“Sit up.”
I lift my body to a slouch.
“Enough,” my mom barks. “Snap out of it and get it together. Addie and Drew need you, and that baby needs you. Now get off your tuchis, take control of the situation, and get your life back on course.” She glances at my bulging belly. “Before it’s too late.”
I stare at her blankly, and my head falls back to the cool oak of the table. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is she wants me to do. My kids are gone, I have no money, no job, no hope for a future. I’m facing one felony charge and two misdemeanor charges and looking at possible time in prison. Addie and Drew need me, this baby needs me—I agree—but what the hell am I supposed to do about it?
* * *
I borrow my mom’s car and drive two and a half miles to my old home. Gordon’s still in Spokane with the kids, because Addie won’t be well enough to travel for a few more days. Mostly I drive there out of habit. I have nowhere else to go, and I can’t stand to be around my mom’s nagging for one more minute.
I stare in shock at the stucco and glass masterpiece that was once my greatest pride aside from my kids. The lawn is brown, the shades drawn, and planted in the middle of the thirsty grass is a real estate sign with the words “Short Sale” across the top and the word “Sold” across the smiling face of a man named Jim Stanaland.
“Jillian?”
I turn to see Michelle, long-legged, tan, and beautiful—upsettingly unchanged from a lifetime ago—jogging toward me.
She stops, leaving a yard of sidewalk between us. Her focus moves from my face to my stomach and her pretty hazel eyes grow, then she forces them to normal and returns her gaze to my face. “You’re back,” she says. “It’s good to see you. I barely recognized you.”
I’m surprised she did. I’m a pathetic sight—my chopped, poorly dyed hair, unwashed for three days, my teenage clothes squeezed over my pregnant body, my makeup-less face unable to hide my humility and shame.
“He found you,” she says, and I’m shocked by the candidness and the sympathetic tone.
I nod.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and I believe she is. She turns to look at our house. “It’s been empty for a month.”
“Claudia didn’t move in?” I ask.
Michelle shakes her head. “I heard Gordon moved in with her, though he hasn’t been around much. Was home for a few days about a week ago, but then he left again. I only know because Bob’s sister has the same housekeeper as Claudia.”
Silence hangs between us.
“He has the kids?” she asks.
“Except for this one.” I smooth my stomach. “Addie got sick. It’s how he found us. She has…” My throat tightens around the word. “Cancer.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, and with the utterance, my bones melt, and Michelle is catching me and lowering me to the curb. She sits beside me.
“She’s going to be okay,” I say, hoping to ease the panicked worry in Michelle’s eyes and to reassure myself. “The doctor said he got it all, but she doesn’t have a kidney. You can live without a kidney, that’s what he said.”
“God gave us an extra,” Michelle comforts, her arm around my shoulder, her hand holding me tight enough that I can feel her heart beating through her tank top, pounding for Addie and for me.
“I haven’t seen her since I took her to the hospital.”
“But she’s okay?”
I nod. “Gordon wouldn’t let me stay, had me arrested right then at the hospital. I’m out on bail. Which means, you, Michelle, are talking to a bona fide accused felon—a kidnapping, child-endangering criminal…”
I’m laughing and crying at the same time, and rambling like a lunatic. Like a New Orleans flood levee, the torrent of the confession is too strong, and in an incoherent exorcism of blurts and spurts, I confess everything I’ve done and haven’t done, all the mistakes I made and all the diabolical ways I tried to fix them that led me to this horrible place, where I’m sitting on the curb in front of my house that’s no longer mine, spilling my guts to a woman I barely know.
“…so you should run, Michelle. Run as fast and far as you can, because I’m like the plague, everyone who comes in contact with me gets destroyed.”
Michelle ignores my deranged rant and her arm continues to hug me, and she rocks me back and forth and tells me it’s okay. “You don’t look all that dangerous to me,” she says.
I try to disengage, to push her away, but her arm holds tight.
“I’ll take my chances.”
“You don’t even know me.”
She shrugs. “I have good instincts.”
I stop struggling, and finally, she releases me, and we sit in silence looking toward the park, where seven weeks ago I told Addie and Drew we were going on an adventure.
Michelle chuckles. I look over at her, and she’s shaking her head and still laughing through her nose.
I can’t imagine what’s funny.
