Читать книгу No River Too Wide - Emilie Richards - Страница 12

Chapter 5

Her hands were trembling. Harmony looked down at the spoon grasped in her right hand and watched it wave gently side to side. If she had needed proof she was shaken to the bone by her mother’s arrival, there it was. Of course, Janine’s surprise appearance was especially dramatic, considering that just moments before Harmony had believed she was dead.

In the living room Lottie was laughing as she and Janine played peekaboo. The sound was silvery and unfettered. Harmony loved to make her daughter laugh. She was never sure which of them was the most delighted afterward.

Gripping the spoon tighter, she stirred the milk and sugar she’d managed to get into each mug; then, better safe than sorry, she decided to carry them one at a time.

Despite good intentions, she didn’t move. Her mother was here, but only for the night. And once she left? While she hadn’t said so exactly, Janine had made it clear that once she moved on, she would have little or no contact with her daughter.

All because of the devil who had fathered her.

Harmony caught a glimpse of herself in the glass cabinet front, and for a moment she stared. Did she look anything like Rex Stoddard? She had never seen any outward resemblance, except her coloring. Buddy had looked more like him, a rounder face, one eye that drifted subtly despite two costly surgeries, a high forehead that, at least for Rex, had climbed slowly higher as he began to go bald.

Of course, her brother had died well before he had the chance to lose his hair.

She didn’t want to think about Buddy.

Looks were one thing, but more frightening, did she have any of her father inside her? She had been angry enough at the way he treated his wife and children that she had, as a girl, lain awake at night fantasizing ways to rid the world of Rex Stoddard. They had been childish thoughts, and she had never acted on them, but was that the way her father’s sickness had begun? Had he, too, lain awake at night plotting revenge and destruction?

Rex had never been able to forgive even the smallest slight. A gesture, an offhand remark, an opinion he didn’t share. Rex held on to those things forever and waited. When he finally had the opportunity to get even, he took full advantage of it.

Harmony knew that most of the time she wasn’t that way. She knew from living with her father just how damaging revenge was to the soul. She had witnessed demonstrations again and again, and each time she’d vowed never to be like him.

Sadly, though, in one way they were alike, because there was one person she would never be able to forgive and didn’t even want to try. She was grateful beyond measure that her mother had not died in the explosion that had leveled her childhood house, but a part of her was sorry her father hadn’t been locked inside and unable to escape.

Had he been, she and her mother could finally stop living in fear.

More laughter erupted from the living room, and she knew she had to stiffen her backbone and start a discussion about the future. She gripped the mug handle. Then she turned the corner of her tiny kitchenette and stood in the wide doorway as her mother whisked a blanket from her face and cried “Peekaboo!”

Janine was so thin. That was the first thing Harmony had noticed, followed by shock at how old she looked. She was only forty-five, but she looked at least ten years older, her skin sallow, her hair salted with gray and pulled back in an unflattering low ponytail. She walked like someone in pain, each foot placed carefully in front of the other, as if she wasn’t sure the ground wouldn’t rise to swallow it. Now she was smiling at her granddaughter, but even that smile seemed tentative, as if admitting she was happy might bring down disaster on all of them.

Janine looked up and saw her. “Need help?”

“No, you take this one. I’ll get mine.”

“Lottie’s okay in the bouncer while we drink it?”

“She’ll let us know if she’s not.” Harmony went back for the second cup, then joined her mother on the sofa. Before she sat back, she sprinkled Cheerios on the bouncer tray so Lottie could practice feeding herself.

“Just the way I like it,” Janine said, joining her against the cushions and turning so she could eye her daughter. “You didn’t forget.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, Mom. I missed you so much.”

“I thought about you every day, but I...” Janine sipped a little tea before she finished. “The only thing I could be proud of was helping you get away.”

“Please tell me what happened. You said you were planning to leave yourself, only not so soon?”

Janine sipped and didn’t answer. Harmony hoped she was figuring out how to tell her story.

