‘You know what,’ she finally conceded, hands going up in defeat, ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t come here to argue with you or to drag up the past.’
He folded muscular arms across his chest, almost sullenly, ‘Then why are you here?’
‘I already told you why.’
‘Right,’ he nodded. ‘Because your sister sent you.’
‘Michael…’
‘No,’ he was the one to cut her off this time. ‘You don’t get to show up here after thirteen years and brush off everything that happened in that time. Do you have any idea what we went through in those first few years you were gone? What you put us all through?’
Martha looked down at her feet again. She couldn’t take the anger in his eyes. The guilt that had already been clawing at her threatened to start tearing chunks out of her flesh and she could not bear to be flayed further. People deal with trauma in different ways and it had become apparent that her former boyfriend still carried his fair share of pain, presenting it in raw and heart-wrenching anger that he wanted her to finally witness.
Sounding as culpable as she could, she did her very best to assure him, ‘I know.’
‘Do you?’ He angrily pushed. ‘You just disappeared, vanished without so much as a phone call to let anybody know that you were okay. I… For fucks sake. I thought you were dead!’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No, you’re not.’ He shook his head, stubbornly. ‘If you were actually sorry, then you would have talked to me before packing a bag and skipping town. If you cared then you would have picked up a phone and let me know that you were not chained up in some psychopath’s basement somewhere. You’re not sorry, Martha. You feel guilty. There’s a big difference.’
At some point during the split-second that followed Martha made a decision which, upon greater reflection, she probably never would have made. Perhaps it was exhaustion, an acquiescence to the pressure of constantly defending her past decisions. Or perhaps it was simply because it was the particular person who was standing there, doubting her. A person who was so blinded by his own pain and his own loss that he could not see past it. But he needed to. And fast. Otherwise her presence would cause more problems than it solved and her sister would never get the closure that she seemed to be so very desperately seeking.
Moving even further into the room, she unbuckled the belts on her jacket and shrugged it off, allowing it to fall to the carpeted floor. She worked quickly and efficiently, ignoring the look of confusion that crossed the face of the man who was stood, mere feet away from her now. Her jacket, the thin black hooded shirt that she had procured from her pack to keep her warm in the autumnal night air and then finally her top all fell to the floor until she was left standing before him in her trousers, boots and bra, defiant in her revelation, though the change she saw in his blue eyes crippled her internally in a way that his anger never quite could have.
For it was not her breasts, nor her neck or toned stomach that they fell upon but her skin or more specifically what had been brutally and methodically carved into her flesh, everything that it seemed and so much worse. His breath fell from his lips as if she had punched him square in the gut but she could give no quarter. Not until he knew how very wrong he had been.
‘You’re right, I do feel guilty’ she stated, trying to keep her tone even and disconnected. ‘Coming back here and facing all of the people that I chose to walk away from is the toughest thing that I have ever had to do. But not because I didn’t care. Or because I was selfish. You see, I couldn’t pick up a phone, Michael. I couldn’t have talked to you before I skipped town because I didn’t leave of my free will. I did not run away thirteen years ago… I was taken.’
Chapter 12
Minutes passed. Feeling like forever. Had he not already been leaning against his desk, Michael Parker was not completely convinced that he wouldn’t have been floored several times over during the past half an hour since the buzzer had abruptly rung.
He had known for many years now that the girl he had devoted his formative years to was still alive but actually seeing her, standing before him in the office which he spent so much of his life, made him realise that a part of him had never truly believed it. She was still gone, never to return. He had still felt the loss of her, still missed her presence. When she left, he had been adrift. She had been such an important part of his life that suddenly being without her had been utterly debilitating and it had taken a very long time to start moving forward again.
But now she was here.
When she had first walked in, he had been thrown but then his emotions had gotten the better of him. He had to admire the courage that it must have taken her to place herself directly under the scrutiny of the people her absence had affected the most. God, he knew how much she hated being the focus of any kind of attention. But the part of him that wanted her to face the consequences of her actions, squirm under the weight of questions she did not seem to know how to answer, won out over the part that wanted to simply see her again. The part that still cared.
He had been brash and hard on her. He hadn’t meant to be. But now she was stood before him, answering his harsh inquiries in seemingly the only way she knew how - by showing him.
And he could not look away. He could not stop staring at her trauma. Not even when her heartrendingly familiar voice softly implored him to, ‘Please, say something.’
He was too scared to ask the only question that came to mind as his gaze very hesitantly travelled downwards from her chest, along her long and slender arms to her toned stomach but he needed to know if it was as horrific as it seemed. Like she automatically knew what he was thinking, Martha slowly turned around, showing that it was and he had to remind himself that he did not need words to communicate with her. She had always known.
But not only was it the front of her body that had been viciously branded. If the thick, deep cuts that had permanently disfigured her stomach had been shocking, the scars upon her back were a hundred times worse, as if it had been the primary canvas for all the abuse that she had endured. There was more damaged skin on her back than not.
