by Nora Roberts
“She wasn’t stable, Bev. Even when we were kids, she was never quite right.”
She couldn’t look at him, not yet. She reminded herself that it had been she who had pressured him into seeing Jane again, into finding out the truth about the child. Folding her hands in her lap, Bev stared into the dusty marble fireplace. “You’ve known her a long rime.”
“She was the first girl I ever slept with. I was barely thirteen.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes, wishing it wasn’t so easy to remember. “My father would get drunk, go on one of his famous rages before he passed out. I’d hide out in the cellar of the flat. One day Jane was there, like she was waiting. Before I knew it, she was on top of me.”
“You don’t have to go into all this, Bri.”
“I want you to know.” He took his time, drawing in smoke, letting it out. “We seemed a lot alike, Jane and I. Somebody was always fighting at her house, too. There was never enough money. Then when I started getting interested in music, I spent more time with that than her. She went crazy. She threatened me, threatened herself. I kept away from her.
“Then not long after the guys and I got together, when we were struggling so hard to get a break, she showed up again. We were playing in dives, barely making enough for food. I guess it was because she was someone I knew, someone who knew me. Mostly it was because I was an asshole.”
Bev sniffled, gave a watery laugh. “You’re still an asshole.”
“Yeah. We got back together, almost a year. Toward the end she was outrageous, trying to start trouble between me and the others. She’d break up rehearsals, make scenes. She even came to the club and went after one of the girls in the audience. Afterward, she’d cry and beg me to forgive her. It got to the point where it stopped being easier to say, sure, fine, forget it. She said she’d kill herself when I broke it off with her. We’d just hooked up with Pete and had a series of gigs in France and Germany. He was working on the first record deal. We got out of London, and I put her out of my mind. I didn’t know she was pregnant, Bev. I hadn’t even thought of her in over three years. If I could go back—” He broke off, thinking of the child in the next room with her crooked tooth and little dimple. “I don’t know what I’d do.”
Bev drew up her knees and leaned over them. She was a young, practical woman from a stable family. It was still difficult for her to understand poverty and pain, though those were the very things in Brian’s background that had drawn her to him.
“I guess it’s more to the point what you’re going to do now.”
“I’ve already done it.” He stubbed out the cigarette in a nineteenth-century porcelain bowl. Bev didn’t bother to mention it.
“What have you done, Bri?”
“I’ve taken Emma. She’s mine. She’s going to live with me.”
“I see.” She took a cigarette. She’d cut, out drinking and her dabbling with drugs since her pregnancy, but tobacco was a harder habit to break. “You didn’t think we should talk it over? The last I heard we were going to be married in a few days.”
“Are going to be.” He took her by the shoulders then, shaking her, afraid that she, like so many others, would turn away from him. “Goddammit, Bev, I wanted to talk to you. I couldn’t.” He released her to spring up and kick at the sample books. “I walked into that filthy, stinking flat intending to do no more than threaten Jane if she didn’t stop harassing us. She was exactly the same, screaming one minute, pleading the next. She said Emma was in the bedroom, but she wasn’t there. She was hiding.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Jesus, Bev, I found the kid hiding under the sink like a frightened animal.”
“Oh God.” Bev dropped her head on her knees.
“Jane was going to beat her—she was going to beat that tiny little girl because she was frightened. When I saw her … Bev, look at me. Please. When I saw her, I saw myself. Can you understand?”
“I want to.” She shook her head, still fighting tears. “No, I don’t. I want things to be the way they were when you left this morning.”
“Do you think I should have walked out on her?”
“No. Yes.” She pressed her fisted hands on each side of her head. “I don’t know. We should have talked. We could have arranged some sum of settlement.”
He knelt beside her to take her hands. “I was going to leave, drive around a little and think before I came home to talk to you. Jane said she’d kill herself.”
“Oh, Bri.”
“I might have handled that. I think I was furious enough to egg her on. But then, she said she’d kill Emma, too.”
Bev pressed a hand against her stomach, over the child that was growing inside her, a child that was already beautifully real to her. “No. Oh no, she couldn’t have meant it.”
“She did.” He tightened his grip on her hands. “Whether she would have followed through, I don’t know. But at that moment, she meant it. I couldn’t leave Emma there, Bev. I couldn’t have left a stranger’s child there.”
“No.” She took her hands from his to lift them to his face. Her Brian, she thought. Her sweet, caring Brian. “You couldn’t have. How did you get her away from Jane?”
“She agreed,” Brian said shortly. “Pete’s having documents drawn up so it will all be legal.”
“Bri.” Her hands firmed on his cheeks. She was in love, but she wasn’t blind. “How?”
“I wrote her a check for a hundred thousand pounds. In the agreement she’ll get twenty-five thousand a year every year until Emma reaches twenty-one.”
Bev let her hands drop away. “Christ, Brian. You bought that baby?”
