by Rachel Lee
“Why did they ask you to resign?”
She pushed aside her plate instantly, and he wanted to kick himself for killing her appetite.
“Surely you read about it,” she said tautly. “It was a damn scandal. I was arrested. Then I was released. I was accused of having an affair with my attacker. He pointed the finger at his wife, saying that’s why she had attacked me. He wasn’t too bright. Forensic evidence didn’t bear him out. But no one believed that I could have been counseling his child yet never have met him. But it was true!”
“I believe you,” he said quietly.
“Anyway, I was ill, it was taking a long time for me to recover, the parents were worrying about all the stuff they’d read about the case and whether their kids would hear about it and finally whether I’d be qualified to counsel anyone after what had happened. Good question. Even I couldn’t answer that.”
He pushed his own plate aside, leaned forward on his elbows and waited. She was talking, and he wanted her to talk as much as she needed, painful as it was to hear.
She rested her hands on the tabletop, spreading her fingers, staring at them. “I don’t even know why he picked me,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “I’d like to know why, but I guess I never will. Anyway, I was between operations when they put me in a jail cell. Can you believe that? I still needed more operations and they carted me off.”
“Somebody was a total idiot.” Anger edged his voice, but she didn’t seem to hear it. She had gone back in time, and he had sent her there. Fool!
“I’ve been trying to figure out that part,” she continued, her voice little more than a whisper. “As soon as I could, I gave them a description of the man who attacked me. I helped with that computer thing where you put together pieces....”
“Identi-Kit,” he said.
“Yeah, that thing. It wasn’t a good description, though. He was wearing a ski mask and I’d never seen him before. I just want to know why I would claim I was attacked by a man if a woman did it, the way he claimed.”
“You wouldn’t,” he said quietly.
“I don’t know what anyone was thinking at that point. I was pretty much wrecked myself. But they figured I’d given them a bad description on purpose once they fingered him. I don’t get that, either. I’d lie about who attacked me, why? To save my career because I didn’t want to admit to an affair? I’d pretend it was a stranger when it was my lover?”
He hesitated, then said, “Some women do things like that because they’re afraid of retaliation.”
She blinked, seeming to see him again, to land firmly back in the present. “You’re right,” she said, her voice strengthening. “Of course, you’re right. But he damn near killed me. He left me for dead. I wouldn’t have lied.”
“I believe you,” he said again.
“When they started zeroing in on him, I guess his wife helped them.” Nora shook her head. “God, it was so surreal. The two of them pointing fingers at each other. But she was the one who got me out of the cell. She swore under oath that I’d never met her husband. That he’d never participated in any of our sessions with their child. That he was abusive to her and violent. Apparently she had the hospital records to prove it. I don’t know what to believe about any of it, but I do know I never met that man before the night he grabbed me. Never. And I don’t care what the police believe.”
“Somebody really screwed up,” he told her as firmly as possible. “You should never have been charged with anything. Period.”
Her chin quivered a bit, then she steadied herself. This woman, he thought, had a whole lot more strength than appeared on the surface.
“Thank God for DNA,” she said finally. “I guess he thought I’d never be found because he left plenty of evidence. Unfortunately, it took a while to process.”
“I know. It’s complicated and they have to be careful.”
“I get it. Anyway, it’s still all mixed up in my head. All of it. I may never get it straightened out. I don’t even know how much of what I think I remember is true. Between my injuries and all the operations, and the trauma, it’s a whirl of disconnected thoughts and memories, a puzzle I can’t quite piece together. I’m not sure I need to or want to. I just want to get past it.”
“That’s going to take time.”
“Yeah.” She shook her head, then lifted his mood a bit by reaching for her sandwich again and taking another tiny bite. “But I feel mostly better being here. I really needed to get away.” She cocked her head. “Does that sound like running?”
“Not to me. I’d be antsy about that guy being out on bond, too.” He didn’t tell her how easy it was to get rid of a tracking bracelet. Or that it sometimes took days to find the perps afterward. This guy must have planned it fairly well, though, to get at his wife before he was caught. That worried Jake more than he wanted to admit.
“Next,” she said with the greatest firmness he’d heard from her yet, “I need to move out. I can’t stay with my dad. He’ll drive me nuts. I don’t even want to go home tonight.”
Jake stilled the immediate impulse to tell her she could stay at his place. She’d be trapped out there without a vehicle, dependent on his schedule. Besides, he didn’t think she wanted to share quarters with him any more than she wanted to share them with her father.
It also occurred to him that she had left here to become an independent woman. Returning her to dependency of any kind might not be a good thing right now.
Much as she seemed to be putting their unpleasant—okay, ugly—past behind her, he doubted it was that easy. Mistreatment had hit her from every direction. He hoped she’d had at least a few years in the past ten when life had been good to her.
He decided it might be best to change the subject to something more positive. Anything to get her looking forward beyond going home to Fred Loftis and then the struggle she’d undoubtedly face over her new job and moving out.
