The Book of Judges

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  My mind was getting fuzzy. Rhoda tucked herself into the nook my chin created as I curled up on the sofa. Though my eyes itched, I didn’t have the heart to push her away. She was so soft, so warm. So alive….

  * * *

  A thumping on my door jolted me awake. I clutched the cat to my chest and held still. What time was it? How was someone in the building?

  The thumping sound turned into a banging. “Maura.”

  My heart raced, my eyes were streaming from the cat dander. I could only breathe through my mouth. I couldn’t catch my breath.

  I pushed the cat away and tried to breathe, slowly, deeply, but my chest rasped and wheezed. My inhaler was in the bathroom, a mere five feet across the room.

  “Maura, let me in.”

  Who? What? Were they crazy?

  I had pulled the blinds. Whoever that was couldn’t see me. Or could they? Were they pulled all the way? I couldn’t make myself check.

  But I really, really, really, wanted to breathe.

  I tried for five more seconds to catch my breath, but it wasn’t happening.

  I rolled off the couch silently, and crawled to the bathroom, hoping that the person at the door couldn’t see me.

  I grabbed the inhaler with a shaking hand.

  One puff. Hold.

  Exhale.

  Second puff. Hold.

  Exhale.

  My office door opened with a creek.

  “Maura—sorry to bother you this early, but Everly, your favorite landlord, is making an office to office sweep today. You’ve got to get that cat out.”

  “Ethan?” My voice cracked, but at least I was breathing again.

  “Yeah, it’s just me.”

  I opened the bathroom door. “You scared me to death. To death, do you understand? Don’t do that again.” I slumped into my desk chair. “Now what is Everly up to?”

  “She’s coming through the building to do an office by office check. You’ve got to get your cat out of here.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t bring myself to care this morning. She was tearing the building down. Surely, she didn’t care if a cat wandered around my office.

  “Because she will kick you out and keep your deposit. It seems to me you don’t need that right now.”

  “True.” I rubbed my eyes. “It’s four in the morning.”

  “Sorry. I started a little early today. I have a lot of work to do before Everly gets in.”

  “Fine. Thanks for the warning.”

  “Anytime.” He paused by the door. “Are you okay?”

  “No, but that doesn’t matter. Thanks for the heads up.” My mind was beginning to clear, but I didn’t appreciate it. “Why did you tell me in person?”

  He grinned. “I don’t need to leave an electronic trail of this conversation. I like my job taking care of Everly’s buildings for her.” He hesitated at the door just a moment longer. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  I laid my head on my desk. I’d take care of some coffee and maybe a nice sausage sandwich just as soon as I changed into fresh clothes.

  Fresh clothes—I had gone through my week-away stash more than once already. I needed access to my closet and my laundry machine.

  I shoved everything I could into my overnight bag—clothes, cat food, toiletries. No use leaving evidence I had been sleeping here. Then I grabbed the cat and her litter box. It was quite a balancing act to get it all downstairs, but I made it.

  I could leave the cat safely in my car while I got the laundry taken care of, and if I left the window cracked, she could just stay there all day, really.

  I stared at my car.

  The window.

  I swallowed a rock of disgust.

  I had to get the window repaired. There was no locking a cat in a car with a gaping hole instead of a driver’s window.

  Should I just give her back to Rick?

  Could I keep her in the car long enough to get her home?

  I called Christine, my oldest and dearest friend. I had rejected her offer for drinks and group support, but I needed her now. Perhaps she would cat-and-Maura sit while I did my laundry. She might, if I asked nice, even loan me something to wear. And pick me up.

  As it was still just shy of six in the morning, Christine did not answer.

  I loaded the car up, put Rhoda in the very back though she stayed there just long enough for me to start the car, and left. I prayed she wouldn’t leap out the window and get run over—the first prayer I had meant in a long time.

  She stayed put.

  The auto repair shop didn’t flinch at my arranging things with a sleek black cat in my arms, which was points in their favor. I didn’t have the inclination to explain myself.

