Shelter Me (28 page)

"You don't owe him anything," I insisted. "Trust me. You really don't. Not loyalty, not faithfulness, nothing."

"That's not true." She shook her head, violently. "It's more complicated...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have stopped. I shouldn't have let this happen. Please, please don't tell anyone."

"Of course I won't." I felt like I was losing my mind. "Do you really think I would?"

"I don't know!" She was sobbing again. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I just don't..."

"Stay here," I said. "Talk to me. We'll figure this out."

"I can't think straight," she said. "Not right now. Not with you. I'm sorry, Jacob, but I have to go."

She ran out the door, leaving it hanging open behind her. I stood there for a moment before I finally closed it.

I felt sick. Of course I'd wanted them to break up. I wanted it more than anything, but never like this. I never wanted her to get hurt. Whatever he'd said to her on the phone, it probably wasn't as bad as the guilt and anger and fear she was already struggling under. I wanted so desperately to help her, to rescue her, but I knew I couldn't.
 

No one could. But especially not me.

***

When my parents got home, I faked sick. I couldn't think of any other good excuse to stay curled up in bed, so I coughed a little and complained of vague aches and pains until they left me alone, with the light off.

I actually dozed off for a while, only to be jolted awake at the sound of my phone ringing. I fumbled for it and answered, groggily.

"Jacob? Jacob, it's Mr. Moore. How are you?"

I swallowed reflexively a few times, my throat dry as sandpaper. "I'm...I'm doing okay, thanks." A thousand scenarios for why he might be calling raced through my mind, making my heart hammer in my chest.

"I wanted to give you a call back about your loan" he said.

"My loan?" I repeated.

"Yes, I'm sorry it took so long. There was some back and forth. But ultimately, the board agreed it was a risk they were willing to take. They looked at some data from other businesses in the area, and with a little persuasion, they're ready to grant you the full amount you requested."

"That's..." I didn't know how I was going to finish that statement. I started over. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you so much. I wasn't...I wasn't expecting this."

"Well, to be honest, they wanted to reject it out of hand. But I wouldn't let them. I've known you for long enough to know you're a good kid who doesn't go back on his promises."

I thought of this morning, and felt sick to my stomach.

"Thank you," I said, again. "I'm very...thank you."

"There's just a little bit of paperwork that needs to be filled out, but we can take care of that on Monday. You can probably start making arrangements for a lease before then, they shouldn't need the deposit right away."

"Okay," I said. "I will. I really...thank you again, Mr. Moore. I'm sorry I keep saying it so much."

He chuckled. "That's all right, Jacob. I'll let you go and celebrate. See you soon."

Celebrate. If only he knew.

My head was swimming. Mark, Marissa, my lease, my business, everything. It felt like my whole life, which had been relatively stable for eighteen entire years, had suddenly been picked up and shaken like a snow globe.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Marissa

When I turned fourteen, my dad took me out to dinner.

I remember it like it was yesterday. He did it begrudgingly, I could tell, after many tense chats with my mother about how "it was time" and "she needs to know how men think, and you're the one who has to tell her." It was a tradition around here, for fathers to take their daughters out on a "date" to discuss the realities of courtship and how they had to guard their hearts - and their bodies - around young men. It would always end with the daughter receiving a gift - a purity ring.

It could be anything, really, but it was usually silver, and usually worn on the ring finger of the left hand. It was meant to signify that, until marriage, a young woman's heart belonged to God.

The dinner was quiet and uncomfortable. My dad clearly didn't know what to say, and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear it, either. I'd gotten the message well enough by then. No sex, no nudity, no impure thoughts, in fact, just stay away from boys altogether. I hadn't given any thought to "staying pure before marriage" because that would have required someone taking any interest in defiling me.
 

And that was my sex education, in its entirety.

He gave me a purity ring at the end of the night, mumbling some awkward explanation. It was too big, and a few weeks later it fell off when I was washing my hands. It ought to have gotten caught in the sink trap, but they never found it.

