk home, and on such a pleasant evening they would, going out the front door of the shop and locking it behind them.
It was a lovely night, warm for September. The moon was full and bright, streaming a beam of bluish light into the alley.
That’s why I was able to see the man. His back was toward me and he was hunched over the side of my car. The strained play of muscles under his shirt told me he was trying mightily to jimmy open the car door.
For a split second my mind raced back to that night so long ago when I had been startled awake by the sound of a stranger trying to break into the backseat of the car where Bethany and Bobby were sleeping. Then, my heart had pounded in terror. Now, it pounded again, in anger. I recognized that head of hair, the set of those shoulders. This was no stranger.
“Hodge! Get away from my car!”
He flinched ever so slightly, startled by the sound of my voice, but then his shoulders dropped and he turned, smooth and slow, to face me. “Ivy. I’ve been waiting for you. Did you have to work late?” He smiled.
“What are you doing?” I asked and then answered my own question. “You were trying to break into my car.”
His head hinged back on his neck and his brows drew together to signal his surprise at my accusation, but I knew what I’d seen. “No, I wasn’t. I was just trying the door to see if you’d left it open. I’ve been waiting out here for a while and it’s cold. I just thought I’d be warmer waiting in the car.”
It was close to seventy-five degrees outside, but I didn’t bother pointing that out. Something I’d learned about Hodge years ago was, the less I let him talk, the better. If you let him talk long enough, he could convince you that water ran uphill.
I pulled my car keys out of my pocket and readied them in my hand. “Get away from my car. I have to go home.”
He grinned. “Well, actually, it’s my car. I paid for it. Remember?”
I didn’t say anything.
Hodge leaned back against the driver’s side door, casually crossed his right foot in front of his left and his arms across his chest, like a teenager hanging out on a street corner, and smiled broadly. “Ivy,” he said, drawing out my name and then laughing. “Come on. Don’t look at me like that. I was just kidding. Though, it actually is my car, but big deal. I don’t care about the car.”
He paused for a moment, gauging his timing, and let the smile fade slowly from his face and melt into a mask of concern tinged with regret. He was very, very good. Utterly convincing. Or would have been if I didn’t know him so well. He sighed heavily, a sound that even a year ago would have made me sorry I’d doubted him.
A year is a long time.
He shifted his weight from the car door to his feet, stood again, uncrossed his arms and opened his hands expansively. “Listen, I know you’re upset at finding me out here, but I’m not trying to scare you and I wasn’t trying to break into your car. Honestly. We need to talk, don’t you think? I tried to call you but couldn’t find your number.”
“It’s unlisted. I don’t want to talk to you. If you have something to say, you can call my lawyer. He’s in the book.”
“Yeah, I know. I know all about your lawyer. And mine. That’s why I want to talk to you. Ivy…baby, we need to talk. This whole thing has gotten out of hand, you know? Lawyers. Social workers. I just…” He swallowed hard, as if trying to keep his emotions in check. “I just want you to come home. You and me and the kids—we’re a family. We’re not exactly Ozzie and Harriet, but we belong together. I don’t want a divorce. And if you think about it, you don’t really want one either, do you?”
“Yes, I do, Hodge. I want a divorce. Now get away from my car.”
“You’re mad at me.” He lifted up open hands, an admission. “I know. I know. That night you left…I was wrong, one hundred percent. I’m sorry. But I was crazy, jealous. I thought you were fixing yourself up for somebody else, you know? Ivy, baby,” he pleaded, “I love you so much it hurts. That’s what made me act like that. But, it won’t happen again, I swear it won’t. You wanted to teach me a lesson and you did.”
He tilted his head to one side and shrugged as if conceding the point. “When I came home that night and you weren’t there, I was so mad. I punched a hole through the bathroom door. Had to get Kittenger to come over and stitch me up.”
He rolled his eyes and chuckled, as if embarrassed by the image of his younger, more impulsive self now seen through older and wiser eyes. Out of everything he’d said so far, this was the one detail I found believable: That upon coming home and finding we’d fled, he’d put his fist through a door. I had no doubt he was capable of doing so again.
“Don’t worry. I fixed it.” He looked at me with smiling eyes, searching for signs of softening in mine, and then went on. “Anyway, after you left, I was really mad for a couple of days, but it was good, you know? It gave me some time to think about how I’d acted and then I felt really bad. I shouldn’t have let myself fly off the handle like that, Ivy. I figured that’s why you left; you wanted to let me stew in my own juice for a while. I kept thinking you’d be back any day. But when a week passed and then two, I thought maybe something had happened to you. I was so worried about you and the kids. You have no idea. I missed you so much.”
