by Cole McCade
Maroni’s mouth tightened suspiciously, but she nodded and turned her head into the radio clipped to the collar of her uniform. “Bring the kid. We’re releasing him to the parents.”
A door on the far end of the room opened, and a young, bright female officer came out with Elijah propped on her hip. Except for a smudge of dirt on his overalls, he looked none the worse for wear. For just a moment Leigh felt a lightness as if she had wings again, when she saw that beautiful little boy and realized that no matter what happened, no matter how many nights she spent cold in Jacob’s bed, she would have her days with that solemn little face tipped up to hers. That solemn little face that was part Jacob’s but part hers, too, a part he could never take away from her.
The quiet, nervous look on Elijah’s face eased when he caught sight of Jacob, and he held out his arms. “Daddy.”
“Hey there, big boy.” Jacob let go of Leigh and gathered their son into his arms, propping him on his hip with an indulgent smile. “You had a bit of an adventure today. You okay?”
Elijah nodded, curling his little hands together. “I’m okay.”
Maroni and the other officer were watching with those kind of misty-eyed smiles that said they were falling for this Hallmark-movie scenario hook, line, and sinker. The brave father, left alone to raise his son while his wayward mother suffered a crisis. The whole family together again, on the path to healing, his love and loyalty rewarded in the end.
Leigh thought she might to throw up.
But she had her part to play. As long as she focused on Elijah and Elijah alone, she could do this. She stepped closer, then stopped when her little boy darted wide eyes to her and shrank against Jacob. Right. Stranger danger. She ignored the lurch in her stomach and stayed where she was, keeping a safe distance as she offered a wave.
“Hi. Hi, Elijah.” When he only watched her, one little fist balled up near his mouth, she tried a hopeful smile. “It’s all right. I didn’t mean to scare you. I guess I’m coming home with you.”
Elijah looked at his father with questioning, liquid eyes. When Jacob only smiled encouragingly, Elijah fixed his curious stare on her again. “Hi,” he said, tiny but crisp and clear. “What’s your name?”
“Le—” She stopped herself short, breathed in deep, and made herself try again. There was no more Leigh. Leigh was just…someone she’d made up, and now she had to let her go. “…Clarissa. You don’t remember me, baby, but I’m your mother.”
“Daddy said I don’t have a mother.”
Oh. Oh, fuck, that ripped so deep it was a miracle her guts weren’t spilling on the dirty tile floor. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, and one look at the flash of guilt in Jacob’s eyes nearly sent her running from the room. He’d said it. He’d said it, he’d meant it, and she had no one to blame but herself, even if she wanted to hate him for it anyway.
What was he supposed to tell your son? That he has a mother, but she just didn’t care enough to stay?
Her lips trembled. “You have a mother,” she whispered, and opened her eyes. “You have a mother who loves you very much.”
Tentatively, she reached for him—but he only stared at her hand like he didn’t know what to do with it. And when Jacob caught her fingers instead, when he kissed her knuckles, she wanted to rip away and scream that’s not for you, it was never for you. Instead she let him draw her close, wrap his arm around her shoulders, and tuck her against his side. Weren’t they a pretty portrait, mother and father and son all embraced together. The nuclear fucked-up family.
“Come on, baby girl,” Jacob said. “It’s been a long night. Let’s go home.”
“Okay. Sure. Yeah…okay.”
But when he tugged on her, she couldn’t move. She had to count to ten and square her shoulders to nerve herself before she could lift her feet and take those first steps toward the door, the end of Leigh, and the beginning of a new life that was just her old life recycled with a fresh coat of paint.
They left in silence. And in silence, Jacob led her to his shiny new black Mercedes-Benz. He buckled Elijah into the car seat in the back, while Leigh stood by helplessly. She didn’t need Jacob to help her into the passenger’s seat, but she let him because it was what he needed. It was what he’d always needed, to be the gallant knight in the story inside his own head.
The streets flashed by while she sat with her backpack in her lap like a shield, the square heavy weight at the bottom telling her the police hadn’t touched money she didn’t even need anymore. She looked out the window with her chin propped in her hand, and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see Gary’s bar slip past in a blur of brick. So she wouldn’t have to wonder if that gleam of black and blue outside was Gabriel’s Firebird. It didn’t matter anymore. She’d made her choice—the choice she’d been too weak, too immature to make four years ago. She’d chosen that little boy, and nothing that came before mattered.
Jacob didn’t speak until they were out of the Jackdaws and into the Rooks, gliding under silent street lights that punched holes of light into the shadowed sidewalks like nails into a coffin. “Where have you been, Clarissa?” he asked softly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. You just…left. You left me. You left us. You threatened to shoot me, and then you left us. I have a right to know where you went.”
“You gave up that right when—” She cut herself short and forced the words back. Not in front of Elijah. “You know what you did,” she said, almost under her breath.
“I know. And I know it was wrong, but you didn’t even give me a chance to explain—”
“There was no explanation for that!”
“We could have talked it out. You owed me that.”
