Just Like the Ones We Used to Know

by Brenda Novak

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss Brenda Novak’s newest book, RIGHT WHERE WE BELONG, a moving story about rebuilding your life when you’ve got nothing left to lose, available now from MIRA Books.

  Read on for a sneak peek!

  CHAPTER 1

  “You knew! You had to have known!”

  The vitriol in those words caused the hair on the back of Savanna Gray’s neck to stand on end. She was just trying to pick up a gallon of milk at the supermarket with her kids, had never dreamed she might be accosted—although since her husband’s arrest, it felt like everyone in town was staring daggers at her. The crimes Gordon committed had shaken the small, insular town of Nephi, Utah, to the core.

  “Don’t you dare run off!” someone said behind her. “I know you heard me.”

  Savanna froze. She had been about to flee. Her emotions were so raw she could barely make herself leave the house these days. She wished she could hole away with the curtains drawn and never face her neighbors again. But she had two children who were depending on her, and she was all they had left. Those children now looked up at her expectantly, and her son, Branson, who was eight, said, “Mommy, I think that lady’s talking to you.”

  Gripping her shopping cart that much tighter, Savanna swung it around. She was determined to do a better job of defending herself against this type of thing than she’d done in the past. But then she recognized Meredith Caine.

  A videotape of Meredith—clothes torn, mascara smeared and lip bleeding while her sister, who was with her now, tried to comfort her—had played on the news several times while police searched for the man who’d attacked her as she carried a load of laundry down to the basement of her apartment building. That man was Savanna’s husband. Since his arrest, Savanna’s house had been egged—twice. Someone had driven onto her lawn and peeled out, leaving deep ruts. And someone else had thrown a bottle at her parked car that’d broken all over the driveway. But she’d never been directly confronted by one of Gordon’s victims, only their friends or family or others in the community who were outraged by the assaults.

  Facing Meredith wasn’t easy. Savanna wished she could melt into the floor and disappear—do anything to avoid this encounter. Meredith didn’t understand. Savanna had watched her on TV with the same compassion and fear all the other women in the area felt. She’d had no idea she was living with the culprit, sleeping with him—and enabling him to operate without suspicion because of the illusion she helped create that he was a good family man. She’d thought he was a good family man, or she wouldn’t have married him!

  “Meredith, don’t do this. Let’s go.” Her sister tried to drag her off, but Meredith remained rooted to the spot, eyes shining with outrage.

  “Where were you, huh?” she cried. “How could you have missed that your husband was out stalking women at night?”

  Gordon had been a mining equipment field service technician for the last seven years of their nine-year marriage, which meant he drove long distances to reach various mines and worked irregular hours. Savanna had believed he was on the road or repairing equipment, like he said. She’d had no idea he was out prowling around. Despite what Meredith and everyone else seemed to believe—that simply by virtue of being close to him she should’ve been able to spot such a large defect in his character—he’d never done anything to give himself away.

  “I thought…I thought he was doing his job,” she said.

  “You believed he was working all those hours?” Meredith scoffed.

  “I did.” She hadn’t been checking up on him. She’d been trying to manage the kids, the house and her own job working nine-to-five for a local insurance agent. Besides, Gordon always had a ready excuse for when he came home later than expected, a believable excuse. Another piece of equipment had failed and he’d had to drive back to his last location. His van wouldn’t start, and he’d had to stay over to get a new battery. The weather was too terrible to begin the long trek home.

  Were those excuses something a wife should have been leery of?

  “Maybe you should’ve paid a little more attention to what he was doing,” Meredith snapped.

  Savanna began to tremble. “I wish I had. Look, I’d be happy to talk to you—to explain my side so that maybe you could understand. But please, let’s not do this here, in front of my children.”

  Meredith didn’t even glance at Branson and Alia. She was too angry, too eager to inflict some of the pain she’d suffered on Savanna. “Your husband didn’t care about my children when he put his hands around my neck and nearly choked the life out of me. Thanks to him, I haven’t been able to have sex with my own husband since!”

  “Meredith!” Her sister gasped, obviously more aware of the children and, likely, the attention this confrontation was drawing.

  Alia, Savanna’s six-year-old daughter, pulled on Savanna’s sleeve. “Mommy, why did Daddy choke her?” she whispered loudly, her big blue eyes filling with tears.

  “Your father…” Savanna’s throat had tightened until she could scarcely breathe, let alone talk. “He made some poor choices, honey. Like we talked about when he went away, remember?”

  “Choices?” Meredith jumped on that immediately. “That man is pure evil. But keep lying—to them and yourself.”

  At that point, Meredith’s sister managed to pull her away. They left Savanna standing in front of the cooler that held the milk and cheese, feeling as if she’d been slugged in the stomach.

  “Show’s over,” she mumbled to those who’d stopped to watch the drama unfold.

  “The kids at school say Daddy grabbed three women and ripped off their clothes,” Branson said, his voice small as his gaze followed Meredith and her sister to the checkout register at the opposite end of the aisle. “That’s true, isn’t it.”