  I left in a BMW X5—the upgrade charge put on Rick’s card. Whatever he usually spent on lovers, he could spend on me while they fixed my window. They claimed it would only be a day, but I’d believe it when I saw it.

  The cat was now lock-upable, so I headed to the laundromat. While the clothes washed, I used the trusty iPhone to catch up with John Deere’s Facebook.

  The morning’s haiku was an angsty abomination.

  Innocence died hard

  Consuming a murder show

  All light has gone out

  I pictured Gina, my haiku writer, as a young teen with extra heavy mascara, eyes peeping from behind shaggy bangs. If I didn’t hear from her, I’d have to call her step-mom again just to see how things were going. See if Gina and her boyfriend had changed in any significant way lately. See if the cops had called on them yet. Plenty to ask.

  While the machine rumbled behind me, I googled “ways to kill people with light.” I was just clicking an interesting search result when the phone rang.

  It was Rick.

  I answered it, but it was muscle memory. I hadn’t meant to.

  “What?”

  “How are you?” His voice was like smooth honey. A voice that used to send my spine into trembles.

  “How do you think?”

  “You need to talk things out. If not with me, then with someone. A good counselor. This will be a poison in you if you leave it there to simmer.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” My voice startled the bearded man sitting across the room. “You know what is a poison in me? You. You are a poison. A poisonous snake.”

  “Snakes are venomous, love.”

  “I know that. I KNOW that. Whatever. You are a wretch and I don’t want you calling me anymore.”

  “Maura, you need to come, meet with me. I’ll bring Izzy and we can talk it out. Work it out. She’s sorry. She’s really sorry and wants a chance to talk to you.”

  “What planet are you from? I know it’s not Earth because there is no way on Earth I would meet with you and that poor child.” Poor child? Where had that come from? In the middle of my heat and anger all I could think of was how he had used her. How he had groomed her to be that girl. How if she had interned with anyone else she’d still have her integrity intact. “You are absolutely the worst. But yeah, I will see Izzy. Tell her to meet me at my office at three o’ clock.” I hung up on him and regretted every single word I had said. I should not have answered the phone.

  I got in touch with Christine while doing the laundry. She was amenable to my plans, but my mind wasn’t on her gracious offer to host me and the cat. It was on my three o’ clock appointment.

  * * *

  Three o’clock took it’s time coming. I sat at my desk eating a fig and cashew bar that stuck in my teeth and was hard to swallow, watching the hand on my plain white wall clock tick slowly by. Three o’ five.

  Three-ten.

  By three-twenty I was convinced Izzy wanted to see me about as much as I wanted to see her.

  At four I knew she wasn’t coming and I was mad. How dare she steal my husband and stand me up? Anger welled up in my gut though I had no idea what I would have said had she showed. Would I have offered her counseling or punched her in the face? Would I have asked her why and cried, or woul
d I have decided not to let her in at all? I didn’t have a clue, but it should have been my decision to make. I grabbed my office phone and dialed Rick. I got his voicemail.

  “Real nice, Rick, that stupid girl didn’t show up. She’s a real winner, that one. A real grown adult. And you’re old enough to be her father, you know that, right? I saw her. She’s practically a child. I swear, you’d bang a teenager at your age, which you probably did, you disgusting pedophile. Don’t call me anymore. I don’t want to hear from you. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.” I slammed the phone down, glad that I had kept a corded landline just for such occasions.

  I put the expected meeting and phone message out of my mind as best as I could and just got on with it. What else could I do? I needed money, which meant I had to work. Period. End of sentence.

  After an hour of fruitless googling, I made my way to Christine’s place.

  I kicked my shoes off in her mudroom and scooped my cat out of the laundry hamper. Christine’s husband Brent was in the kitchen stirring something that smelled atrocious. Bitter, like burnt onions. I grabbed a stool at their breakfast bar. “Thanks for letting me crash here.”