“I actually didn’t understand most of what you just told me,” she says, “and yet, somehow, I feel like I understand you perfectly.”
And I have to smile as well. “Crazy understands Crazy?”
“More like, At Your Wit’s End understands At Your Wit’s End.”
I feel a little less foolish. I stare at the hill that Addie and Drew loved to roll down until they were so dizzy they were drunk with silliness when they stood up.
“I should have taken her to the doctor sooner,” I mumble to the hill. “I just thought it was the flu.”
“Did it seem like the flu?”
“When it happened? Yeah, it did.” And this time when I tell her the story, it’s coherent. I tell it in reverse, starting with rushing Addie to the hospital after she threw up in Paul’s room. I tell her about Paul and Goat and fishing in the river. I tell her about our late-night Uno games and about Addie almost drowning. I tell her how we ended up where we did and how Gordon almost found us our first night on the run.
Then I hesitate. Jeffrey dead in the gymnasium fills my memory, then in hyperspeed, my mind replays every episode of abuse, Gordon’s guns, his hands on my throat, his threats. I remember each moment in high definition, as if I more than lived it—I see it, I feel it—the bruises still hurt, I feel his fists, his kicks. I hear every threat, remember every moment of fear. Each horror of the last nine years flashes through my mind with impossible clarity—but as near as it is, I can’t reach it or bring it forward to speak of it out loud.
“He hurt you,” Michelle says beside me, bringing me out of my frozen stupor. It’s not a question, but a proclamation.
My head nods an inch, and my eyes slide to Michelle, whose own eyes now stare at the glowing horizon. And suddenly, I’m not alone. Michelle understands. Michelle more than understands, Michelle’s been there.
I stare at her. It doesn’t make sense. Bob, her husband, has the spine of an octopus and the impetus of a sloth. I can’t imagine him even saying a harsh word and definitely can’t imagine him hurting Michelle. Even I could take Bob in a fight, and Michelle’s a much stronger woman than me.
She answers my unspoken skepticism. “My father,” she says in a voice so quiet I’m unsure she spoke, then she stands and offers a hand to help me to my feet.
She releases her grip, but I hold tight. “How’d you get away?” I ask.
She shrugs. “He died. Got caught on the anchor of his boat when he was spear fishing and drowned.”
And I don’t know what’s funny about that, but something is because we both laugh.
“I’ve got to go,” she says. “Bob’s going to think I fell off a cliff.”
Panic fills my face.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “What you told me won’t go any further than this curb.”
“How will you explain to Bob why you’ve been gone so long?” We’ve been talking at least an hour.
“I’ll tell him it’s none of his business, if he asks, which he won’t. Or, if I really want to toy with him, I’ll tell him I was contemplating my life. That’ll freak him out.”
I manage a small, grateful smile.
“Keep them on their toes,” she says as she turns to trot back toward her house. She looks over her shoulder as she starts her jog. “That’s the secret,” she yells. “They may be stronger, but we’re smarter. Let them think they’re in charge, when really you’re the one steering the boat.”
S
till unready to return to my mom’s pestering and my dad’s worry, I drive aimlessly along the coast until the sun gives up its fight and darkness obscures the waves and the view.
An hour later, I’m in front of Sherman McGregor’s mansion. I’m relieved it doesn’t appear to be shrouded in mourning. The downstairs’ lights blaze, and an upstairs’ window is open. It’s been seven weeks since I left. I’m glad I’m not too late, that I still have the chance to say good-bye.
Yes, I want to see Sherman out of compassion, but my motives are also selfish. Sherman’s possibly the only person in my life who doesn’t know what I’ve done. I want a break from the madness, a moment to pretend I am who I used to be—a respected member of society, a married, churchgoing, law-abiding, God-fearing citizen with two beautiful children, a husband, and an enviable life.
My knock is answered by the same nurse I met before I left, and she’s definitely surprised to see me.
“Thought you gave up on him like everyone else,” she says. Her name tag reads, “Greta Thompson, R.N.” She’s a substantial woman, her butt high and her large breasts hanging low, making it appear as though she has no waist.
“I’ve been out of town.”
“Well, he’ll be glad you’re here. Never asks about his no-good sons, but he asks about you.” There’s a slight southern drawl to her words and more than an ounce of feeling for Sherman, and it makes me like her very much.
