The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (14 page)

“You don’t seem impressed,” he said. He was standing right next to me. I could feel the heat from his skin and his silent strength that always soothed me when he was in the station. I had to force my eyes to remain open and not let my mind get lost in him.

“Are you happy?”

He stepped farther into the room. “I would be lying if I claimed this hasn’t been hard. Everyone around me is trying to figure out who I am and what happened to the Vince they knew. But for the first time in my life, I have such clarity.”

“You’re the exact opposite of me.” Everyone around me knew exactly who I was, and I had no idea.

“From what I know of you, Mar—Meredith, you’ve always known exactly who you are.” The statement made him sad, and it made me want to ask him what else he knew about me.
“Just follow your heart. It’ll lead you home.”

“What if my heart lost its memory, too?”

“MOMMY, HOW FAR AWAY IS
Hawaii?” Liv asked.

“Um, probably about five thousand miles. It takes over eleven hours to fly there.”

“How far away is Alaska?” she then asked.

“How far away is the sun?” James chimed in, and before I had a chance to answer, he asked, “How far away is infinity?”

I inhaled deeply as I continued to drive the country road to our home.

“Mom?” James yelled from the third row of the Escalade, not letting me off the hook.

“Infinity isn’t a place,” I started and turned down the radio. “It’s an . . . idea. A concept.”

“Like love?” James was hanging on my every word, ramping up the pressure of my answer.

“No. Different than love. Infinity is simple. It just goes on forever.”

“Like love,” Liv chimed in.

“Think of it this way. An infinite love is one that goes on forever. It never stops.” I watched as both kids digested my explanation, already dreading any follow-up questions.

“So what’s infinity plus one?” James asked, and I considered just pulling over and running from the car.

“You tell me. What’s infinity plus one?”

“Infinity,” Liv and James both said at the same time.

“What’s a googol?” James asked before I had time to recover.

“Hey, I’m going to play some music. I want you to search on Google for what a googol is when we get home.” I turned up the music, and Liv sang the wrong words the rest of the way home.

Brad’s car in the garage bay next to mine surprised me. It was seven thirty at night and kind of early for him to be home on a Friday. The kids ran inside, calling his name and searching for him. Brad being home before us on any night was a foreign concept to our children, too.

I was the one who finally found him. He was sitting on the back deck, drinking a beer and smoking a cigar. I saw him there but didn’t go outside. I watched him from the back door, scouring my mind for the sensation of loving my husband.

Both kids went out to say hello and came back inside, having taken the few minutes Brad was willing to give them. They went upstairs to change into their pajamas, and Brad came inside.

“Where have you been?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was jolly drunk or jerk drunk.

“I took the kids out to dinner.” I straightened the papers and mail strewn across the island. Brad sat down with his beer on the other side of the counter from me. “How was work?”

“Brutal.” He took a long sip of his beer and watched me as I sprayed cleaner on the counter and wiped it down.

I ran my hand over the glistening quartz, and the memory of the colonel’s lips between my legs shot through me. I lowered my face, hiding from my husband, as the vivid memories from a dream washed over me. The colonel’s hands on my breasts as his tongue sent an orgasm through my body that nearly tore me in half.
If you are a whore, you’re my whore.

“My counterpart in London should suck my dick.”

“Oh,” was all I could muster. “I’ll be right back.” I forced myself to walk to the bathroom and stared at my reflection in the mirror searching for answers. He’d said, “If you are a whore, you’re my whore.” He’d said that. I hadn’t dreamed it, or had I? I splashed water on my face and straightened my shirt.

I’d only had sex in my mind.

“Maybe we should go to church,” I said when I returned to the kitchen.

“That’s funny. I was just thinking we should go to bed and you could give me a blow job. Crazy how we’re on the same page.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Brad said.

I avoided Brad the rest of the night. I didn’t want to have sex with him. I wasn’t impressed with his early return. Before nine
P.M.
on a Friday night, he was nothing more than an interruption in the kids and my life. He drank too much, turned the television to whatever channel he wished, and expected me to ride him while he watched game two of the World Series.

When he came to bed smelling of beer and less than coordinated, he mounted me and fucked me until he came. He barely finished before he passed out.

Yes. We needed to go to church.

THERE WERE FEW THINGS WORSE
than moving. Not a root canal. Not rain on your vacation. Not childbirth. It would have to be something painful and consuming with no definitive end to compare it to. Like a tax audit or a divorce.

To my complete surprise, I’d been able to convince Brad our family belonged in the house that began as a tavern. He was after all, my favorite drunk. It had taken less effort than I’d expected, and Brad really seemed to be putting me before his own needs and desires. It was foreign in our relationship, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. He was eventually going to love the house.