I really should have seen that as the sign that it was.

After I fled from Jacob's house, guilt and shame following me like a dark cloud over my head, I went straight to my parents' house. They didn't ask any questions when they saw me, just let me in and told me that I could stay as long as I needed to.

I must have looked that bad.

It was convenient, sort of, that Mark had barely let me move anything into his house. I still had all the clothes I could possibly need, and plenty of books to pretend to read while I tried to forget about what a failure I was. At life, at my faith. At everything.

Jacob was such a nice boy, and I ruined him.

Dear God, please forgive me. I don't know what I was thinking. I was selfish and I needed comfort because you let me marry that man, why, why? What did I do to deserve that? What have I ever done wrong? What's wrong with me? Why? Can you just tell me that? Why me? Why do you hate me so much?

As usual, there was no answer.

***

My bag was halfway packed by the time I even realized what I was doing.

As a kid, I'd done this many times. I'd spent hours lying in bed, fantasizing about how I'd do it. How I'd run away. I would stuff a backpack with Clif bars and water bottles and all the cash from my piggy bank, figuring out how I'd sleep under the stars, where I would go after that. But I could never go through with it.

Now, things were different.

I was a grown up. I could leave home if I wanted to. I could go anywhere in the entire world, start a new life. Never come back to Hobb's Vale. I could pretend all of this, Mark, everything, had never happened.

I paused with a sweater in my hand. Under normal circumstances, this was the point at which the sensible part of my brain would kick in.
No, you can't, it's silly. Don't try to run from your problems. You've never even had a job. Your cell phone is on your parents' plan. What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?

But it rang hollow. None of it sounded sensible to me right now. I felt feverish, but terribly clear-headed at the same time, my heart pounding in my ears and only one thing echoing in my mind:

Leave. Leave. Leave. Leave. Go.

Get out.

Go.

Get out.

This is your chance.

I knew it was right. This was the only time my desire to run away would be stronger than all the feelings, good and bad, that held me here.

Jacob.
 

I couldn't face him again. This way, I'd never have to.

George wandered over, sniffing curiously at my bag. I felt a twinge in my heart, but I knew there was no way I could take care of him in my new life. Staying with my parents, at least he'd be happy and well-fed.

He sat and looked at my curiously. Tears trickled down my face, but I looked away.

I finished packing and shoved the bag under my bed. Once the house was calm, I would leave. I had plenty of experience sneaking around the house in the night, whenever I couldn't sleep, just slipping through the darkness for no particular reason at all. I knew I could get out the front door without waking anyone.
 

Sitting there cross-legged on the floor, my mind ran over everything that had happened over the past year. The day I met Mark, I couldn't even remember what I was wearing. What I'd been thinking when I woke up in the morning. Of course I didn't remember. Back then, I didn't realize. I had no idea what was about to happen.

There were a thousand little moments when I could have turned back. I could have stopped it. Changed everything. When he wanted to court me. When he proposed. When he asked me to take off my shirt.

When he photographed me.

The day of our wedding, when I'd woken up feeling sick to my stomach for reasons which were now painfully clear, I could have done it. I could have been a runaway bride, in the news, someday taking a book deal to write about my life in ten years once I'd settled in a new city and found a new boyfriend, who didn't know about my past.

But I'd run out all my chances already, and now I was paying the price for trusting him. For shutting my eyes, for biting my tongue, one too many times.

But not anymore.

Jacob would be hurt, but eventually he'd learn to forget me. He'd do much better, if not with Lily than with someone else. Someone undamaged, without scars, someone who wouldn't be a dark cloud over his life. I liked to imagine him with someone pretty who made him laugh, who would ride alongside him down mountain trails on the bike he'd picked out for her, that he'd fix for her when the chain started to go rusty.

Someone who'd make him happy.

Someone I could never, ever be.