Finally she put the mug down on a side table. “I wanted to leave for years. Now it seems like forever, only that’s not true. There was a time...”

“When you...loved him?” Harmony had trouble getting the words out.

“I did. Even despite, well, everything.”

Harmony waited for her to go on, but Janine changed tack. “Then a time came when I knew if I stayed, he...” She shrugged.

“He would kill you.” It wasn’t a question.

Janine gave a short nod. “But it wasn’t just that. I realized I was shrinking. Literally. Because I was always hunched over, trying to protect myself. In other ways, too. Nobody knew me anymore. After you left, for a while your father got more and more possessive and paranoid.”

“I didn’t know he could get more of either.”

“It seemed to multiply every week. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without him, not pick up a library book or a quart of milk. My set of car keys went missing one day, and I never saw them again. And even leaving the house with him was rare. Strangers looked right through me when I did, like I wasn’t there.”

Harmony’s throat was raspy from unshed tears. “Nobody who ever really knew you would have looked through you.”

“I’m afraid your father made sure nobody had that chance.”

“You said you had to have a plan?”

“Women like me are most likely to die after they try to leave the men who abuse them.”

“I know it’s not perfect, but wouldn’t the police have protected you?”

Janine gave one emphatic shake of her head.

Harmony didn’t know why she’d asked. She’d seen too many stories herself about abused women who had been killed on the way to the courthouse to get restraining orders, or even inside the courthouse itself.

Janine said the rest in a rush, with more energy than she’d shown to this point. “One day I realized I could barely get out of bed in the mornings, that even being afraid of what he might do if the house wasn’t clean enough or the dinner perfect enough didn’t motivate me anymore. I knew I had to do something or else. The agency was having its New Year’s open house, and it was one of the few things your father still expected me to attend. It would have looked bad for him if I didn’t go. I met a woman there. She...she suspected. She told me to call her the first moment I could.”

“And she helped?”

“She knew how.” Janine didn’t go on.

“She’d done this before?”

“It took a while...to trust her. You can understand. I was putting my life in her hands. We decided on steps to follow. I was supposed to obey your father’s orders and act like whatever he told me was just meant to protect me from a cold, cruel world. To pretend I didn’t want to go out, that I was afraid of my own shadow, that I needed his guidance. Little by little.”

Harmony tried to remember how her mother had behaved when she was still living at home. Janine had made a point of not arguing with Rex, true, but sometimes she had found clever ways around his edicts. And despite everything she had still smiled, still laughed, still shown a certain joy in living that he hadn’t been able to extinguish.

There had been moments, days, even weeks, when their lives hadn’t seemed that much different from those of other families. Janine had known how to diffuse her father’s anger. Or make herself the brunt of it. But she had been actively involved in life. The spark inside her had never been extinguished.

“Did he go for it?” Harmony asked.

“It seemed to be working. He was still violent, erratic, but after a while he...well, he was different. I made mistakes and he didn’t always notice. At first I thought he believed I’d changed, that I had finally become the wife he wanted, and he was cutting me some slack. Then I realized he just didn’t seem to care that much. I wondered if he had figured out my acceptance of our life together was a lie, and he was just waiting for me to prove it.”

“Do you still think he knew?”

“No, I don’t.” Janine bit her lip. “Because if he had figured out I was going to leave him...” She didn’t have to finish.

“Then what? Frustrations at work, maybe? Something else going on?”

Janine turned both palms up, as if to say Who knows?

Harmony thought this replay of the past had gone as far as it could. What her father felt about anything, or what had gone on in his life outside the home, was of no interest to her. Rex Stoddard might think he was the center of the universe, but that wasn’t a universe she wanted to inhabit again. She changed direction. “Before, when we were outside, you said he didn’t come home the night of the fire. But you don’t know where he was?”