  He wasn’t asking. He was just now realizing that Gordon wasn’t innocent as they’d all stubbornly hoped. That her son would have to accept such a terrible truth, especially at his tender age, would’ve broken Savanna’s heart—if it hadn’t already been shattered into a million pieces. “They’ve been talking about your father at school?”

  For the most part since Gordon’s arrest, Branson had clammed up when it came to discussing his father, pretended as if nothing had changed. Almost every day, Savanna would ask him how things were going at school, and he’d insist everything was fine.

  This proved otherwise, which made her feel even worse.

  Head bowed, he scuffed one sneaker against the other. “Yeah.”

  “Mommy?” Alia’s lower lip quivered as she gazed up, looking for reassurance.

  Savanna knelt to pull them both into her arms. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. You aren’t responsible for what your father did.” She wanted to believe she wasn’t, either, but part of her feared that maybe she had more culpability than she cared to admit. Had she been too gullible, too trusting, as everyone implied?

  She must’ve been, or she wouldn’t be in this situation. And standing by Gordon even after the police searched the house had only made public opinion worse. She’d wanted so desperately to trust her husband above others, to protect her family, so that was what she’d done—until the mounting evidence grew to be too much. But that process of utter shock, denial, crushing pain and, finally, numb acceptance wasn’t anything others had witnessed her go through. They merely saw her as being tied to him, as loving and supporting the monster who’d raped three women, and since he was no longer walking around town, she’d become the target of everyone’s resentment.

  “Boys aren’t supposed to hurt girls,” a bewildered Branson said.

  “You’re absolutely right, honey,” she told him. “You shouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “So…why would Daddy choke that lady?”

  Tears burned behind Savanna’s eyes as she hugged them both tighter. “I don’t know.” That was a question she asked herself at least once a day, but she had no answers—for any of the terrible things he’d done. It wasn’t as though
she’d ever denied her husband physical intimacy. Other than a few oddities she’d chalked up to personal quirks, she’d thought they had a normal sex life. Since this whole thing had come out, however, she couldn’t help wondering if she could’ve been more alluring or adventurous or exciting to him. Maybe if she’d been satisfying, he wouldn’t have gone searching for something else and none of this would’ve happened…

  Straightening, she shoved her cart to the side, left the few incidental groceries they’d gathered and took hold of her children’s hands.

  “Where are we going?” Branson asked when she circled around to the far side of the store to avoid Meredith as she led them out.

  “Home,” she replied.

  “What about the milk?”

  “We’ll get it later.” She couldn’t stay in the store another second.

  After helping her children get buckled up, she slid behind the wheel of her little Honda, which, fortunately, hadn’t been impounded by the police like the van Gordon had driven to work.

  “Are you sad, Mommy?” Alia asked.

  “No, honey,” she replied. Sad could never cover it. The nightmare that had started when the police showed up with that search warrant only got worse and worse. She kept telling herself that she’d survive and find solid ground again, be able to stabilize her life, but she’d been far too idealistic. It’d be two more months before the trial even started. Then who knew how long the legal proceedings would take. Gordon and his crimes were all people could talk about—all they would be talking about—for the foreseeable future.

  Given the evidence, he’d likely be convicted, but even if he wasn’t, Savanna wouldn’t stay with him. She hoped she’d never have to lay eyes on him again. She no longer felt safe in his presence, no longer felt as if her children would be safe. She’d already filed for divorce, but she knew that wouldn’t remove him from her life for good. He was the father of her children. The repercussions of his actions would ripple through the next decade or two, maybe longer.

  Once they got home, she fed Branson and Alia and helped with homework, but her mind wasn’t fully engaged. She went through the motions like an automaton, trying to persevere until they were in bed and she could call her younger brother.

  At nine-thirty, she tucked them in, poured herself a glass of wine and carried it into her bedroom, where she shut and locked the door and dialed Reese’s cell.

  “Hey, sis. I’m out with a friend,” he said as soon as he answered. “Can you make it quick?”

  She blinked against the tears she’d been battling for several hours. Quick? Gordon’s emergence as a suspect, the gathering of evidence, the search of the house, the arrest…it seemed like the longest, most invasive process she’d ever endured—as well as one of the most painful. “I can’t stay here, Reese.”

  “What do you mean?” he responded. “In that house? Or in Nephi?”

  “In Nephi. In Utah. I have to get out of here, leave the whole area. I never want to see any of these people again.”

  “But we talked about this. You said it would be better to keep the kids in the same school rather than rip them away from their friends and teachers. They’ve already lost their father.”

  “I felt that way at the time, but I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think it’s good for them to stay here, to try and bear up beneath all the negative energy. And I know it’s not good for me. We need a fresh start.”

  There was a slight pause. Then he said, “Why the sudden change of heart?”

  “I told you. I can’t handle the anger and the blame. It feels as if almost every person I meet hates me. And I doubt that’ll go away anytime soon.”

  “What do you mean? Why would they hate you? You’re not the one who raped those women. They don’t think you helped Gordon in any way…”

  “No one has launched that accusation, thank God. Right now, they’re only blaming me for missing whatever signs I should’ve seen.” She stared glumly into her glass. “And maybe they have the right. I can’t say anymore what I should or shouldn’t have done. Would some other woman have noticed that he was too secretive? Would they have called his work to verify his hours and location? Would they have searched his stuff and found that ‘rape kit’ hidden in the shed out back?”