Hot tears gathered in my eyes and started sliding down my cheeks, one by one, at first, and then in cascades. The dark pit of hopelessness that had been slowly growing inside of me for months, years, my whole life, gnawing away at my insides - was taking over.
 

It was eating me alive, and the only way to deal with the pain was to feel nothing at all.

There was some corner of my brain that still had a tiny bit of clarity left, and it was telling me that running away would solve nothing. I wasn't sure if that was true or not. I wanted to believe it, because staying would be the easy choice. But inside, the roaring emptiness was eating every part of me - even the parts that cared about other people. That loved my family. That loved Jacob. I hated the way I felt, the blank spots where my emotions should be. But even the hate was slowly being eaten up, leaving nothing.

So in a way, the shadow that walked down the stairs in my house at two o'clock in the morning, a bag slung over its shoulder, wasn't me. I felt like I was inhabiting its physical presence, like in a dream, but it wasn't me. The person I'd once been was gone, long gone, lying dead on the polished wood floor in Mark's house. There was no use in trying to recover that girl.
 

She was never coming back, no matter where my shadow went.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Jacob

Thankfully, I didn't have to work for a few days, so I was sleeping in. Until my phone rang, once again, jarring me out of sleep. I had to blink a few times before I recognized the number - Marissa's house.

I answered it with my heart pounding.

"Jacob." The voice sounded tired and strained. "It's Mrs. Moore. Have you seen Marissa?"

I shook my head, before I remembered that she couldn't see me. I cleared my throat. "No," I said. "No, ma'am. Why?"

Because she went back to Mark, just like you knew she would.

"I can't get in touch with her." Mrs. Moore let out a shaky breath. "George is...her cat, Georgie. He's very - he's very sick. I'm at the vet's right now. We don't know..." She stopped for a moment. "I just, I know she'd want to be here. But I keep calling, but it just rings and rings. Mark's not picking up either. I don't know where she is. I thought maybe..."

I was instantly awake. My stomach churned. Not George. Not now. I knew how much that little ball of fur meant to Marissa.
 

"Is he..." I couldn't bring myself to say it.

"We don't know," said Mrs. Moore. "We don't know anything yet. But it doesn't, it doesn't look good."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Moore," I said. "I wish I could tell you where she was. But she won't talk to me either."

"I was afraid of that. Just - call me, call me back at this number if you hear anything. Or think of anything. Or...anything at all."
 

"I will."

With shaking fingers, I tried Marissa's cell, but I know it was useless. She wouldn't pick up for me, not now. Not after what we'd done, and the things she'd said.

My heart was racing as I threw on some clothes and ran down the stairs. I knew what I had to do. On any other day, at any other time, I would have rather thrown my own bike over a cliff. Or broken it in half with my own bare hands. Or anything, really, other than getting on that same bike and pedaling, pedaling as fast as I could go, towards the one person in the world I never wanted to see again.

I had no choice. After what she'd said, I was sure - I was positive - that she'd gone back to him. Maybe he'd continued to threaten her. Maybe he'd convinced her that he wasn't such a bad guy after all. I had no idea, but something told me that if I wanted to find her, I'd have to find Mark first.

His school was about fifteen miles away, and mostly uphill. It wasn't a route I would have biked if I had a choice, but my parents had the car and I certainly wasn't going to try and explain this situation to Marissa's mother. I had to go there myself, and no matter how horrible and awkward it was, I had to tell her what was happening. I had to tell her to come home.

The farther I rode, the more I started to question my own sanity. Why couldn't I have done...well, anything else? What did I really think was going to happen? This was the worst possible way to try and get through to her. I was going to come across as a crazy stalker.

This wasn't my place. I had no reason to interfere. In spite of the ugliness, in spite of everything Mark had said and done to her, she was still his wife. He might have told her that it was over, but did he mean it? Would he hold firm if she came back to him, apologizing? Groveling?

I couldn't think like that. I was just here to pass on a message. Whatever Marissa did after that was up to her.