Owed him? She jerked her gaze from the window to him. He sat there so calmly, smug and self-assured and self-righteous with his mouth set in that way she hated. That twist of his lips said he would bulldog his way through this until he got the answer he wanted, because he’d already decided he’d been wronged and could do no ill. Gone was the Hallmark husband he’d played in the station. This was the real Jacob, self-absorbed and clueless, and she wanted to scream at him. She wanted to scream that she didn’t owe him anything because he hadn’t bought her, and there was no currency that could ever pay for that kind of betrayal.
But she held her tongue, because she remembered. She remembered being small and confused and scared while Mama and Daddy had hissed cold words at each other over her, and all she’d been able to think was that even if they weren’t looking at her, it had to be her fault and they were just punishing her by not acknowledging her existence.
“I’m back now,” she said tightly. “We’ll talk when we get home.”
“Fine. But naturally, we’ll have to explain where you went. And you’ll need to dye your hair back.”
“Why?”
He hesitated, darted a glance at Elijah in the rear view mirror, then hissed, “…you look Tee-Ar-Ay-Ess-Aych-Why.”
Trashy. She looked fucking trashy. Damned right she looked trashy, but never before had she felt like actual trash until he’d curled his upper lip that way and darted a slit-eyed glance at her naked thighs, a glance that said he was measuring her value in her purity and wondering just how many hands had gotten her dirty since his own.
“You had me declared legally dead,” she snapped. She couldn’t stop herself, not even with Elijah in the back seat, that terrifying fire rising and speaking in tongues of flame. “Why would you do that?”
“It was the sensible thing to do,” he said stiffly.
“Why? So you could find someone else to fuck? That didn’t stop you before.” Cold realization slapped her hard across the face. She hadn’t put two and two together when the officer had first said she’d been declared legally dead, but now she understood with a sort of heavy clarity that crushed down and crumbled her into ugly, hateful bits. “Did you get your hands on my trust fund? Is that why you did it?”
His hands tightened to
white-knuckled fists on the steering wheel. “Clarissa—”
“We’re not even married anymore, are we? You can’t be married to a corpse.”
“Clarissa!” he snarled.
“Did you use it to get laid?” Once the floodgates had shattered, she couldn’t stop the torrent. All the anger she’d bottled up toward him for so many years, all the anger she’d been taking out on everyone but Jacob. All the hate when she’d seen his back humping and jiggling over that leggy piece of ass. All the contempt she’d felt every time he’d smirked and asked did I hurt you too much, baby? when he didn’t care how she felt at all. “Sympathy over your presumed-dead wife, running off to leave you with a little boy to raise on your own. I bet that got you in that little redhead’s pants fast. Not that having me around ever stopped you.”
She didn’t know what reaction she’d expected, what reaction she’d wanted—but all she got was silence. The kind of silence she was used to from Gabriel…but where Gabriel’s silence was calm and warm, this? This was a threat. A promise. That when they weren’t in front of their son, Leigh would pay for every word. She knew she should be afraid of the slow squeak of the leather steering wheel under his shifting fists, of the pulsing blue veins standing out against his temples, but she was all out of fear. The only thing she was afraid of right now was losing Elijah again, but she’d get to keep him as long as she was willing to take anything Jacob dished out.
And she was. Willing. Ready. And one way or another, she’d find a way to fight back.
“Are you done?” he bit off.
“And if I’m not?”
“I’m scheduling an appointment with the doctor. If you’re dealing with addiction issues, he’ll be able to help.” The tight anger in his voice relaxed, softened, turned to patronizing, almost syrupy warmth. “I just want to help you get back to normal, Clarissa.”
Normal. He’d thought the smiling shell of a woman who’d held him and lied when she’d said I love you had been normal, had been everything she was meant to be, while the fire inside her was something unnatural. Something artificial. Something she must have snorted or swallowed or shot into her veins, because in his world that was the only reason she could ever feel the way she did. She sank back against the seat, just staring at him, sick and hollow words on her lips—but before she could speak, Elijah piped up from the back seat.
“Clarissa?” he asked curiously.
Clarissa. Like he was calling a stranger.
“No, Elijah. No.” She looked at his reflection in the rear view mirror. “It’s…it’s Mommy. Please call me Mommy.”
Please tell me this was worth that, at least.
But Elijah’s large, dark eyes just watched her in the glass, and he said nothing at all.
“I doubt he recognizes you. If he remembers you, it’s with dark hair,” Jacob said, then whispered, “You look like a whore.”
Because I am a whore, she thought, and wrapped her arms around herself, staring out the window again. And I’m whoring myself for that little boy’s love.
Not yours.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
SHE DIDN’T KNOW THIS HOUSE.
She looked around the townhouse that had been her home for barely a year of married life, and felt like she’d never been here before. Jacob had redecorated, replacing the silly kitschy things they’d picked out together from catalogs and antique shops with cold sterility—each room done in clean, masculine lines with everything precisely arranged to show off his possessions. A gold-plated baseball autographed by Mickey Mantle. A glass-encased atomic clock. Antique swords, though no more gun cabinet. A dozen little odds and ends that all cost more than she could imagine. So much excess arranged among his neatly-framed community leadership awards and business commendations, a shrine to his image of himself.