I follow her up the stairs to Sherman’s room and stifle a gasp at the skeleton lying in the massive four-poster bed. He’s less than half the man he was before I left. His lids droop over his bulging eyes, and the skin on his arms and face is so loose it appears to be melting. I take his thin, veined hand in mine. It’s warm, and the fingers curl around my palm as his eyes flutter open.
“Hey,” I say brightly, masking my pity.
He smiles, then coughs, then groans, then resumes his thin smile. “Thought you ditched me,” he says.
“I needed to go out of town. There was a family emergency, and it took longer than I planned to get things sorted out.”
“All’s good now?”
I nod, then change the subject. “Did you finish Hemingway?”
His eyes shake more than his head. “Greta reads like my grandson. She tries, but Ernest needs to be read right.”
I move to the bookshelf across the room, find
Death in the Afternoon
, and open to where we left off. Fifteen minutes later, Sherman’s asleep. I stay watching him for another half hour, hoping he can feel my presence, hoping he knows he’s not alone.
C
onnor happily agreed to meet me at Las Brisas Cantina after work for a drink.
He looks wonderful. His blond hair has a summer glint it didn’t have when I left, and his skin glows bronze.
After our kiss-kiss on each other’s cheeks, Connor’s skin smoother than mine, we’re shown to an outside table that overlooks Heisler Park and the waves. Connor orders a margarita and some chips, and I order a virgin piña colada.
“You look amazing,” he says, and I laugh. “I don’t mean the clothes, those are a crime of fashion…” I’m wearing a pair of my mom’s Lycra workout sweats that barely expand enough to reach around my growing center and a batik tunic with wood beads at the neckline that I bought at an African bazaar when I was sixteen. “…but your skin looks fabulous and I love the hair, very Liza Minnelli. Though it looks like you put on a few pounds in the middle.”
“What a mess, huh?” I say.
“Gordon’s?”
I look at him and he shakes his head.
“Wow, Jinks, I like drama, but only the melodrama variety, the kind I concoct myself. This is like a poorly scripted episode of
Melrose Place
. You’d even give Lindsay Lohan a run for her money on screwing up your life.”
“He killed Jeffrey,” I defend.
Connor’s nod is noncommittal. “It was investigated as a mugging.”
“Was?”
“It’s cold now.”
I close my eyes at the injustice and say a silent prayer for Jeffrey and one for myself, begging forgiveness for my cowardice. More guilt compounded onto the already behemoth load I carry for what happened to Jeffrey.
“Jinks?” he says. I refocus my eyes. “Have you considered that maybe that’s what it was, a robbery gone bad? Wrong place, wrong time?”
My head shakes back and forth too adamantly.
I can’t be wrong. The ramifications of doing what I did without being justified are too great—stealing Addie and Drew from their father, uprooting them, putting them in danger, not taking Addie to the doctor in time.
When I first saw Jeffrey dead, I was so certain, but time and distance distort things, or perhaps clarify things, and it’s hard to maintain the same conviction.
“Okay, well, as your lawyer, I’m telling you to keep your suspicions to yourself. You’ve got enough to deal with without implicating yourself in Jeffrey’s death.”
My eyes widen.
“Settle down. I know you didn’t shoot him. I’m just saying, you need to stay out of it so no one else thinks you did.”
I nod. I’m almost surprised I’m not being investigated as a suspect, that shooting Jeffrey isn’t being added to my list of crimes: drunk driving, child endangerment, kidnapping…murder. I’m ashamed I’m not brave enough to tell what I know to the police, but I know Connor’s right, going to the police will only implicate me. If Gordon did this, he’s too smart to be caught. If there were any evidence, Gordon would already have been investigated, but as always, he’s gotten away with it and no one even suspects him of being anything but what he portrays himself to be, a doting father with a crazy wife who tried to steal his kids from him. He’s brilliant and ruthless—a consummate psychopath.
“How’s Ad?” Connor asks, changing subjects and bringing me from one horror to another.
“She’s okay for now. She’s recovering from the surgery and it will be a few days before she’s strong enough to fly home.”
Connor takes my hand. “Hang in there. I can’t imagine how hard this is for you, but you need to hang in there.”