  “About that.” He tasted something red from the end of his wooden spoon. His lip curled. “Just a couple of nights, okay? Christine would never tell you no, but she’s been working all day and then taking care of her mom’s medical stuff every evening. She’s completely spent.”

  “I’ll be no trouble, I promise.” Disappointment floated down over me like wet snow.

  “You think you won’t, but she takes on everyone’s issues. You know that. She’ll stay up all night letting you pour your heart out and then she’ll give you her patented reality-based, no nonsense advice. A day or two is okay, but she can’t do this for weeks on end.”

  “I wouldn’t anyway.” My eyes began to water, so I put Rhoda down.

  “Two nights.” He took his pot to the garbage can and dumped it. “I’m ordering pizza. What do you like on it?”

  “I ate already, but thanks.” It was a lie, but I had just realized the watering eyes weren’t from the cat. I took myself to the guest bedroom and threw myself on the bed. I needed a hot shower and I needed my friend, but I guess I wasn’t exactly what she needed right now.

  The doorbell rang forty minutes later—the pizza, I assumed. Two hours after that Christine came home.

  I hadn’t even known her mom was sick.

  A light knock on my door let me know my ever-giving friend was ready to give more. She poked her head in. “Can I get you anything?”

  I greeted her with a bear hug. “You can lay it on me, if you want. Let it out. Tell me what’s going on. I just wanted the bed, for a night or two, but I won’t stay long.”

  “Don’t listen to Brent. He’s over-protective. Mom is fine.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “She has a wound on her leg from a fall, and it’s not healing. I go clean it and bandage it, etc. No big deal. It will be fine. I just like to stay and talk. She gets lonely. Tell me how you’re doing and what I can do to help.” She sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were deeply shadowed.

  “Tell me to get off my duff and get my act together, I guess. I need a rallying cry, and no one does that as well as you.”

  She yawned. “Then do it. You don’t have time for self-pity. Get your act together, okay? You and I have known what Rick was for many years. Don’t look back now. No point.” She stretched. “How’s that?”

  “Perfect Christine. Thank you. Now go let your good husband take care of you for a while.” I nudged her shoulder.

  She took me up on it without another word.

  My parents hadn’t actually disowned me when I married Rick, but over the last twelve years we had grown very distant.

  I wouldn’t be the one they would call to tend their wounds and stay for a long chat if they lived in town. In fact, I hadn’t told them yet that I had left Rick. My pride wouldn’t let me. I knew they would give sympathy, but I would also know they had seen it coming, and that that was what they were really thinking. And since I had gone back to him so quickly last time I left, I couldn’t bear to hear them offer that sympathy with doubt in their voice, like they didn’t trust I’d stick with my guns this time, either.

  I went to bed sadder than I wanted to be, and jealous of Christine and her husband who couldn’t cook, and her elderly mother who had a seeping wound of some kind.

  The familiar tune of Watching the Detectives singing from my phone woke me up. It was just after 2:00 in the morning. The number was unfamiliar, but in murder investigations you answer every call.

  “Maura Garrison.”

  “I deleted your voicemail from Rick’s phone and I don’t need your sympathy. Rick and I have a beautiful thing that you wouldn’t understand.” Izzy was panting as she spoke as though she was running away from something. The truth maybe.

  I sat up, fully awake. “What do you want?”

  “Rick is not a pedophile and I am not a child. I am twenty-five years old and able to make my own decisions.”

  “And having an affair with Rick was the adult decision you made? Sounds like your family counseling education has stood you in good stead.”

  “Any woman would choose Rick, if they had the opportunity. He is amazing, and you know it.”

  “He’s a schmuck, and you’ll learn it.” I felt strong, not emotional, and a little hungry. Hangry, even. I could take on Izzy. “I’ll tell you one thing about Rick that you won’t like. He is a boob man, and having seen what you have to offer, he’ll have to get his fix somewhere else.”