“You can’t buy what’s already yours.” He bit off the words because it made him feel dirty. “I gave Jane enough to be sure she would stay away from Emma, from us.” He laid a hand on her stomach. “From ours. Listen to me. There’s going to be press, some of it will be ugly. I’m asking you to stick with me, ride it out. And to give Emma a chance.”
“Where would I go?”
“Bev—”
She shook her head. She would stick with him, but she needed a little time yet. “I’ve been reading a lot of books lately. I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t leave a toddler alone for this long.”
“Right. I’ll go take a look.”
“We’ll take a look.”
She was still on the sofa, her arms curled tight around Charlie. The blare of the television didn’t disturb her as she slept. There were tears drying on her cheeks. Seeing them, Bev’s heart broke a little.
“I guess we’d better get the decorators busy on a bedroom upstairs.”
EMMA LAY IN the bed between fresh soft sheets and kept her eyes tightly closed. She knew if she opened them, it would be dark. There were things that hid in the dark.
She kept a hammerlock on Charlie’s neck and listened. Sometimes the things made swishing noises.
She couldn’t hear them now, but she knew they were waiting. Waiting for her to open her eyes. A whimper escaped and she bit her lip. Mam always got mad if she cried at night. Mam would come in and shake her hard, tell her she was stupid and a baby. The things would slink under the bed or into the corners while her mam was there.
Emma buried her face in Charlie’s familiar, stale-smelling fur.
She remembered that she was in a different place. The place where the man from the pictures lived. Some of the fear vanished in curiosity. He said she could call him Da. That was a funny name. Keeping her eyes closed, she tried it, murmuring it into the dark like a chant.
They had eaten fish and chips in the kitchen with the dark-haired lady. There had been music. It seemed music played in the house all the time. Whenever the Da man spoke, it sounded like music.
The lady had seemed unhappy even when she had smiled. Emma wondered if the lady was going to wait until they were alone before she hit.
He’d given her a bath. Emma remembered that he’d had a funny look on his face, but his hands hadn’t pinched and he hadn’t gotten much soap in her eyes.
He asked about her bruises, and she had told him what her mam had warned her to say if anyone asked. She was clumsy. She fell down.
Emma had seen the angry look come into his eyes, but he hadn’t smacked her.
He’d given her a shirt to wear, and she had giggled because it had come all the way to her toes.
The lady had come with him when he had put her in bed. She’d sat on the edge and smiled when he had told a story about castles and princesses.
But they had been gone when she’d awakened. They’d been gone and the room was dark. She was afraid. Afraid the things would get her, snap their big teeth, eat her. She was afraid her mam would come and slap her because she wasn’t home in her own bed.
What was that? She was sure she had heard a whispering noise in the corner. Breathing through her teeth, she opened one eye. The shadows shifted, towering, reaching. Muffling her sobs against Charlie, Emma tried to make herself smaller, so small she couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be eaten by all the ugly, squishy things that hid in the dark. Her mam had sent them because she’d gone with the man in the pictures.
The terror built so that she was shuddering, sweating. It burst out of her in one high wail as she scrambled out of bed and stumbled into the hallway. Something crashed.
She lay sprawled, clutching the dog and waiting for the worst.
Lights came on. They made her blink. The old fear dissolved in a new one as she heard voices. Emma scooted back against the wall and sat frozen, staring at the shards of china from the vase she’d broken.
They would beat her. Send her away. Shut her up in a dark room to be eaten.
“Emma?” Still dazed with sleep, floating a bit on the joint he’d smoked before he and Bev had made love, Brian walked toward her. She curled into herself, bracing for the blow. “Are you all right?”
“They broke it,” she told him, hoping to save herself.
“They?”
“The dark things. Mam sent them to get me.”
“Oh, Emma.” He dropped his cheek to the top of her head.
“Brian, what—” Still belting her robe, Bev rushed out. She saw what was left of her Dresden vase, gave a little sigh, then crossed to them, avoiding the shards. “Is she hurt?”
“I don’t think so. She’s terrified.”
“Let’s have a look.” She took Emma’s hand. It was fisted, her arm taut as a wire. “Emma.” Her voice had firmed, but there was no meanness in it. Cautious, Emma lifted her head. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Still wary, Emma pointed to her knee. There were a few drops of blood on the white T-shirt. Bev lifted the hem. It was a long scratch, but shallow. Still, she imagined most children would have wailed over it. Perhaps Emma didn’t because it was nothing compared to the bruises Brian had found on the girl when he’d bathed her. In a gesture more automatic than maternal, Bev lowered her head to kiss the hurt. When she saw Emma’s mouth drop open in shock, her heart was lost.
“All right, sweetie, we’ll take care of it.” She picked Emma up and nuzzled her neck.
“There are things in the dark,” Emma whispered.
“Your daddy will chase them away. Won’t you, Bri?”
The Irish in him, or perhaps the drug, made him weepy when he looked at the woman he loved holding his child. “Sure. I’ll chop them up and toss them out.”
“After you do, you’d better sweep this up,” Bev told him.
