Thorns on Wildflower Island

by Michelle Files

  Marshall jumped up out of his chair and started pacing around the room. Eliza sat there for a minute, just watching him. It was Marshall’s go-to move whenever he got anxious or stressed about something.

  “Well, if he calls back, find out exactly what he wants. I’m sure there is something that he wants,” Marshall told her, pacing even faster around the room.

  “Really Marshall, you need to calm down. Come over here and sit.” She patted the seat of the chair that he had just vacated.

  Marshall looked over, took a deep breath, walked back, and sat down. He was clearly agitated. His wife took his hands in hers in a gentle, loving manner. It did seem to work, a little bit at least. He gave her a half crooked smile.

  “What would I do without you?” Marshall gently asked.

  Eliza just smiled at her husband. She could think of a couple of quips, such as reminding him how lucky he was to have found her, and that she was the best thing that ever happened to him, and such. But she thought better of it. This wasn’t the time or place. They needed to keep on the task at hand, and not get caught up in wordplay.

  “I know what he wants,” Eliza told Marshall as she continued holding his hands. “Well I think I do anyway. He wants money. What else could it be?”

  “What?! We don’t have any money! At least not the kind of money someone would be trying to extort out of us!”

  Marshall jumped up and began pacing again, knocking his chair over in the process. All of the yelling, not to mention the loud bang that the chair made as it hit the kitchen tiles, startled their son, and he began wailing.

  “Ugh, see what you’ve done?” Eliza walked over and picked up their son. “Can you just calm down now? We need to talk rationally and figure this out.”

  Marshall nodded and picked up the toppled chair. He sat down and began tapping his fingers on the table, nervously.

  “I’m sure he expects us to get it from your father. Do you think he would help us?” Eliza asked.

  Marshall’s father, Murray Porter, was loaded. He owned half the town of Sea Cove and it embarrassed Marshall to no end. Murray was the type of person that didn’t take crap from anyone, and Marshall was terrified of him. They never had much of a relationship while Marshall was growing up, as his father spent 16 hour workdays running his real estate empire. He owned quite a bit of the commercial property in town, making him pretty much every shopkeeper’s landlord.

  Murray was an overbearing father while Marshall was growing up. He wasn’t abusive, but was gone so much, and worked in his home office when he was at home, that Marshall barely knew his father. When Murray did take the time to pay a bit of attention to his son, it was usually to admonish him for his lack of ambition. He was the kind of old fashioned, domineering type, whose affection was handed out in direct proportion to your success. Having a son who was none of those things, was easily dismissed.

  Murray just couldn’t understand why his son did not want to follow him into his world of real estate development. That was the last thing Marshall wanted. He had no desire to work for his father. Ever. He just wanted to get away from him. Marshall could see how his father treated people. He was a bully. He bulldozed his way over his employees and tenants. He didn’t quite resort to knee breaking when tenants were late with their rent, but the threats his ‘hired guns’ made, certainly got the rent paid in a timely manner.

  Marshall recalled one time when his father had him tag along with the ‘mean guys,’ as 10 year old Marshall called them. They went to a nice little bakery in the heart of town. The mean guys met with the owner, a sweet little old lady, named Hazel. They told her that if rent was not paid by the next day, it would be ‘a shame if your husband had some sort of accident.’ Even 10 year old Marshall got the fact that they were threatening her, without being overt about it. The men were all brawn, and not much in the brains department, but they knew enough not to actually make a direct threat to the woman. They knew that it would be easy to have cameras that recorded sound, just about anywhere. They didn’t want to go to jail. Not that they really expected Hazel to turn them in. They knew she was terrified of them.

  That incident really put Marshall’s father into perspective for him. Even at such a tender age, he knew he would never be like his father.

  Marshall’s mother died when he was very young, so his father was all he had. Marshall ended up raising himself for the most part. He couldn’t wait to move away from his father’s sporadic influence the second that he had the chance. So, when Eliza agreed to marry him during their senior year of high school, he was thrilled. He could start a whole new life with the woman he loved. He got a job and rarely spoke to his father again. He certainly never took anything from him, which is why they only had one car and lived off the money they made. He wanted nothing from his father.

  “I’m not asking my father for money,” Marshall proclaimed. Eliza could see that he meant it too. Marshall would never ask Murray for anything, ever.

  “We don’t know for sure what he is talking about or what he even wants. But, I have to tell you something else. It might be why he is harassing me, and not you,” Eliza said.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked her. Marshall began pacing the floor once again.

  Eliza began fidgeting and looking around the room. She needed something to look at, besides her husband. She couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes and was terrified to tell Marshall her story. She knew she couldn’t get out of it though. It was time he knew. She picked up Zachary and put him back in his high chair with a tray full of snacks. She then walked over and sat on the couch.

  Eliza thought for a moment about the first time she met Marshall, when they were both still in high school. He was the rebel. The one with the long hair and ‘who gives a damn’ attitude. The one everyone wanted to be. He was so handsome, so remote, so insufferably cool. And she couldn’t get enough of him. Now, she almost wished that she had resisted all of those teenage hormones, and gone another way in her life. It was too late now for regrets though.