“It had happened before, some kind of game he played for years, leaving town without notice. He had all kinds of ways of checking on me while he was gone. Sometimes he would line up repair men to conduct roof inspections or clean out our septic tank. Then they were required to report what they found by phone immediately. The first question Rex always asked was ‘And my wife was there to show you around?’ I heard their answers, so I knew.”

“I never realized.”

“Sometimes he was watching the house, testing me. Sometimes he was really out of town, but he didn’t tell me ahead of time in case I used the opportunity to leave. This time I don’t know what happened. But I knew I might not get a chance like it again. And even if I wasn’t prepared completely?” She swallowed hard, audibly, as if the fear was still there waiting to choke her. “I was ready enough,” she finished.

“What about the fire? Did you set it to make escaping easier?”

Janine looked shocked. “Oh, no.”

“Then what happened?”

“It was stupid. Impulsive. As I was leaving, I burned all the photos on the downstairs table. I took them out of their frames, and I burned them. Whenever he finally came home, I wanted him to know how I really felt about our life together.”

Harmony stared at her. “Wow, he loved those photos.”

“You called that table the zoo, remember? You said we were like caged animals on display.”

Harmony did remember. She had despised every attempt to portray them as the all-American family. The photos in the entryway. The four of them sharing hymnals in the same pew every Sunday. Cheering together from the bleachers the year Buddy had been a linebacker on the high school football team.

Then going home together after the team lost and listening to her father criticize every play her brother had made.

“How did the fire start if you didn’t start it on purpose?”

“I can only guess. I’d left earlier and was already at the edge of the woods when I remembered Buddy’s scrapbook. I went back, and on the way to the stairs I saw those photos and...I just snapped. I burned them in your father’s favorite ashtray.”

Harmony remembered talking to friends at school whose parents smoked. She had been the only one who’d wished her father would smoke more and suffer the consequences.

“I went upstairs,” Janine continued, “but it took me some time to find the scrapbook. When I came out of Buddy’s room, the stairs were on fire. Your father took up the runner just a few weeks ago and refinished the steps by himself. The house still smelled like varnish. Maybe whatever he used?” She shrugged.

“But how did you get past the fire?”

“I was wearing my heavy coat because I knew I might need it later. I took it off and used it to beat back the flames so I could make it outside before the whole place went up. Then I didn’t look back. I was gone, really gone, well before the tank exploded.”

“Nobody saw the fire? Nobody reported it?”

“It was the middle of the night, and you know how far away the neighbors are. I don’t think anyone realized the house was on fire until the explosion. Then probably everyone within twenty miles knew.”

Lottie, tired of bouncing and ready for dinner, finally began to whimper. Harmony went into the kitchen to retrieve cereal and organic pears she had prepared that morning—which now seemed like years ago. By the time she returned, Janine had lifted the baby out of her chair and was walking the length of the small living room, murmuring softly.

“She likes you,” Harmony said. “She’s going to love having you here.”

“I can’t stay. I wouldn’t have come at all, but I was afraid you might hear about the fire and be absolutely beside yourself.”

“You could have called.”

“No, I thought you needed to see me, to be sure it wasn’t some sort of hoax.”

“I think you needed to see us.”

Janine fell silent.

“Dad hasn’t traced me here yet,” Harmony said. “And I’ve been gone for years.”

“Your dad never had as much motivation as he does now. Now he’s going to be looking for both of us, and looking hard.”

“That’s part of why you didn’t leave before, isn’t it? Because you were afraid he would double his efforts to search for me as a way to find you.”

Janine didn’t deny it. “He will. Which is why I have to leave in the morning.” She seemed to hesitate; then, as she handed Lottie to Harmony, her voice grew softer.

“He’ll think I’ve traveled west.”

“West? Why?”

“That was part of the plan. Things were in place.”

“You mean that’s what you planned? To go west?”

“No, but he’ll think that’s what I did.”

Harmony settled Lottie in her high chair and pulled a chair up beside her. She gave the baby a plastic spoon to play with as she fed her because she was in no mood to let Lottie fling food all over the living room.