Completing the turn, she quietly explained to him, ‘My legs are also scarred but only at the top of my thighs and not as bad. I’m not taking my pants off, so don’t ask.’
‘Fair enough,’ he replied, voice sounding distant and foreign to his own ears.
Her point clearly and viscerally made, Martha bent and retrieved her top off the floor, pulling it back on over her head and down her arms. It was long sleeved and black, fitted snug like it had been made for her. She also picked up her shirt and jacket. However instead of putting them both back on, she moved past him and folded them over the back of the chair that was next to his desk, her movements deliberate and methodical. Evidently, she wasn’t going anywhere until they talked about what she had revealed. Parker wasn’t sure if that was for the best or not but he was certain that he was glad. He could barely process what he had just seen but he knew for a fact that he did not want her to go anywhere. Not just yet. Maybe not again for a while.
‘Who… Who did that… to you?’ he asked as she joined him, leaning on the desk. She mirrored his pose but with her arms defensively crossed in front of her chest.
After a while she shrugged and said, ‘It doesn’t really matter who it was.’
‘It matters to me.’
She seemed to be thinking about how to the answer in a way that made her comfortable and he felt like the worst kind of bastard for pushing her for more answers when she had, quite literally, bared her tragedy before him but, again, he needed to know. The answers mattered because they defined what he was going to do next about whatever he found out.
Eventually, she said, ‘Very bad people.’
He closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘That’s not an answer…’
‘It’s enough,’ she retorted firmly. ‘All you need to know is that there were more than one of them and that they took me and they hurt me. Badly.
And for a very long time.’
‘How long?’
‘Almost three years…’ she stated. ‘Nine hundred and fifty seven days to be exact.’
He cursed under his breath. Well, he had asked. How the hell had she survived?
‘Martha,’ he started to say, ‘I am so, so sorry.’
‘Don’t.’ She shook her head sternly. ‘It wasn’t you. And I don’t want anybody’s pity.’
Taking a deep breath in and out, he nodded. That, he understood. Of course he had no way to relate to the horror that Martha had gone through but he vividly recalled the way people had treated him after she had gone missing, and then again when his parents were killed. It was only natural to offer comfort and empathy to those in pain but most of the time, it was simply platitude. After a while of hearing the same crap over and over, it became meaningless.
He wished that she would tell him who the responsible parties were though. After all, she had stated that there were more than one of the sick bastards involved. He couldn’t help but want to know the details, to know exactly how many people hurt her and why they had done it. There were so many more things that he wanted to ask and he struggled so badly to find the words but in the end, it was alright. Because once again, she seemed to sense this and stepped away from the desk, pacing slowly around the office as she spoke, ‘After what happened, I wasn’t myself for a long time. I lost… big chunks of what made me feel like me.’
Parker tried to understand. ‘Did you get amnesia?’
‘No,’ she quickly asserted. ‘Not like that. I never forgot anything. Or anybody. It was just between the abuse and… everything else, the act of simply surviving each and every one of those days took so much out of me. For a while I was just so hurt and so lost. It took almost as long to recover physically as the length of time that they had me. And then mentally and emotionally… I’m not the same person that I was when I left here. That girl is gone. She’s not coming back.’
‘I can see that,’ he said, hoping that his agreement did not upset her any further. Given what she had been through, what she had had to endure, he would have been disturbed to have found the girl he remembered, walking around in her boots. He had always admired her tenacity. You didn’t survive being the unwanted daughter of an abusive alcoholic without developing a spine but he could not even begin to fathom the strength that she must have now.
In his eyes, it made her incredible. Even more so than she had been to him before.
She, however, shrugged it off with a nonchalant, ‘Yeah. I guess you can.’
He still really wished that he knew who had hurt her though.
‘It doesn’t matter who they were,’ she reiterated. ‘It’s over. They’re gone.’
He disagreed but sensed her tone and knew that she was not going to give any more information. He wasn’t at all happy about it but he didn’t want to pressure her any more than he already had. It was going to take him some time to reconcile the answers that she had given him with the facts that he thought he had known, because it had been so wrong for such a long time.
But she was there. She was there and she was safe. That was all that mattered now.
Martha ceased her pacing, stopping in front of the double bulletin board that stood next to the door. It wasn’t until then that Parker remembered where they were. In his office. His place of work. Where his current investigation involved somebody that he definitely knew for a fact had abused her, over and over, for years. Exactly like the people who took her did.
‘Sorry,’ he cursed. ‘I should have come down. You shouldn’t have to see all that.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, her eyes scanning the crime scene photographs and police reports that he had pinned up there. He wondered how she felt, staring at images of a man that caused her so much misery, from the posed still that had been undoubtedly taken at some charity gala to the starkly captured dead body on the gravelled driveway of her childhood home.
He did not expect her to grieve for the man but Mr Ford had been her father, after all.
‘Was there a funeral?’ she asked, no hint of emotion whatsoever in her voice.
