Authors: Carolyn Brown
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Did you resolve that abuse issue?”
“Divorce was signed on Wednesday.”
“Good for you. Now, about this stuff you want to donate?”
Hannah sat down on the edge of the bed. “A complete bedroom suite, sheets, comforters. How much can you handle? And what about men’s clothing?”
“All of it, and we’ll be glad to get it. Sometimes women show up here with teenage boys in tow, and we seldom have anything that they can wear.”
Darcy sat down beside her, picking up the tail of the conversation. “Great idea.”
“My ex-husband wasn’t a very big man, so these things should work for a teenage boy. Socks and underwear?” she asked.
“Honey, sometimes they arrive in nothing but their pajama pants, and even barefoot if their mama has left in a hurry. I can round up some volunteers to come and get it,” Gina said.
“No, we’ll bring it to you. Is tonight all right?”
“Of course. I’ve got two volunteers here now who’ll help unload and then get the clothing organized,” Gina said. “I’ll be expecting you.”
“I never knew that you went to the shelter,” Darcy said after Hannah hung up.
“I tried, but he figured out where I was.” Hannah stood up, threw open the closet doors, and tossed three expensive suits on the bed. “This stuff needs to be gone, not just stored, and I’m glad that I can donate it to the shelter.”
“Hey.” Travis rapped on the doorjamb. “Sophie said it was all right for me to come in through the back door.”
Hannah reminded herself to breathe. Long, deep breaths. That would still her racing heart. No one had sneaked up on her in a long time. She’d had to be vigilant to live with Marty, especially the last two years.
“Sure it is, but what in the devil would a battered-women’s shelter want with men’s T-shirts? They are ironed and ready for use, folded even neater than they were the day they were bought.” Darcy held one up. “And probably the best that money can buy.”
“Gina, the lady who runs the Patchwork House, says that the abused women don’t always arrive alone. Same way I did. Sometimes they bring teenage boys with them, and ninety percent of the time, they only have the clothes on their backs.”
“Then you are giving all this to the women’s shelter?” Travis asked. “Furniture, too? Hannah, it’s only been a couple of days, and this is very nice furniture. Don’t do anything that you’ll regret later. You could sell this stuff and make a few dollars.”
“Like Darcy said, if it’s in this house, it belongs to me, and believe me, there will be no regrets. And this is what I want to do with it—all of it,” Hannah said with conviction.
“Holy smoke, Hannah, you weren’t kiddin’,” Darcy exclaimed when she opened the next drawer. “You really did iron his underwear.”
“By choice?” Travis asked.
“For survival,” Hannah whispered as she headed to the kitchen. She took a moment to rein in her thoughts. Pure fire would pour from Marty’s eyes and steam from his ears if he knew all his clothing was going to be stuffed into a garbage bag and sent to a battered-women’s shelter.
He hated women’s shelters. She’d had the bruises to prove it, because when he came home the weekend after she’d tried to leave, he’d made sure she understood that was the last chance she’d ever get to try to run away with Sophie again. Next time he would take the child and she’d never see her again.
But there had been no next time, because Hannah was terrified of losing Sophie. She peeled off two garbage bags—one for the things in the dresser drawers, another for the things in the closet. She smiled at the poetic justice of sending it all to the women’s shelter. Everything that had been Marty’s. That’s what Darcy had said. The shelter could have that damned leather recliner in the living room and the table beside it and the lamp, too. That had been Marty’s, and no one had better sit in it or move that lamp a fraction of an inch. When she dusted Hannah used a tape measure to be sure it was put back exactly where he liked it.
“You might need to hook up that trailer that you cart around your lawn mower on when you take it down to the church to take care of the landscaping,” she said as she shook out a plastic bag, picked up a fistful of snowy-white T-shirts, and tossed them inside. When that was done, she started on the underwear and then the silk pajama pants and the matching robes. By the time she put the last pair of socks into the bag, there was barely enough room to tie it shut.
“Now what?” Darcy asked.
“There are two drawers of my things. Dump them on the sofa in the living room and I’ll take care of them after a while,” Hannah said, amazed at how much lighter her heart felt already. She picked up the second bag and shook it open. “Next is all the clothing he left behind and his shoes. Travis, you might want to hitch up the trailer.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned. “I’ll back it up to the front door and start taking things out of here soon as you’re ready.”