It was a mistake to engage him, I knew that, but the enormity of this lie shook my resolve. I couldn’t let him get away with it.
“Really? Is that why you never even bothered to report us missing? Or why you haven’t shown up for any of your scheduled visits with the kids?”
Hodge wasn’t used to me challenging him. He pressed his lips together, trying to keep his temper under control. “You mean my supervised visits with the kids? Yeah, Ivy, I was really anxious to abandon my business responsibilities and drive five hours so I could sit in some government office and visit my kids with some snotty social worker watching to make sure I d
idn’t smack them or look at them sideways! Yeah, I was real excited about doing that, Ivy. What father wouldn’t be?”
His voice was raised. I knew I should tread more lightly, but part of me was happy to see him angry, happy to know that, for once, I was the one holding the strings and making him dance to my tune, piercing holes in the mask of composure he was working so hard to maintain. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could almost hear him mentally counting to ten as he told himself to calm down.
“And I did report you missing,” he insisted. A lie. “The police must have lost the paperwork or something, but I did file a report. Not at first, though. I didn’t want cops chasing after you like you were some kind of criminal or something. After all, it was just a little marital squabble.”
I remembered hurrying between the chest of drawers and the bed as I’d filled a suitcase with clothes, rushing to make sure we were gone before he returned, blood dripping from my lacerated hand onto the carpet, the pain, catching a glimpse of my left eye in the mirror above the dresser, swollen purple turning to black. A marital squabble.
“And anyway, I really thought you’d come back. I didn’t think you could make it without me, but I was wrong. Okay? I admit it, I was wrong. You found a job, a place to live. You proved your point. Now it’s time to come home.”
“I am home.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure you are. Come off it, Ivy! You can’t seriously mean you’d rather live here, in this crappy little town, in your dingy little apartment, working at your dead-end job, than go back to your beautiful house right on the golf course with the Jacuzzi and three-car garage?”
“Yes, I can. I do.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and decided to try one more time. “Ivy, I know you’re mad. I know you’re trying to punish me. I get it. I really do. But you have to believe me. I love you and you have to come home now.” I shook my head, but he ignored me. “It’s all going to be different, I promise. A whole new start. We’re going to go on a second honeymoon, back to the Caribbean. I already bought the tickets. I called the hotel and reserved the same bungalow we had on our honeymoon. It’ll be a fresh start for us. And when we get back, I’m going to buy you a new car. Any model you want. And I’m going to hire a housekeeper so you have more time for yourself. And, if you want, we can even go to one of those marriage counselors. You’ll see. I’m a changed man. From here on out, it’s going to be a whole new ballgame, but I don’t want to hear one more word about divorce, ever again. Do you hear me?” His nostrils flared, white with frustration in the face of my silent refusal.
“Do you hear me? You’re coming home,” he declared. “And you’re doing it now! You belong at home.”
“I belong where I say I belong. I belong to myself. I’m nobody’s property. Not anymore. Now get out of my way.”
With my keys still in my hand, I took three long steps toward the car and turned my shoulder slightly, trying to shove Hodge away from the car door. The heat of my anger made me feel powerful and strong, deceptively so. He never supposed I’d have the nerve to challenge him physically. The surprising force of my body against his muscled torso caught him off-guard and he lost his balance, tottering a good four feet from the door he’d been blocking. Seeing my chance, I clicked the keychain to unlock the car door, accidentally dropping my quilt in the dirt as I sprang for the door and wrenched it open. I tried to get behind the wheel and slam the door, but I wasn’t fast enough.
I felt a searing pain in my scalp as Hodge grabbed hold of my hair and dragged me from the car. I tried to grab on to the interior frame of the car, but it was no good. He hauled me out of the car. My flat-soled tennis shoes scuffled on the loose gravel as I scrambled to keep my feet under me; if he got me on the ground, I’d have no chance of escape, and escape was the only thing on my mind.
The sense of power I’d known a bare moment before had fled; terror rushed in to fill the void. I fought back my fear, tried to get a grip on myself, watching for an opening. I knew there would only be one.
Still holding my hair with one hand, he dragged me away from the open car door toward the hood. He twisted his left hand backwards, slapping me as hard as he could with his knuckles and wedding band leading the blow, knocking my head sideways so the pain ripped through my cheeks and my scalp simultaneously.
He shoved me back against the hood of the car, grabbed the waist of my jeans, unsnapping the closure and opening the zipper in one movement. “You don’t belong to anybody? Is that what you said? Is that what you said to me?” he bellowed.
Jerking my hair, he pulled me off of the car and then twisted me around to face the hood, tugging the fabric of my jeans and underwear down around my hips with his free hand while simultaneously pushing down on my head, forcing me to bend over the car.