“What is the one thing you’d like to do tomorrow if you could?” he asked.
She didn’t even hesitate. “Ride Daisy again. But I’ve got to work.”
“We managed to fit in both things today, didn’t we? And you said Emma was letting you set your own hours. So how about I pick you up in the morning and I’ll get you back to the library right after lunch?”
Her face brightened so much that she no longer looked like the pale waif he had picked up just yesterday. “You really don’t mind?”
“Not in the least. I’d enjoy it, too. So consider it settled. I’ll get you around eight, if that isn’t too early. Maybe you can ride Daisy a couple of times before lunch.”
What killed him, though, was seeing those moments of beauty and happiness fade as he drove her home. He could almost feel her shrinking beside him.
So while he was worried about that lunatic from Minneapolis finding her, he became more immediately concerned about Fred Loftis. But what the hell could he do about the woman’s father?
* * *
Nora had not the least doubt that there was going to be a big scene with her father when she got home. She had broken all the old rules, and she seriously doubted he had changed them in her absence. She had gotten a job, she had refused to go to work for him, she had gone out without telling him where and she hadn’t been home to serve him his dinner after he closed the store. The rules had been engraved on her at an early age.
She just hoped her dad didn’t blow up before Jake left. She had never, ever, wanted anyone to see how her father treated her. It always made her feel small and somehow shameful, and even though she’d been through her own therapy as part of her training, coming home had reawakened all those feelings as if she’d never dealt with them.
Well, darned if she would take it this time. Fred Loftis might be in for a bit of a shock himself.
She felt herself stiffening in anticipation of a confrontation. She had grown up hating fights and arguments, and it had taken her a long time to learn to stand up for herself at all. A long time to imagine that
it was possible to ask for anything, a reluctance that still hampered her.
Damn, she wished she had more energy, but as the anticipation of trouble began to run through her, she felt her adrenaline surging. She sat up a little straighter and fixed her jaw. She was not going to take any trouble from that man. She was grown up now, thirty, able to make decisions for herself. She had proved that a hundred times over since she had walked out that door to go to college.
When they reached the house, Jake turned off the ignition. He walked around, helped her out and escorted her to the door. A gentleman. But this time he didn’t leave her as she inserted her key in the lock. He loomed behind her and she couldn’t imagine why. She’d already told him she couldn’t ask him in.
But he waited, and was there when she opened the door. She turned to say good-night, wanting him to leave before her father began the expected eruption, but he didn’t budge.
“Thank you,” she said. “I enjoyed that. I’ll see you in the morning?”
He nodded, but still didn’t move away. What was going on? She started to step through the door, with the strange feeling that the coming battle might emerge from any direction. She glanced over her shoulder. “Jake,” she said quietly, “please.”
He just shook his head. “Seeing you safely home doesn’t end at the door.”
Oh, God. The anticipated trouble had just multiplied, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She tried to run back over the evening, to remember what she might have said to turn him so protective. Something about a house rule, that was all. Surely?
Before she could find any other reason for this odd behavior, her father came out of the living room. In the background she could hear some sports announcer. He must have moved up from basic service to some cable plan that would give him more sports to watch. An irrelevant thought.
“Where you been, girl?”
Before she could answer, Jake did. “Out for dinner with me, Mr. Loftis.”
“We had food at home. Sorry I had to eat alone.” As if he hadn’t been eating alone for years. “Gadding about gets you into trouble, girl. You ought to know that now.”
The way he said it tightened everything inside her. She felt her hands clench until her nails bit into her palm. He was blaming her for what that crazy man did to her? Blaming her?
“How dare you,” Jake said from behind her. His voice carried the edge of steel.
“You get out of here. I’m talking to my daughter.”
“Like hell I will.”
“You got no part in this. I warned her about going to the city. I warned her about living alone. Now she’s under my roof again, and she’s going to live my way, the right way.”
Loftis turned toward Nora again. “What’s this about getting a job when you won’t come help me out? Well, if that’s the way you want it, you can pay rent. I ain’t got no cause to support a grown woman.”
“No, you haven’t.” Nora’s own voice sounded far away, even to her. She seemed to be floating above it all somehow, suddenly free of the tethers of emotion that had nearly bound her with fear on her way home. “If you want rent, Dad, I’m not cooking for you. I’m not cleaning for you. I’m inviting my friends over when I choose. I’m through with your rules.”
“Then you got no place here!”
“I never did.”
The unwanted weakness was overcoming her again, and she reached for the doorjamb. What she found instead was Jake’s arm.
“I’ll get your things,” he said.
“In just a minute.” She felt like she was looking at her father from a long way away. “You deprived my mother of any joy or happiness she might have had in life. You will not do the same to me.”
“Jezebel,” he said, practically spitting the word.
“You are a hateful man,” she said. “Now move out of the way. I’m leaving.”
“To go live with a man you hardly know!”
“It’s none of your damn business now.”
She stepped forward, half expecting to get hit, as she had so often in childhood, but evidently with Jake standing there, especially in his uniform, he wasn’t going to take the chance. He backed away.