  “Um, well, I have something to tell you.”

  “You said that already. What do you need to tell me?” he asked her. Marshall stopped pacing and stood directly in front of the couch, facing Eliza. His body language was overbearing and it made her very uncomfortable.

  “Okay, okay, I’m getting to it. Before I start, please promise me that you won’t get mad.”

  “Eliza, please just tell me what it is.” Marshall was starting to get angry. He was tired of Eliza playing games and just wanted her to get on with whatever it was that she needed to tell him.

  “Okay fine.” Eliza looked down at her lap. “There is a slight possibility that Zachary is not your son.” Eliza said it so quietly that she wasn’t even sure Marshall heard her.

  He did.

  “What?! What is that supposed to mean?”

  He seemed to be looming over her at that point and it made Eliza shrink further into the deep cushions of the couch. Looking down in shame, she couldn’t summon the nerve to look him in the eyes. It took everything she had to keep her entire body from shaking uncontrollably.

  “Eliza, answer me!”

  Finally looking up at him, “Marshall, please sit down so we can talk about this calmly.”

  Marshall sat on the coffee table, facing her. His piercing stare never left her and it was unnerving. He said nothing, but raised his eyebrows in a questioning manner.

  “Okay.” She leaned forward and patted his knee. He quickly looked down at her hand and back up to her face. Still he said nothing. “I kind of slept with someone else. Once.” She held up her index finger for emphasis. “Now I’m not positive who his father is.” She began chewing on her lower lip.

  “What the hell? When did this happen?” His leg started twitching, like he was about to jump up.

  “I don’t remember exactly. It was not long after we got married. We were fighting a lot and I was really upset one day and…”

  “Who was it?” he asked
, much calmer than she expected.

  “Um, I don’t want to tell you that. What’s the point?”

  “What’s the point? The point is that some other man had sex with my wife and I need to deal with it. That’s what the point is!”

  That time he did jump up off the coffee table, making Eliza cower. He didn’t hit her, but she thought he might. As if right on cue, Zachary started crying. He was still in the high chair and had run out of snacks. It was Eliza’s chance to cut short the conversation and get away from Marshall’s fury. Temporarily at least.

  “I need to get the baby. It’s time for his nap,” she said, as she jumped up from the couch and walked to the kitchen. She didn’t dare look back at her husband. She began to deliberately find tasks to occupy herself. Anything to avoid this conversation with her husband. Eliza began looking around the kitchen and living room. “Where is that blue elephant toy of his? He’s been crying for it at bedtime.”

  “How the hell should I know. Just put him to bed and don’t worry about it,” he snapped at her.

  “Don’t be such an as…” Eliza shut her mouth before the entire sentence was out. It wasn’t going to help matters if she started calling him names now.

  Marshall’s head snapped around when he realized what she was about to say. He narrowed his eyes at her. Marshall didn’t say anything more, but the anger on his face worried Eliza. Or was it anguish she saw? She wasn’t sure. She certainly could understand either one.

  Chapter 10

  Over the next couple of weeks, while Eliza and Marshall were trying to figure out what to do, Eliza received several more calls from the unknown person. Marshall never received any calls, by phone or otherwise, other than several that hung up when he answered. This was a never ending source of irritation between Mr. and Mrs. Porter, especially since she still refused to name the possible father of their child.

  Eliza did tell Marshall about every call she received. She had decided to keep him in the loop about everything. Well almost everything. The calls were increasingly hostile and threatening. This worried Eliza. She began doubting her earlier conviction that it was Nathan calling her. From everything that she had been hearing about him, Nathan was a really nice guy, someone that didn’t have an enemy in the world. It just seemed to Eliza that he was an unlikely candidate as the person that would be making threatening harassment calls.

  She had to admit that she could have been completely wrong about that whole situation. Marshall didn’t agree with her about that. He was still sure it was the nurse. Though she didn’t know why.

  The caller never once mentioned money though, which they thought was odd. He never did come out and say exactly what secret he had either. But, he definitely knew who they were, and knew something. Eliza tried to explain that they didn’t have her father-in-law’s money, and had no access to it either.

  The caller seemed unconcerned about their money situation. He only seemed to be interested in harassing them, and they couldn’t figure out why.

  The problem was that Marshall and Eliza did have a secret. A big one. They couldn’t figure out how in the world anyone could know about it though. As far as they knew, they were the only two people involved and neither had told anyone. Or had they? The stress of the calls and threats, and the whole issue of paternity, caused them to start mistrusting the other. And mistrusting each other made them fight. And once they got going….

  The fight they had that night was louder and more brutal than usual. So loud that the neighbors called the sheriff’s office. The sheriff himself rarely responded to domestic disputes. They were what he hated most about his job, so whenever he could avoid it, he didn’t deal with them. He figured that’s what he had deputies for.

  When the deputies showed up at the door, Marshall was bruised and disheveled. It was very clear to the deputies that there was a problem just by the way Marshall was acting.

  “Um, hi officers.” Marshall smiled as he stuck his head into the narrow doorway. He was trying to partially hide behind the barely open front door.