My mind screamed out, No! I wasn’t going to let him do this to me. Not ever again. I wanted to shout with rage but instead I made my voice soft and pleading. “Hodge, don’t. Please, Hodge, don’t.”
“Oh, now it’s please, Hodge? Please? You should have thought of that before you made your little declaration of independence, baby. I’m going to remind you who you do belong to. By the time I’m through with you, you’re going to say please like you mean it.”
There was nothing Hodge enjoyed quite as much as my fear. It gave him a sense of power that went to his head, made him a little drunk and, if I was lucky, distracted.
I let a sob escape from my throat, which didn’t require much acting on my part, and though it sent a fresh shock of pain to my scalp as he pushed me closer to the hood of the car, I pretended to stumble. That gave me a chance to flex my knees, center my weight and blast upward like a submarine performing an emergency blow, exploding to the surface without warning. With the silvery tip of the car key wedged tight between the middle and forefingers of my left hand, I concentrated every ounce of primal energy I could into my arm and gouged the pointed key into the orbit of his eye.
He screamed, let go of my hair, and clutched at his eye. I howled, “No!” and spun my body to the left and pumped my arm like a piston, driving my elbow into his stomach as hard as I could. He doubled over. I ran toward the open car door, hitching my jeans up as I did.
I almost made it. I was behind the wheel with my fingers wrapped around the door handle, ready to slam it shut, when Hodge wrenched it open with such power that my arm jerked and I could feel a burning sensation in my shoulder socket. He grabbed me again, by the arm this time, and pulled me from the car. I could feel the firestorm of rage in Hodge’s powerful right arm, more violent and uncontrollable than before, and instinctively knew that, at that moment, he was absolutely capable of killing me.
He was a monster, furious and snarling. Once he had me out of the car, he grabbed the keys from my hand and flung them across the top of the car. I heard a dull clink as they fell onto the gravel far out of reach.
Hodge pushed me against the side of the car, pinning me against the metal frame, and shoving the hard edge of his hip into my stomach. He gripped my left arm and stretched it out so my fingers hung over the edge of the door frame.
“You want to play with the car door? Is that right? You want to shut the door on me?”
He clutched the door handle with his right hand and, as hard as he could, slammed it shut on my hand.
There was a sickening crack of breaking bone. I screamed in agony.
Hodge screamed, too.
My eyes were screwed shut in pain, so I didn’t see what happened. All I knew was that Hodge had let me go. The car door opened, releasing my broken, bleeding hand. I crumpled to the ground, overcome by pain.
And suddenly Margot was on the ground next to me, shaking, crying, and wrapping my hand in her pink and green scarf.
I opened my eyes and saw Hodge doubled over, howling, with his hands covering his face, and Liza standing in front of him, eyes blazing, her feet planted wide apart, both hands fully extended, gripping a tiny metal canister and pointing it straight at Hod
ge.
Just behind Liza stood Evelyn and Abigail, armed and dangerous, each holding a big sixty-millimeter rotary cutter with new, sharp blades that glinted in the moonlight, and expressions that made it clear that if Hodge made one wrong move, they’d give no more thought to using those blades on him than they would to slicing through a bolt of fabric.
Groaning, Hodge rubbed his eyes and raised himself upright, blinking as he looked from one female face to the next as if his eyes might be playing tricks on him.
Keeping her eyes trained on Hodge, Abigail called out, “Ivy, are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, swallowing back the pain. “I’m okay.”
“Good. Mr. Edelman, move slowly back to the wall. Spread your feet apart, lift your hands over your head, and keep them there.”
Hodge stopped for a moment, assessing the situation. His eyes shifted from Abigail to Evelyn and back. His mouth twisted into a sneer and he laughed. He thought they were bluffing. Reaching out both arms, he took one quick, large, lunging step toward me, daring anyone to stop him, certain that neither woman had the guts to do so.
He didn’t know them the way I did.
Striking like a cobra disturbed in its lair, uncoiling in one fluid motion, Evelyn took her right hand off the cutter, sprang toward Hodge, swung her arm behind her head and brought it back down again as hard as she could, slapping him for all she was worth! The crack of her palm against Hodge’s shocked face echoed off the alley’s brick walls, a sharp, stinging sound, decisive and startling as a gunshot.
“Ahh!” Hodge’s eyes widened with surprise. His hand instinctively flew to his cheek to absorb the shock of the slap. He retreated a step as Evelyn, all flashing eyes and fury, crouched down into a stance like a sumo wrestler, menacing him with the glinting, circular blade of the cutter, thrusting it forward like a gangster brandishing a switchblade and forcing him backward, step by step, until his back was against the wall.
A Thread of Truth Page 28
