Underestimated

by Jettie Woodruff

  I rolled my eyes. I loved that he cared about me. I loved that he loved me, but his constant badgering was almost more than I could take. I couldn’t forget my past because he wasn’t about to let me. If he wasn’t continuously asking me if I was okay, he wanted to talk about it, or me talk about it rather.

  “Just a little headache, I’m going to go home and take a nap.”

  “Okay. I’ll bring supper home.”

  “Dawson, can I just be alone tonight?” Why did I just ask him permission to be alone? I was a twenty six year old woman. I didn’t need his permission.

  “Please don’t push me away, Riley.”

  “I’m not, Dawson. I am still going to marry you, and I still love you. I just need some alone time.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I put the few groceries away and lay on my couch. I didn’t really have a headache anymore, but I was feeling a bit of, I don’t know, self-pity, maybe. I did doze off and slept for all of twenty minutes before Lauren’s key unlocked my door, and she let herself in.

  “Ry?” she called.

  I raised my hand for her to see that I was on the couch.

  She bounced around and sat in the chair.

  “Watcha doing?”

  Really?

  “I was trying to take a nap,” I stated the obvious, sitting up.

  “Are you sick?”

  “No. Tired.”

  “What are you doing for supper?”

  “Do you think about anything but food?”

  “Yeah. Sex,” she smiled.

  I smiled too. “What are you doing tonight? Let’s order Chinese and have a girl’s night.”

  “I don’t think Dawson is going to fit in,” she teased.

  “He’s not invited,” I replied.

  “Uh oh, did you guys have a fight?”

  “No. Not really. I just told him that I wanted to be alone tonight. I feel like he is suffocating me.”

  “Did you talk to him about it?”

  “No. I am tired of talking about it,” I said, not talking about the same thing that she was talking about.

  Lauren and I wrapped ourselves in warm fuzzy blankets and sat on the back deck with a twelve pack of beer. It was just what I needed. The November sky was dark and cloudy, kind of like my mood, but laughing about silly stuff with Lauren pulled me right away from my self-absorption. We only made it outside for about an hour and were freezing. We ordered Chinese around seven. Lauren flirted with the poor delivery boy something fierce. I couldn’t help but laugh at her.

  She didn’t stay long much after that. She woke too early, and it was getting close to her bedtime. I found myself alone and damnit if I didn’t miss my sheriff. I was surprised that he hadn’t called, but I was sure that he was trying to give me my space.

  I showered and cuddled up on the couch as I flipped on the television. I channel surfed for a while, never landing on one certain show. I took a deep breath, giving in and dialed Dawson.

  “Feel better?” he asked on the first ring. I smiled. I loved him so much, and wished then that I hadn’t been such a prune. He would have been right there with me had I not decided to go all dark on him.

  “Yes, and I am sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “I don’t know. For being such a pain, I guess.”

  “You’re not a pain, Ry. I love you just the way you are.”

  I snorted. He shouldn’t love me. He shouldn’t love me at all. He should have run the other way as soon as we met.

  “Well, I feel like a real idiot now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, I am going to bed alone.”

  “I will be there in twenty minutes,” he said. I could see his smile through the phone.

  “You will?”

  “Unless you don’t want me to.”

  “I want you to.”

  ***

  I almost missed Las Vegas after enduring winter in Maine. It was freezing, and I was tired of being indoors. Dawson and I spent a lot of time looking at wedding magazines and planning our little wedding, and I freaking loved it.

  The week after New Year’s, I had gotten out of the shop later than usual. Star was off visiting her daughter, Moonie in Australia. I wanted to go with her. I was sure she was warmer than I was. I locked the backdoor and scraped the ice from my windshield.

  Nine degrees? Really?

  I cranked the ignition and my old car didn’t like the winter either. It wasn’t starting.

  I did the only thing I knew to do. I called Dawson.

  “Hi, baby. You on your way? I’ve got a pot of chili, homemade bread, and a warm cozy fire waiting for you.

  “That sounds amazing, but my car won’t start.”

  “What’s it doing?”

  “This,” I answered and cranked the key again, holding the phone for him to hear.

  “Hmm, sounds like the battery. Go back inside where it’s warm. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I did as I was told and watched out the front glass, waiting for Dawson.

  I leaned in and kissed him as soon as I got into the warm car. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I called Charlie. He’s going to come over in the morning and take a look at it for you.”

  “You’re my hero,” I teased. He was my hero. I didn’t know where I would be without him. I didn’t even like to think about it.

  I think Dawson could have won a chili cook off contest with his chili. It was the best chili I had ever tasted, and my Grandma Joyce made some pretty good chili. I was so full. I couldn’t eat another bite. I tried to get him to let me clean up, but he refused and made me go soak in a hot tub while he did it.

  We sat in front of the fireplace and made out like a couple of teenagers. Dawson hadn’t asked about my escape since we had gotten into the argument on Thanksgiving. It had been weighing on my mind though. I wasn’t having the nightmares and Drew didn’t haunt me in my sleep. It wasn’t that. I just felt like it was something that was important to Dawson. Something that he wanted me to share with him. I felt like I owed it to him. He had been there for me so many times, including that night when my car decided to break down on the coldest day of the year.