“This stuff is pretty heavy. You’ll need some help,” Hannah said.
“Aunt Birdie has a furniture dolly out in her storage shed. I used it when I moved my stuff into the house last year. Everyone in town borrows the thing when they move. See y’all in a few minutes.”
Sophie came bouncing down the hall, singing “I’ll Fly Away” so loud that it echoed all through the house. She made up words that she didn’t know and the new lyrics said that she would fly away, oh, glory, if Jesus would just send her some wings.
Hannah giggled.
Darcy laughed out loud.
Travis picked up Sophie and swung her around until she squealed.
When her feet were on the ground, she ran to Hannah’s side, her eyes darting around the room. “Mama,” she whispered. “Father will be so mad.”
“Your father said that he doesn’t want any of this stuff,” Hannah said. She didn’t say that Sophie’s father—not her daddy by any means—didn’t want either of them, either.
Travis hurried across the room, picked Sophie up, and tossed her onto the bed. “It’s a trampoline! See how high you can jump.”
Hannah nodded. “It’s okay. Your father isn’t ever coming back here again, so we don’t have to worry about him getting angry. So bounce away, because this bed will be gone in an hour.”
Sophie bent her knees and jumped several times before she fell backward on the bed. “I didn’t think you meant it when you said you were fixin’ the room all over. Why isn’t he comin’ back?”
“Because we got a divorce and he let us have a new name, remember?” Hannah answered.
“What’s a divorce?” Sophie asked.
“It’s when a man and his wife decide they can’t live together anymore.” Hannah struggled to keep it as simple as possible.
“And the judge in the court signs a paper and they aren’t married anymore,” Darcy said to help her out.
“Then I like a divorce. Can that be our word for today?” She pointed toward the air-conditioning vent at the top of the wall. “What is that, Mama?”
“It’s where the cold air comes out in the summertime and the warm air comes out in the winter,” Hannah said.
Sophie continued to point. “No, not that. You got a spider eye, too. I wonder if there’s one at Aunt Birdie’s house.”
“What?” Hannah asked.
“Lie down right here with me and you can see it. It’s little bitty and it’s red like a little spider eye.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you’d found a spider eye in your ceiling?” Hannah asked.
Who knew when the exterminator could get out here?
“I thought it was like the thing in the living room that you turn on to get cold air or hot air. Or”—Sophie giggled—“it was really like Charlotte in the book you read to me. Oh, I forgot to tell Nadine about Charlotte and her web. I got to go tell her.” Sophie bounded off the bed and down the hall.
Darcy followed her and returned with a kitchen chair and a dinner knife. “If that’s what I think it is, Marty should be shot.”
Hannah covered her face with her hands. “Please tell me it’s insects and not a camera. I feel violated even though . . . oh . . . my . . . God.” She felt the fire glowing in her cheeks. He’d filmed the abuse so he could watch it over and over again.
Darcy crawled up on the chair and undid the screws. “It’s a nanny cam. Why would he do this?”
Hannah went straight to the third step in the grief cycle that she’d read about concerning divorcing an abusive husband. Anger, as hot as a Texas wildfire, raged from her toes to the ends of her jet-black hair. “Hand it down to me, Darcy. And let’s go see how many more are in the house.”
“I’ll take it to the bank with me on Monday and put everything we find in my safe deposit box. You’re already listed as the only other person who can open it if something happens to me, so if you ever need them for proof of anything . . .” She paused and handed the tiny camera down to Hannah. “I promise I won’t look at what’s on there. Since he hasn’t been home in months, it’s probably run out anyway. Besides, if there’s footage of him hitting you, I’d be tempted to kill the bastard.”
There was one in Sophie’s bedroom and one in the living room aimed right at his recliner. None in the kitchen or the bathroom.
“I guess he was only making sure his possessions were where he could check up on them,” Darcy said through clenched teeth.
Hannah immediately began checking under lamps and in the corners of the cabinets. “What if he’s bugged other places in the house?”