  “We’ve been through this. There was nothing to make you doubt him. You even had a regular sex life—or that was what you told me.”

  “We did, for the most part. But how would I know? I was twenty when I married him, and he’s the only man I’ve ever been with. Who am I to say what’s normal between two people? I can only judge from my own experience. Maybe you should tell me.”

  “I’ve never been married. So far, my longest relationship has lasted two months.”

  Still, he had more sexual experience than she did, but when he chuckled about that, she wondered, as she often did, why he hadn’t ever made a commitment to anyone.

  She figured he would eventually—he was only twenty-four. Regardless, that was a question best left for another time. Tonight, she was too bogged down by thoughts of Gordon and what he’d done. “They found blood from one of the women in our van. Did I tell you that? He had his family riding around in a vehicle that still had the blood of a woman he’d attacked.”

  “You told me. That was when we both decided we could no longer maintain our faith in him, remember?”

  She raked her fingers through her hair as she studied herself in the mirror above the dresser. She no longer even looked like the woman she used to be. She hadn’t taken the time to get her hair trimmed—hadn’t wanted to visit the salon she normally frequented while everyone there was whispering about her—so it had grown out of the bob she’d been wearing before her world collapsed. All she could do was pull the thick, auburn mass into a ponytail or let it go wild and curly. She’d always liked the gray-blue of her eyes, but they looked empty now—hollow, shell-shocked. Who was this person staring back at her with a face so pale she could almost trace the blue veins underneath? “Maybe I should’ve noticed the blood.”

  “You have children. They scrape their knees and elbows now and then, don’t they? And Gordon fixed mining equipment, which meant he had to have injured himself occasionally. Why would you assume—from a few drops of blood—that he was out harming women?”

  She turned away from the mirror, couldn’t bear to look at herself any longer. “I don’t know. It’s just that so many people think I should’ve spotted something. I’m beginning to doubt myself. The morning after he raped Meredith, he had scratches on his arm. I asked how he got hurt. He said he backed into a ditch he didn’t see at a mine site and got scraped up by blackberry bushes while trying to get a two-by-four under his rear tire. Maybe that seems like a lame excuse now that the police have pointed out the pattern of those scratches. It did look like four fingernails had gouged his arm, but…I honestly thought nothing of it at the time.”

  “It’s only been a month since they locked Gordon up, Savanna. Surely things will get easier.”

  She detected a hint of impatience. He’d heard so much about her problems of late. As sympathetic and supportive as he’d tried to be, she’d been falling apart for too long, ever since she’d learned that her husband was the primary suspect in the string of violent sexual assaults that’d sent the good people of Nephi into a panic. Understandably, Reese was eager to get back to his regular life. He was her younger brother, after all, wasn’t used to having to support her so much. She’d been the one to carry them both through the loss of their eldest brother and both parents a little over a year ago.

  He’d had enough sorrow for one fourteen-month period. She felt like an idiot for not realizing before now that she’d exhausted his reserve of compassion, that this was the point where she’d need to soldier on alone.

  “I’ll let you go,” she said abruptly.

  After a brief silence, he said, “I’ll call you later, okay?”

  He probably felt guilty for revealing that hint of impatience. But he was with someone. He
’d said that. Anyway, if he was capable of moving on after losing, all at once, three members of their immediate family and was beginning to feel good again, she wouldn’t continue to drag him down. “There’s no need,” she said. “I’m fine. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be moving as soon as I can arrange it.”

  “That takes time. You’ve got to sell the house, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to walk away from it?”

  “Why not? There’s no equity. Gordon took out a second mortgage almost as soon as he inherited it from his grandmother. With the market the way it is…we’ve been upside down on this place for two years or more.”

  “What about your credit?”

  “The house is in his name. He never put me on the loan or the title. If his mother wants to save this place, she can move in and make the payments. I’ll leave all of his stuff behind—” she’d already boxed it up and stacked it in the garage, anyway “—and put the keys under the mat.”

  “But where will you go? Back to Long Beach?”

  “No.” They’d sold the beautiful five-bedroom, four-bath home their parents had owned in Los Angeles, where they’d been raised, and split the proceeds. Reese had paid off his student loans and was using what he had left for graduate school. He was planning to be a doctor. She’d spent a portion of her inheritance on Gordon’s defense—which she now considered to be a waste of money.

  “Then where?” he asked.

  The only place she could go. “The farmhouse in Silver Springs.” It was all she had left.

  “Savanna, no. That place needs too much work. Dad was barely getting started with it when he…when they had the boating accident. How will you live there?”

  “I’ll renovate it myself.” And why not? They had to do something with it. And neither one of them had wanted to put it up for sale. That home hadn’t been just another real estate purchase to their father, although he’d done a lot with real estate over the course of his life. This was the ranch his grandparents had once owned. He’d had fond memories of the place, was so excited to be able to bring it back into the family where he’d said it belonged.