  “Dawson?” I softly spoke, pulling away from his lips.

  “Riley?” He mimicked my tone. I smiled.

  I turned my back and snuggled up to his chest. It was easier for me to talk when I didn’t have to look at him. He opened his hand, and I placed mine in his.

  “You ask the questions,” I suggested. He knew what I was talking about.

  “Are you sure, Ry?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “Um, okay. You’re here, so I presume you did get into his office. Tell me how that came about.”

  I was silent for a bit as I thought about that night. It was the dead of summer and extremely hot out. I hadn’t even been in the pool because the water wasn’t refreshing at all. It felt like bath water, and the air outside was so thick. Drew had come into my room after getting home late and drunk.

  “I’m not going to go into the details about that because I will stop and want you to have sex with me,” I told Dawson.

  “That’s okay. I have a pretty good idea how it went, and truth be known, I hate to hear about the things that he did to you,” Dawson said, kissing my head.

  “He didn’t leave my bed that night. He stayed all night and until noon the next day. He had never done that. He held me in his arms, and we watched television together while he did things to me, daring me to come. I did of course, and had to spend an hour episode of Criminal Minds over his lap. He watched the show and would bring his hand in contact with my bare butt when I least expected it. Finally, after he was bored with his game and got off in my mouth, he got up. He gave me my cellphone and told me that he was going out of town that night.”

  “He kept your phone?”

  “Yes, unless he was leaving or I was out,
and then I was allowed to have it.”

  Drew disappeared to his office, and I went into the kitchen with Rebecca. She gave me a look, knowing that I had been tied up entertaining Drew all day.

  “How much flour does that recipe say?” she asked, nodding to the laptop on the bar.

  I walked over to the bar and pulled my feet under me and leaned on the counter. I looked up to her as soon as I saw the quick note on the laptop.

  “We have your identity. We need to start acting now.”

  I read and quickly closed it out when I caught a glimpse of Drew coming. Rebecca was smart and did have a recipe pulled up for some kind of cake she was making.

  “What are you doing in here?” Drew angrily asked. I was sure that he saw me in one of his cameras. He walked up to the laptop and looked at the recipe. He dropped the window to see what was behind it. There was nothing but the mountain wallpaper.

  “I was just reading off this recipe for Rebecca. She’s going to teach me to cook.”

  “Why. You don’t need to know how to cook.”

  “Because I have nothing else to do, and it’s like a hundred degrees outside.”

  “I don’t like you on the computer. You know that,” he said. I was glad that he didn’t tell me that Rebecca couldn’t teach me to cook.

  “It’s only a recipe, Drew.”

  He looked right to Rebecca. “I don’t have a problem with it if you don’t mind me blocking your internet,” he said to her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t care. That recipe is not on the internet. It’s from one of many cookbooks that I have downloaded. I don’t need to be online to access them.”

  Drew turned the laptop away from me so that I couldn’t see the password that he put into block all internet access. He really was a stupid son of a bitch. I knew every password he had. I had sat on his desk while he did what he wanted with me so many times it was pathetic. I knew as soon as he put it in he had typed, all my love with no spaces. I often wondered what it meant. I knew that it wasn’t about me. He never in the almost six years that I was there hinted anything about love. He turned the computer back to me and left without another word.

  I wished that Rebecca had said more about her plan, but that was all that the note had said. We would be alone that night because Drew would be gone.

  “Wait,” Dawson said, interrupting my story again.

  “What?” I asked, entwining my fingers with his.

  “He left you and Rebecca alone?”

  “Yeah, all the time. Why?”

  “Why didn’t you both just leave?”

  “It wasn’t that easy, Dawson. I wouldn’t have done that anyway. Rebecca had stayed with me and took care of me for almost six years. For one thing, she needed her money when she left. I didn’t want her to be associated with my leaving him at all. Not to mention he could log on to his laptop anywhere in the world and go right to the cameras. Every room in the house had cameras. He had called me several times, and asked me things like how was your bath, your snack, your swim. Once he called to warn me that I was in trouble for going too far on the golf cart. He couldn’t hear me when I drove the cart around, but he could see where I went.”

  I snickered a little. “That was when I called him every name in the book.”

  “How did you get into his office with all the cameras? Didn’t he have one outside of his office?

  “Yes he did, and Rebecca was an expert criminal. She had really thought things through. I didn’t know how in the world she expected us to get in there. I was scared shitless”

  I was sitting on the sofa after taking a bath, reading when all of the lights in the house went off. I didn’t know where Rebecca was, and wondered what was going on. My cellphone rang, and I answered it right away, seeing that it was Drew.

  “What the hell is going on there?” he angrily asked.

  “I’m not sure. All of the lights just went off.”

  Rebecca called from the kitchen. “Powers out.”

  “Rebecca said the power must be out.” No sooner did I say that, the lights were back on.

  “They’re back on,” I said.