I’d spent weeks going through items we needed to get rid of instead of move to the house, and it still didn’t make our current house look any more appealing. The basement was slightly emptier, which Brad kept telling me would benefit us when we moved, but it did little for the aesthetics of the house. One thing I never complained about in the house was its storage space, but after spending hours cleaning and organizing, even that was working against me.

As I pulled everything from my bathroom vanity, I put the items into three piles: need now, need in new house, never needed in the first place. The steam jewelry cleaner Brad’s mother had bought me as a wedding shower present went into the third pile. I had three open boxes of tampons. When I consolidated the boxes, I found a wad of cash in the bottom of the third.

The sick truth of nefarious intentions seeped into my mind. Why would a housewife have cash hidden? The purse I’d lied to Brad about came to mind and was followed by another thought. I was planning on running away, which made no sense. I would never leave Liv and James here alone. I would never leave them anywhere.

I counted the money. Six hundred dollars. That was a lot of secrets, or just one really big one.

Why can’t I remember?

I put my head in my hands and squeezed it, willing the memories to be set free. Brad’s desperation at the shore when he’d
needed
to make love to me and his kindness and willingness to sell the house, were the only things that came back.

I was afraid of him.

Even without the memories, I knew I was afraid of him, which was ridiculous. In the decade I’d known him, I’d never been afraid of him once. I’d been overwhelmed a few times, but never afraid. He was Brad. He was my husband.

I heard the door to the kitchen close downstairs and re-stashed the money in the tampon box. Yes. I smiled at my former self for selecting the hiding place. Brad would never open the box.

I’d checked their costumes in their backpacks twice to make sure all the parts were in there. This was the first year since I’d quit the Department of Justice that I wasn’t working one of my kid’s Halloween parties at school. The first time I was working myself. The colonel, Thompson, whose granddaughter was in the elementary school, and I were all going to drive over together. What a difference a year made.

I had on a black dress and the creepiest eyeball necklace I could find. Like, an entire eyeball hung from the chain around my neck.

“That is disgusting,” Daniels said when he saw it.

“It’s Halloween. Are you dressing up?”

“No.”

“Well, it sounds like you’re no fun.”

“Oh, I’m fun. Tons of fun. That’s what the ladies call me, Fun Daniels.” Daniels was enormous. He was over six feet tall and almost as wide. He was a giant muscle, undeniably attractive, and overly confident. He was young.

“I stand corrected.”

The colonel and Thompson stopped at my desk. I grabbed my bag and phone and followed them out the door, which the colonel held for me. As soon as I got in the back of the patrol car, my phone dinged with a text from Jenna.

Jenna: Where the hell are you?

It made me smile. Jenna always made me smile. I texted her back.

Meredith: On my way.

I dropped the phone on my lap and looked up to see the colonel watching me in the rearview mirror. Instead of turning away, I stared back.

“What are your kids this year?” Thompson asked the colonel, breaking his spell on me.

“Allison’s a rabbit . . .”

I didn’t listen to the rest. I couldn’t hear him through the exploration of my mind, the search for any connection Vince might have to a wad of cash in the tampon box in my bathroom. Vince parked about a half mile away, because God forbid the entire town not come out for the elementary school parade.

“Are you going to be all right in those shoes? I can drop you off.”

“I’ll be fine. Thanks, though.” I got out of the patrol car and shut the door behind me. There was a balmy breeze and a dark cloud above us that threatened to ruin the trick-or-treating later.

“Shit,” Thompson said and stopped walking. The colonel stopped, too, and both of them stared down the street at a man three houses in front of us who was barely on his feet, tripping from the curb to the other side of the walk.

“Why does he do this?” the colonel said, and then turned to me. “You go ahead.”

“What?”

“That’s Arnie Hampton. Alex’s dad.”

The man in front of us was barely recognizable, but when we got closer, I could hear him muttering something.

“Goddamn her! Motherfucking whore gonna leave me. I’ll show her,” he said and almost fell over.

Thompson ran ahead and grabbed Arnie by the arm, helping to keep him on his feet.

Vince stopped me with a hand on my elbow, and heat shot through me. “Go ahead of us. And if we don’t make it to the parade, call me and I’ll send someone to pick you up.”

I looked from his hand on my arm to Arnie again. The man was belligerent and pulling away from Thompson, who was trying to turn him around and lead him away from the school. “But you’ll miss the parade?”

“That’s better than Arnie not missing it. His poor kids.”

Arnie turned to Thompson and spit on him, and then he was face down on the ground with his arm at Thompson’s mercy.

“Go, please.”

I did as he asked. I walked the rest of the way by myself, and I wondered how many times a day the colonel put someone else before himself and his own family.

“Took you long enough,” Jenna said and rolled her eyes at me when I reached her on the parade route.