  “Mr. Porter, we got a call from your neighbors that there was a disturbance going on over here. Can you please open the door for us?” the shorter of the deputies asked sternly. It sounded more like an order than a request.

  Marshall didn’t budge. “Everything is fine here. The neighbors must be mistaken.” Marshall tried his best to sound calm, taking in deep, slow breaths.

  “Sir, where is your wife?” the much taller deputy asked him. Neither deputy had introduced himself.

  “She’s in the bathroom. Really, everything is fine here.” Marshall forced his voice to sound nonchalant about the whole thing. “We had an argument, but that’s all. She’s fine. We are both fine.”

  It wasn’t working. The deputies had seen plenty of domestic disturbances over the years, and knew better than to take one person’s word for it. There was always another person involved. Sometimes that person didn’t want to talk to them, and sometimes they couldn’t. The deputies needed to find out which one it was.

  “Sir, we need to talk to your wife. We have to do a welfare check on her. You need to open the door. Right now.” The taller deputy reached over his partner and pushed on the front door. He didn’t shove it, he just wanted to make his point that they were coming in, whether Marshall liked it or not.

  “Okay, okay,” Marshall said and reluctantly opened the door for the officers to enter. He stepped to the side as they walked in.

  “Sweetheart, the police are here and want to talk to you!” he called to the other room. He kept his voice light and airy.

  “I’ll be right there!” she called back, in her sweetest voice.

  Marshall watched as the deputies walked around the house. They weren’t opening drawers or anything, but it annoyed him to no end that they were snooping around where they didn’t belong. It was his house and they had no business there. But he knew there was nothing he could do about it. If he didn’t let them do what they were doing, he knew that he could very well end up in a cell for the night. And that was the last thing he needed.

  The deputies were only there to make sure his wife was not in danger. When Marshall thought about it, he could understand that. All they knew was that the neighbors called worried about Eliza. Marshall wasn’t really that rational though. He was just pissed off that they were walking around where they didn’t belong, and weren’t wanted. Marshall followed them around the house. He didn’t want them touching any of his stuff.

  The deputies were trained to look for additional people in the house, as well as guns, knives, anything that could be used as a weapon. During their walk through, they noticed there were toys and a high chair. Before they could ask anymore questions though, Eliza walked out of the bathroom. She had done her best to clean up and had even changed her clothes and put on a little makeup. She was a bit bruised, but otherwise seemed fine.

  “Hi. I’m Eliza Porter. How can I help you?” she ran her fingers through her short hair as she spoke.

  She knew perfectly well why they were there. It wasn’t the first time the neighbors had overheard their disagreements and called the sheriff’s office.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?” the shorter officer asked her.

  “Oh, I’m fine. I’m sorry that the neighbors bothered you. They get worked up when we have an argument. But, there’s no problem here. We’re just loud and I’m sorry about that.” She waved her hand dismissively, trying her very best to sound casual about the whole thing.

  One of the deputies looked at her closely, while the other kept a close eye on Marshall. “Ma’am, you have what looks like the start of a black eye. Can you tell us what happened?” the shorter one asked again. He seemed to be the one in charge, asking all the questions.

  “Oh this?” Eliza put her hand up to her left eye. “It’s nothing. I tripped on the stair landing and my face hit the railing. It was an accident, honestly.”

  The officers were not buying it. But if both the husband and wife deni
ed that anything happened, there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t press charges against someone if there was no proof of any wrongdoing. And it would certainly be pointless in this case, as neither would ever testify against the other.

  “I see. Does a child live here?” The taller officer finally chimed in.

  Marshall and Eliza looked at each other, while the deputies watched. No emotion showed on their faces. Marshall turned back to the officers.

  “Yes, we have a baby. Why?” Marshall asked him, narrowing his eyes at both of them.

  “Where is the child now? We would like to make sure he or she is all right.”

  “Okay. He’s upstairs. I’ll go get him,” Eliza volunteered. “He’s taking a nap, so give me a minute. Okay?” She looked to the officers for confirmation. They both nodded approval.

  Eliza turned to get Zachary, while all three of them watched her ascend the stairs. The deputies clearly did not trust anything either one of them said. Or did. While she was fetching the boy, the taller officer started talking again.

  “You know, this is not the first call we’ve gotten regarding domestic disturbances at this house. At some point we may have no other choice than to arrest you. Possibly even both of you. And if we do that, your child will go to social services. Is that what you want?” The officer stared Marshall down. He wanted to make sure that Marshall understood exactly what he was telling him.

  He did.

  “I know. I know.” Marshall held up both hands in a surrender pose. “We are just loud when we argue, that’s all. And I guess we do argue a lot. I promise that we will try to keep it down,” Marshall answered back.

  “See that you do.” The officer crossed his arms in front of him and widened his stance.

  Marshall could see that the cop was just trying to intimidate him, but he went ahead and played along. No need to piss them off now, he thought. He might still end up in that cell for the night. Marshall turned his head and rolled his eyes just as Eliza was coming down the stairs with a sleepy Zachary in her arms. The officers looked up at her and did not notice Marshall.