Darcy slipped all three cameras into a zippered compartment of her suitcase. “I’ll help you. Mostly those things are hidden and they have a live feed into something . . . and here’s a little something different.” She’d removed the back of the telephone, and there another electronic device blinked away. She held it up to her mouth and whispered, “Hello, Marty! This is Darcy and we have your nanny cams. I’d say that they have enough evidence on them that you’d best keep your sorry ass in Dallas, or else there’ll be a stink attached to the Ellis name that folks will smell all across the country.”
The blinking light went off immediately.
“Now, it’s just a matter of finding the rest of them. Probably one in each room,” Darcy said as she unzipped the suitcase and added the little thing, along with its spindly wires, to the stash.
“Here’s the second one.” Hannah found one in the kitchen phone.
“Did you have a phone in the bedroom?”
Hannah nodded. “He insisted on one in Sophie’s room and in all the bedrooms upstairs, supposedly to be there when his parents came to visit, which they never did. The only place there isn’t one is in the master bathroom.” Hannah shivered from her head to her toes. “I’m buying new phones tomorrow and having my number changed on Monday. And a new cell phone, too,” she said. “Oh, Darcy, what would have happened if I’d ever talked about him in this house?”
“The good Lord was protecting you for sure.”
“I was so embarrassed that I’d let myself fall into that hornet’s nest. The only people that knew nearly everything were Aunt Birdie and my mama. Thank God, I always talked to Mama at her house and not this one,” she said.
“Why didn’t you call her from here?” Darcy asked.
“When Liz and I shared an apartment in Gainesville, I always talked to Mama on Monday night right after supper. It was our time, and we enjoyed catching up on everything then. After Marty and I married and I moved back here, it was just easier to call Mama over at Aunt Birdie’s. She held the baby and let me have an hour to visit. Then it got to be habit, I guess. I’m convinced today that it was guardian angels watching over me. I said things to her that if Marty had heard, he would have killed me for telling anyone,” Hannah answered.
“Thank God that you never had an affair or we’d have never found your body. This is horrible, Hannah.”
“What’s horrible?” Travis asked as he and Sophie came into the room from the front porch. “Trailer is ready. What goes first? Sorry I took so long, but with what all y’all have to move out of here I decided to bring the work truck.”
“That recliner, table, and lamp.” Hannah pointed.
“I bet the shelter will be glad to get it even if Marty’s sorry old ass has sat in it. We’ll tell them to wipe it down with bleach before they let anyone else use it.” Darcy winked at Travis and mouthed, “Later.”
Hannah eased down onto the sofa. Would it ever be completely over and done with? She wanted to be angry, to recapture that moment when it had washed over her in the bedroom when she’d discovered the nanny cam. But all she felt was disgust and emptiness.
Travis sat down beside her. “You okay?”
“I will be, and getting rid of all this stuff will help tremendously.”
He jumped up and nodded. “Then let’s get this crap out of here. We’ll slide this dolly right up under the back side of the chair, rope it down, and roll it right out there onto the trailer, then up into the truck bed,” Travis said as he worked. “Table and lamp will fit into the backseat along with those garbage bags. Is the dresser ready to go after that?”
“Yes, it is. Just tell us what to do to help. Lord, I wish I could do more for women who are still suffering like I did,” she said.
You can.
The voice in her head sounded a lot like her grandmother’s.
There are four bedrooms upstairs that will be sitting empty. Use them to help those women. Call the shelter and offer your services.
Hannah picked up her cell phone and then threw it back down on the sofa. “I need to make a phone call.”
Darcy put a finger to her lips and whispered. “Just to be on the safe side, I’d take it out to the yard.”
Hannah carried it out into the middle of the road separating her house and Aunt Birdie’s and called the phone number to the Patchwork House.
“Hello,” Gina answered.
“This is Hannah O’Malley again. I have four bedrooms upstairs that I would like to offer to you to use if you run out of room, or however else you’d like to use them. Overnight. Hideaways for abused women. I want to help other women who are going through what I did. I will convert one into a living room for my guests so that they won’t feel so cooped up, because I do know they aren’t supposed to be outside a lot when they are in a shelter,” Hannah said.
“There would need to be home visits, and we’d have to do paperwork to vet you, since we get state aid.”