There were no photos. Not their wedding photo that used to be on the mantle, not one picture chronicling the years of holding Elijah, playing with him, wiping smears of Spaghetti-Os off his fat little baby cheeks. Just a sixty-inch television, and paintings. Pretentious paintings in minimalist elegance that would have been beautiful on someone else’s walls, but were just ridiculous here when she doubted Jacob understood a single one of the fluidly dashed kanji or cared about the meticulous discipline and centuries of cultural values behind every last brush stroke.
This didn’t feel like coming home.
It felt like walking through a museum.
Jacob took her backpack from her solicitously as she crossed the threshold. She let him peel her hoodie away from her the way he used to peel her coat from her shoulders as they stepped out of a limousine on the doorstep of some fancy restaurant or another. Elijah wormed between their legs and ran for the pristine white sofa, climbed up on it, and reached for the iPad resting on the arm. No toys, she realized. No toys anywhere. A house with a little boy should be full of toys and brightness and all the mess that came with a sweet and happy little thing tumbling and playing everywhere.
“It’s late,” Jacob said. “We’re both tired. We can talk in the morning. I’ll…wait, to schedule the doctor. For now. But I called your parents, and they’re coming over after breakfast.”
Dread sucker-punched her hard in the gut. Mama…it might be good to see Mama, to curl up against her for just a moment and feel like maybe her mother still loved her daughter the way only a mother could, but if he came with her…
She worked her lips, darted a glance at Jacob, then looked away. She couldn’t even be angry at him right now, not when he looked as bone-tired as she felt. “Sure,” she said. It was too cold in here; the wrong kind of cold. It was always too cold wherever Jacob went, air conditioning blasting little knives of icy wind, and she hugged her bare arms to herself and shivered. “But I want…I want to sleep in the guest room tonight.”
“Of course. I understand if it’s too soon, baby.” He smiled ingratiatingly. Back to being the reasonable one. Always the reasonable one, the calm one, so when she was hurt and angry and lashed out, he could call her hysterical and emotional and all the other things men said to invalidate a woman’s impotent rage. “I’ll find you something to sleep in. I…” Something flickered in his eyes, and it wasn’t love. She hadn’t seen that there for a long time. “Your things are in the attic. But I’ll find you something.”
“Okay. Sure. I’m…I’m going to go take a shower.”
“You got it, baby girl.”
He wasn’t even looking at her when he said it. He was looking over her in that way he had, and she doubted he’d even heard what she’d said. She was just another problem to be dealt with, and he was already focusing on the solution.
She scooped her backpack up and slung it over her shoulder, then pulled her hoodie off the coatrack and hugged it to her. Her things. Hers, and she’d gotten too used to not letting them out of her sight. Technically this was her house, but it didn’t feel like it. She felt safer with her hoodie clutched to her chest, more capable of turning her unguarded back on Jacob and walking away.
She slipped down the hall, but couldn’t help peeking in the first door on the right. Elijah’s room. It used to be soft butter-yellow with the walls covered in ducks and the crib shaded by a forest of little mobiles, but now it was painted the sterile white of an institution. The only hints that it was a child’s room were the colorful spines on the neatly-ordered bookshelf, and the Thomas the Tank Engine quilt on the little-boy-sized bed. It felt as wrong as the rest of the house. A child’s room needed color and personality, and all the little things children collected that expressed how they identified themselves. She didn’t care if those colors were pink or blue, if those little things were Barbies or decapitated frogs, but God, no wonder Elijah was so quiet when he lived in a house that was more of a glass display case than a real home.
No wonder he was just like her.
She bit her lip and pushed away—and nearly ran right into that perky little redhead, as she emerged from the room next to Elijah’s with a pair of fuzzy pajamas in her
hands. The redhead squeaked and stumbled back. Leigh just froze, staring at her. Staring at the girl who was playing mommy to her son. The perky redhead stared right back, then smiled a nervous, almost scared smile and ducked around her. “Excuse me.”
The girl slipped past, but as Leigh looked over her shoulder at her, the girl did too—and for just a moment their eyes met with a kind of understanding, before Leigh walked away from the sound of that perky little redhead’s perky little voice chirping, “Okay, little man, let’s get you ready for bed.”
The guest bedroom at the far end of the hall looked like a hotel room, but that was all right. Impersonal was safer, and at least it had its own bathroom. Leigh shut the door and considered locking it, but if she locked the door Jacob would just flip out, lose his shit, and beat it down. God forbid she shut him out of a room in his own home.
But she did lock the bathroom door before she stripped. She still didn’t like being naked with Jacob so close, and her skin didn’t stop crawling until she felt that satisfying click of the lock tumbling into place. Then it was just her and her reflection in a bathroom the size of a studio apartment, all curves of white tile flowing everywhere like swan’s wings, Leigh the only blot of color getting it dirty. Getting it trashy. She looked at herself in the mirror, naked and slim and so fucking trashy with her skinny little body and small high breasts and pink little mouth, her soft thighs still marked with the touch of Gabriel’s hands, her pale throat livid with the kiss of biting lips, silently proclaiming to Jacob:
I don’t belong to you. Someone else has had his dirty hands all over your property, and I don’t belong to you.