‘Yeah, it was last week.’
‘Did you go?’
He nodded. ‘I did.’
‘How was it?’
‘Busy,’ he shrugged. ‘Whatever else your father was, he was one hell of a businessman and he knew how to socialise. The church was full, the wake even fuller. A lot of people came out to pay their respects to him. He was well thought of around here. You know that.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, a little bit of sadness permeating her indifference. ‘I know that.’
Trying to redirect the conversation, if not attempt to lighten the mood, he decided to let her in on what he had been doing since Maxwell gave him the file. He would play it carefully, of course, until he had spoken to the director about the eldest Ford daughter’s presence but he did not think it could hurt to put her mind at ease about the investigation.
‘I only got the file from the police today,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had much time with it but from what I can tell, they made the most obvious ruling they could, given the evidence that they had. He was alone. The room was locked. No obvious signs of foul play.’
She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘So you think he actually fell?’
‘I don’t think he was pushed,’ he indirectly confirmed.
‘What about suicide?’ she enquired. ‘Had he been drinking?’
‘He wasn’t inebriated.’
Narrowing her eyes, she replied, ‘Not what I asked.’
‘I don’t know enough to tell you anything concrete yet,’ he sighed. ‘But I will. One way or another, we’ll get to the bottom of what happened to him. Your sister will get her answers.’
‘Thank-you,’ she said softly, turning her back on the evidence of her father’s death. She crossed her arms in front of her again but to Parker eye’s it seemed less defensive and more in self-comfort. As tough as she was about some things, this was clearly getting to her. Confirming his suspicions about why, she added, ‘Amanda’s really struggling with all of this.’
‘She is, yeah.’
She asked, ‘Do you see much of her, socially?’
‘I see her every now and then,’ he confirmed. ‘She’s been dating Walsh for a while and I see her with him if we’re both lucky enough to get the same night off. The shifts here are pretty brutal. It works on a rotation - twenty-four hours on then twenty-four off. Our shifts overlap a few times over the week. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for socialising.’
She seemed to be frowning, so he made sure to add, ‘I still watch out for her when I can though. It’s weird, I guess, seeing as you’ve been gone for so long but she’s kind of family.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t your boss mind that you have a personal connection to the investigation? Amanda said that Walsh refused to do it because it’d be a conflict of interest.’
‘Walsh made that decision for himself,’ he told her. ‘I think he just didn’t want to have to be the one to upset her if we don’t find what she’s looking for. He’ll still probably consult on it if I ask him to though. It’s not really an ethical problem.’
She nodded, ‘Okay.’
‘Besides,’ he shrugged, ‘it’s Marytown. There’s always going to be some sort of potential conflict of interest somewhere. Everybody knows everybody, and everybody’s business.’
She seemed to swallow hard. ‘Yeah, I’d forgotten about that.’
‘Seriously,’ he tried to assure her, ‘don’t worry. We know what we’re doing here.’
‘Okay, I believe you,’ she conceded. ‘And thank you, again.’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t mention it.’
She came back across the room, retrieving her shirt, apparently satisfied that she had gotten what she came for and did not want to outstay her welcome which he understood but at the same time made an old, familiar ache returned to the pit of his chest. If he hadn’t
been prepared to see her again after so much time, he now was not at all ready to watch her walk away.
Before he thought too hard about what he was doing, he stated, rather than offered, ‘I’ll drive you back.’
Refastening the buttons on her shirt which, even though it was hooded, was as dark and well-fitting as the top she wore beneath it, she smiled but said, ‘It’s fine. You don’t have to.’
‘You’re staying with Amanda, right?’ He pointed out, justifying the decision that he had just abruptly made. ‘I need to go and take a look around Mr. Ford’s study, so I can do that and make sure you get home safe at the same time. Walsh is over there now, right?’
‘Yeah, he and Amanda were watching movies or something. There was giggling.’
He rolled his eyes, knowing well what it was like to be around the two of them when they were being impossibly couple-like. Retrieving his keys out of the top drawer of his desk, he said, ‘Feel like going and breaking up their fun?’
Shrugging her shoulders back into her, also black, also fitted, military style jacket, Martha smiled. ‘Well, okay then.’
Chapter 13
Since she had slipped out of the Ford residence before acquiring a key, Martha had to ring the doorbell once more. It was a little bit awkward, what with her ex-boyfriend stood beside her like they were teenagers all over again and she was about to get a telling off for missing curfew.
It was, rather unsurprisingly, Esther who answered the door. Her aunt stood there for a moment, glanced from one of them to the other before shrugging her shoulders and opening the door wide enough for them to pass through with a barely muted, ‘Well, that didn’t take long.’
‘Good evening, Ms. Adamson,’ Parker smiled, politely. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘Oh nonsense,’ she waved him off with a hand. ‘Martha, I assume you are both looking for your sister? She is upstairs in the lounge with that scruffy boyfriend of hers.’
Sins of the Father (Bloody Marytown Book 1) Page 8