Emma spent the night, the first of her new life, snuggled with her family in a big brass bed.
Chapter Three
AS SHE HAD every day for nine days, Emma sat on the big window seat in the front parlor and looked through the mullioned glass. She stared beyond the edges of the garden with its nodding foxglove and bushy columbine to the long graveled drive. And waited.
Her bruises were fading, but she hadn’t noticed. No one in the big new house had hit her. Yet. She’d been given tea every day, and presents of sugar plums and china dolls from the friends who came and went so casually in her father’s house.
It was all very confusing for Emma. She was given a bath every day, even if she hadn’t been playing in the dirt, and clean-smelling clothes to wear. No one called her a stupid baby because she was frightened of the dark. The lamp with the pink shade was turned on in her room every night, and there were little rosebuds on the walls. The monsters hardly ever came into her new room.
She was afraid to like it, because she was sure her mam would be coming soon to take her away again.
Bev had driven her in the pretty car to go shopping in a big store with bright clothes and beautiful smells. She had bought bags and boxes of things for Emma. Emma liked a pink organdy dress with a frilly skirt the best. She’d felt like a princess when she’d worn it the day her da and Bev had been married. She’d had shiny black shoes with little straps as well, and white tights. No one had scolded when she’d smudged the knees.
The wedding had seemed very strange and solemn to Emma, with everyone standing out in the garden and the sun fighting off clouds. One of the men everyone called Stevie had worn a long white shirt and baggy white pants. He’d sung in a husky voice while strumming a glossy white guitar. Emma had thought he was an angel, but when she’d asked Johnno, he’d only laughed.
Bev had worn a circle of flowers in her hair and a flowing multicolored dress that had swept her ankles. To Emma, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. For the first time in her young life, she had been struck by true envy. To be beautiful, and grown-up, and standing beside Da. She’d never be afraid again, or hungry again. And like the girls in the fairy tales Brian was so fond of, she would be happy ever after.
When the rain had started, they had gone inside to have cake and champagne in a room with fabric books and flowers and fresh paint. More guitars had been played and people had sung along and laughed. Beautiful women, in slim short skirts or flowing cotton dresses, had roamed the house. Some of them had cooed over her or patted her head, but for the most part she’d been left to herself.
No one noticed that she’d had three pieces of cake and smeared icing on the collar of her new dress. There had been no other little girls to play with, and Emma was too young to be dazzled by the names and faces of the luminaries of the music business who had wandered through the house. Bored, a little queasy from cake, she’d gone off to bed, lulled by the sounds from the party.
Later, she’d woken. Restless, she had dragged Charlie out of bed to go downstairs. But the heavy scent of pot smoke had stopped her. She was familiar with it, too familiar. Like the stink of gin, the sweet scent of marijuana was firmly linked in her mind with her mother, and the shakings and beatings that had come whenever Jane had crashed from her highs.
Miserable, she had huddled on the steps, cooing reassurances to Charlie. If her mam was here now, she would take her away. Emma had known she would never again wear the pretty pink dress, or hear her da’s voice, or go into the big, bright stores with Bev.
She’d cringed when she heard the footsteps on the stairs, and waited for the worst.
“Hello there, Emma luv.” Soaring, at peace with the world, Brian had dropped down beside her. “What’re you doing?”
“Nothing.” She’d curled tighter over the stuffed dog. She made herself small, very small. If they couldn’t see you, they couldn’t hurt you.
“It’s quite the party.” Leaning back on his elbows, he’d grinned at the ceiling. Never in his wildest fantasies had he believed he would one day entertain giants like McCartney, Jagger, Daltrey, in his own house. And his wedding, too. Good Christ, he was married. A married man with a gold ring on his finger.
Tapping his bare foot to the beat of the music that crashed its way up the stairs, he’d studied the ring. No going back, he’d thought comfortably. He was Catholic enough, and idealistic enough to believe that now that the deed was done, it was forever.
It was one of the biggest days of his life, he’d thought as he’d fumbled in his shin pocket for the pack of cigarettes he’d left downstairs. On
e of the biggest, he’d thought again with a sigh. And if his father had been too drunk or too lazy to pick up the bloody tickets he’d sent to Ireland, what did it matter? Brian had all the family he needed right here.
He’d pushed thoughts of yesterdays out of his mind. From now on there would only be tomorrows. A lifetime of them.
“How about it, Emma? Want to go down and dance at your da’s wedding?”
She’d kept her shoulders rounded and barely shook her head. The smoke twining mystically in the air had made her temples throb.
“Want some cake?” He had reached out to give her hair a gentle tug, but she’d cringed away. “What’s this?” Baffled, he’d patted her shoulder.
Already queasy, Emma’s stomach had rolled with a combination of terror and too many sweets. After one hiccup, she’d lost her cake and tea ail over her father’s lap. Wretched, she managed a single moan before curling back over Charlie. As she lay too sick to defend herself from the beating she was certain was coming, he’d begun to laugh.