On shaky legs, Nora made her way to her bedroom, feeling Jake’s hand on her elbow every step of the way. Blackness seemed to be creating a tunnel around her vision. When she got to her room, though, she collapsed on the bed and put her head between her knees. Don’t let me pass out. Please don’t let me pass out.
“Keep your head down,” Jake said gently. He pressed the back of her neck lightly. “Where do I find everything I need to pack?”
“I hardly unpacked. There are a couple of things in the closet. Except for my bath supplies, everything is still in my suitcase.”
The tightening tunnel of blackness began to recede. Her heart was hammering as if she had just run a marathon, and her limbs were shaking. Nothing new, really, since the attack. Weakness had become her frequent companion.
Maybe she’d feel better about all of this tomorrow. Right now she just felt sickened. “I can’t just move in with you,” she protested faintly.
“You can look for a place if you want. No biggie. But you can’t look at this hour of the night. And you’re not staying here.”
She heard hangers scrape against the closet rail, then from the corner of her eye saw him fold the dresses into the suitcase. “I guess not. But I could stay at the motel.”
“Over my dead body.” All of a sudden he squatted in front of her. She lifted her head enough to meet his gaze.
“He used to hit you, didn’t he?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to answer that question. Why it should shame her so, she didn’t fully understand. They’d worked on that in her therapy, how nothing her father did was her fault, but she felt the hot, miserable wave of shame anyway.
“I always wondered,” he said. “He sure looked like he was about to, tonight.”
Then he was gone again, moving around the room. “Your bath supplies. All girlie stuff?”
“Mostly. It’s all in a flowered bag.”
“Got it. You wait here.”
She heard him open, then close the door. Then the most astonishing statement.
“You’re kidnapping my daughter, Madison! You got no right.”
“She’s an adult choosing to leave of her own free will. Now step aside or you’ll be the one arrested for unlawful imprisonment.”
Wow, Nora thought. Wow. Could this really be happening? The surreal feeling she had experienced so often since the attack was claiming her again. This must be someone else’s life.
But a minute later Jake was back with her flowered makeup bag, and he dropped it in the suitcase.
“All done, I think,” he said. “Do you want to check?”
But she really hadn’t unpacked much. She hadn’t had the energy, or the desire, to settle in here. “That’s it.”
“Do you feel strong enough to walk out of here?”
She was determined to walk out of here, with her head as high as she could hold it. The last time, she had left in anger after their fight over her mother’s death and her supposed responsibility. This time she would leave like ice. How much sweeter that would be.
She marshaled herself and stood. Jake was right there, ready if she needed aid, but she was grateful that he waited to see. She’d managed to sacrifice enough of her independence and sense of self-worth over these past few months. Even little victories had become important to her.
God, to feel that way after more than a decade of becoming a new and stronger woman. It was pathetic how fast she had slipped back into the ways of thinking she had learned in childhood. Fear. Living in constant fear of everything. Endless self-doubt. Endless feelings of inadequacy.
“I hate myself,” she muttered as she started toward the door.
“Whoa there,” Jake said quietly. “None of that.”
“It’s true.”
Thank God he didn’t argue. She needed to get
out of this house, to breathe some different air, before she’d have the energy for anything. Coming home hadn’t helped her. In some ways it had sapped her.
Survival demanded that she get out of here now.
It was as if something important was changing deep inside her, as if some cloud were lifting. For the past few months she’d been in survival mode, intensely focused on fear, rage, pain and recovery. Now she felt an urgent desire to focus on finding herself again, looking forward again.
She hoped it lasted.
If nothing else, seeing her father again, living in his house however briefly, had made her realize that there was no way she wanted to slip back down the rabbit hole of time.
Loftis was standing in the doorway of the living room as she emerged. Behind her, Jake carried her bags. Her father looked as if he wanted to erupt. The desire was fairly written all over him. His fists were clenched, and for an instant, just an instant, she saw him as the paper tiger he was. He couldn’t control her anymore. He couldn’t threaten her anymore.
Her head lifted and she shifted her gaze from him to the front door. Deep inside her grew the certainty that she would never come back to this house. Never. Its walls held years of pain, self-disgust and self-loathing. Just being here was causing the poison to seep back into her.
She lifted her head another notch and forced her step to grow firmer. Done. Finished. She should never have allowed herself to think that she had no choice but to return. Messed up as her life had become, sick as she still was, she shouldn’t have given in to the craven impulse to hide and lick her wounds. Not with that man.
Just after she and Jake crossed the threshold, she heard him call after her, “That man’s coming, girl. You’re gonna be sorry you don’t have me to protect you.”
Her step faltered. Jake shifted a suitcase and grabbed her elbow. “Keep going,” he said in a low voice.
But she didn’t. Instead she turned and looked back at her father. “Protect me? You never protected me. Not once.”
Then, before she could say more, Jake let go of her arm and slammed the door behind them. “The car,” he said. “Can you make it that far?”