The details of Janine’s escape niggled at her, but compared to her mother’s future, the past seemed unimportant.

“If he has good reason to think you’ve gone west, then you can stay here. Has he ever said anything to make you think he knows I’m in North Carolina?”

“It’s no good, honey. I can’t risk it. If he does find you, God forbid, I don’t think he’ll hurt you if I’m not with you. You’re settled here. He knows you have friends who could come forward to protect you. If he shows up you can even tell him the truth, that I was here but I wouldn’t tell you where I was headed. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it—”

“It’s not going to come to that, because you’re going to stay with me in Asheville. Or if you absolutely refuse, then I’m going with you. Wherever you go.”

“You can’t. The only good thing about you leaving home was that I didn’t have to be afraid for both of us anymore. I can’t live that way again, being afraid all the time that he’ll show up one day and harm us both, and maybe the baby, too.”

“Does he know about the baby?”

“He’s never said anything.”

Harmony thought that answer was as good as a no, because when her father was angry, everything came out. If he’d learned about Lottie, he would have flung the baby’s birth at her mother and blamed her for not raising Harmony to be chaste.

“This is North Carolina. Rex Stoddard has no friends here, no link to the community. We’ll talk to the sheriff and ask how we can best protect ourselves.”

“We might as well call your dad and give him our address. We can’t involve the authorities. They keep records. Records can be located.” Janine came to stand beside her daughter. “That’s what I mean, honey. Those kinds of slipups are too common when more than one person is involved.”

Harmony fed Lottie another spoonful of cereal, then swiveled to face her mother. “Hasn’t he run your life long enough? Are we going to spend the rest of our days letting Rex Stoddard make all our decisions? I’m kind of out of the habit, and frankly, I’m a lot happier. Even if I know he’s still a threat, I’m willing to take my chances.”

Janine’s exhaustion was showing, her mouth drooping, her eyes puffy. “I would give almost anything to change things, but not your safety.”

Harmony could feel her mother slipping away again, and she wasn’t willing to let her. “Then you and Lottie and I will take new names, get new documents. Somebody will help with that. We’ll move to a big city where everybody’s anonymous. You can take care of her while I work.”

“No, you aren’t going to give this up.” Janine lifted a hand to indicate everything around them. “I won’t allow that. There are ways we can stay in touch. Then, after time passes, maybe if things have improved or changed significantly, we can see each other again. Find a place to meet and plan carefully.”

“You’re just going to disappear, aren’t you? Like that.” Harmony snapped her fingers. “And you think that will make things okay? That now I won’t be worried every minute? That I won’t lose sleep at night picturing you just a step ahead of him? Or dead by his hand and me not knowing?”

“Honey, I—”

“No! You didn’t think this through. You’re back in my life, and no matter what you do or where you go, you can’t change what you’ve already done.” She handed a piece of whole wheat toast to Lottie and stood. “I knew what you were facing before. Do you think I ever forgot for one moment what you were going through every day back in Topeka? But I thought it was your choice, that you just didn’t have the strength to get out or maybe even the desire. Now I know you do.”

“I can’t stay here. You don’t have enough room. I know you don’t make enough money to support us both, and what hope do I have of finding a job way out here? You don’t need me for child care. I think you’ve managed that just fine. I have no place here, and it’s dangerous.”

“We’ll find a way.” Harmony nodded as she spoke. “Just tell me you’re willing to stop running. That we can stand together now, the way we used to. Tell me the mother I love, the one who raised me to be strong despite everything going on around me, is still in there. The mother who accidentally set our house on fire and still managed to escape. The one who traced me here and came to make sure I knew she was okay.”

“Honey—”

Harmony wouldn’t let her finish. She rested her arms on her mother’s shoulders. “Tell me that mother’s going to stay here and start a whole new life. You can change your name and the color of your hair, but please don’t let that mother escape again. Promise me you won’t.”