  “Don’t hang up until I see for myself,” he demanded.

  I waited, and it took three minutes for the cameras to reset so that he could see me. I just knew Rebecca was behind it.

  Drew hung up without another word. I went back to my book, wishing that I could talk to Rebecca without him hearing. What the hell was she up to?

  Another thirty minutes or so went by when the lights mysteriously went out again, and this time Drew called Rebecca. I listened to the one sided conversation from the kitchen. Rebecca told him that she had already called the power company. She did… about ten times. She too knew Drew, and knew that he would call them too. She wanted the power company to tell him that they had several calls already.

  I was so confused when I finally turned in. I never talked to Rebecca again, and the power had only been out a short time again.

  I was sound asleep when Rebecca quickly came into my room. I jumped when I felt the tickle of something soft. It was pitch black again, and the light that usually cast a soft, dim light through my window was out too.

  “Hurry. We don’t have much time.”

  “Rebecca, what the hell are you doing?”

  “We’re going into Drew’s office. The lights are going to come back on any minute. Get up!”

  I got up, and she moved the pillows under the cover and placed the blonde wig on my pillow. My heart was beating a million miles a minute. She was going to get us both killed.

  We had just gotten the door closed when the lights came back on. “How the hell are you turning the lights on and off?” I wanted to know.

  She ran right to the computer and moved the mouse, bringing the sleeping computer to life. “Ms. K is taking care of it. I didn’t ask questions. I just know how long we have. What’s the password to log on?” she asked, sitting in his chair.

  I couldn’t think. I had seen him put in that password a hundred times, and it wasn’t coming to me.

  “Come on, Morgan!” Rebecca pleaded.

  “Ten karat 4,” I yelled in a loud whisper. I didn’t know why I was whispering. I knew that the office had no cameras.

  I watched while Rebecca pulled up different accounts. When she finally found the one that she was looking for, I stopped her and told her not to take it from that one because he would miss it. I told her to pull up the one in Florence because that was the one he was least involved in. She did, and of course it was password protected. I went through all of the passwords that I could think of, and it was finally the last one that I could remember.

  “What the hell are you doing? You can’t move that much money,” I said when I watched her move seventeen thousand dollars into Lisa Fitzgerald’s account.

  “I already did,” she said hitting approve transaction.

  “Who the hell is Lisa Fitzgerald?” I asked.

  “Nobody. If he traces it back he will hit a brick wall,” she said logging off.

  She ran back to my room and took the blonde hair with her. Five minutes later the power was miraculously restored. I pretended to move a little when the light from outside came into my window.

  I freaked a little when my cellphone rang.

  Fuck…

  I didn’t answer right away and feigned sleep. I looked around the room dazed and groggy, trying to put on a good show for Drew. I sat up and reached my phone.

  “Why the fuck, aren’t you answering your phone?” he yelled.

  “I did answer,” I said. I didn’t know that he had called while I was in his office.

  “I called you three times.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear it. Rebecca gave me something for a headache earlier. She said it was Tylenol pm. I must not have heard it. Did you want something? What time is it?” I was proud of the quick sleeping aid response.

  “Why the hell does the power keep going out there?”

  “W
as it out again?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

  “Forget it, go back to bed,” he said and hung up.

  I laid the phone down and pretended to go right back to being sound asleep. I was far from it though. My mind reeled like mad. Rebecca was going to get us both killed. What the hell was she up to? This couldn’t possibly work. Could it? The excitement that we may just get away with it made me think about a life. A real life without Drew. Where would I live? Would I have neighbors? I wondered if I would ever be able to be with another man. Probably not, not for a long time anyway. What kind of job could I get? I’d never had a job in my life, other than babysitting my little brother and my cousins back home.

  I lay awake not moving for hours thinking about being free from Drew. I kept my eyes closed and didn’t move, afraid that Drew was watching me, wherever he was. I knew I would endure some of his tedious crap when he got back, but I didn’t care at the moment. I was too excited.

  When Drew arrived back home three days later, I was terrified. I tried to hide it as best I could, but I just knew he had found the missing money. I was reading a book in a chaise lounge by the pool when he opened the door and told me to follow him into his office. It was fairly early, not even noon yet. My heart sank. He knew.

  I got up and wrapped a towel around my body and followed him to his office. Rebecca winked a hang in there wink.

  “Should I skip this part?” I stopped and looked back at Dawson, asking if he wanted me to skip the bad. He caught my cheek with his lips.

  “No. I’m okay. You can continue,” he replied, rubbing my arm.

  I knew that I would be spending my day in Drew’s office while he worked. Once I knew that he didn’t know about the missing money, I relaxed and was glad to be spending the day with him. I planned on paying more attention to his conversations and what was on the screen of his computer if I got that close.

  “I called you four times the other night,” Drew said, removing my towel. “What are the rules, Morgan?” he asked, running his fingers across the crook of my breast.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t feel well that night. I answered as soon as I heard it.”

  “Are you making excuses, Morgan?” he asked, circling me and breathing his warm words on the back of my neck.