  “You can be as crass as you want, but it won’t change that you gave up your relationship with a brilliant man.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You are distant, cold. Frigid. He tells me everything. You’re frigid and he’s a warm man.” She paused and seemed to have caught her breath. “He wants a family and you are a selfish woman who won’t give it to him.”

  Chin up, Maura. She could only hurt me if I let her. “Frigid? That’s adorable. That’s the same line he used with me. That said, if you believe he wants kids so bad, ask him about his vasectomy.” I would have been a good mother, dammit. “And one more thing. If what you have is so good, why is he calling me every day begging me to come home?”

  “You’re a horrible person, Maura Garrison, and you never deserved Rick. I’ll be the new Mrs. Styles and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  She hung up on me, and I stared at my phone, an ugly fight from seven years ago playing over and over in my head. My negative pregnancy test sitting in the bathroom sink. Rick, quiet voiced, but unapologetic. Me screaming. Him explaining that he couldn’t raise children with a woman who wasn’t saved, and that’s why he had done it.

  I lay back, my head on the hard, thin pillow. I closed my eyes and tried not to see the look in his eyes, him begging me to understand why I was too evil to be the mother to his children.

  I would never understand.

  Chapter Eight

  The Old Paris Theater Mission was the most ecumenical organization in Adam Demarcus’s group. It had been founded by a coalition of historic Portland churches in the late 1990s as a homeless shelter and soup kitchen. While it wasn’t strictly evangelical in its mission statement, churches from around the city took turns hosting church services. The real focus of the mission was on its cots, food, and coats. They didn’t hand out blankets because they didn’t want to encourage sleeping rough, though how not having a blanket was going to make homelessness better escaped me.

  I learned all of this from the tour Mac gave me. Then I donned my hair net and plastic gloves and got behind the lunch counter. I wanted to meet people and dishing up chili was a pretty good introduction.

  A steady stream of hungry folks, mostly young people and single men, passed through the line. It was dawdling work, people shuffling, in no hurry, but not many people wanted to chat with me.

  I filled a paper bowl and passed it over
the sneeze guard, as I had done many times in the last hour. “Here you go.” I smiled the inviting smile I used for hard cases.

  A clean-shaven man with a dark red knitted cap took the bowl with shaking hands. “Thank you.” He gazed at me with watery blue eyes. “You’ll come eat with me, won’t you?” His voice was soft and crackly like cellophane.

  “Definitely. Save me a seat.”

  He smiled, three of his top teeth missing, and shuffled over for his corn bread. He glanced back at me. “Don’t forget, please.”

  “Of course not. Just wait for me.” The line was almost done, and we were almost out of chili, so it was a promise I thought I could keep.

  When we were done serving, I kept my eyes on my “lunch date.” “Who’s the guy that asked me to eat with him?” I asked the woman who had been serving the corn bread.

  “Never seen him before.”

  “His first day here then?” I was disappointed, to say the least.

  “Nope, mine.”

  “Ah. Hey, Mac.” I caught my host’s eye. “I’m going to go sit with the fellow in the burgundy cap. Anything I should know?”

  Mac gave him a once over. “He’s a semi-regular. Never slept over though. He might have known Adam.”

  “I can work with might.” I tossed my plastic gloves in the trash and joined cap-guy at his table.

  “You came.” His face lit up. At some point in his life he had been a very handsome man, but hard living had etched itself in his face. No smile lines, just hollow, scarred cheeks, and dry, sun damaged skin. His eyes were empty despite his smile.

  “Of course.”

  “But you’re not eating.” He frowned at the empty place in front of me.

  “It’s okay for now. I’ve got to help clean up, but I didn’t want you to leave without my coming by.”

  He pushed his chili to me. “Don’t let yourself get hungry, it’s a terrible feeling.”

  “Don’t worry. I have lunch in the back. I promise.”

  He eyed me closely and took his chili back.

  “I’m Maura.”

  “Good to meet you, Maura.” He began to eat in earnest, glancing up at me now and again between bites. I let him focus on his food.