Читать книгу The Breaking Point - Mariella Starr - Страница 5

It’s a strange moment when you suddenly realize you can’t take it anymore. It at this particular moment for Faith Benedetti was thirteen years of accumulated slights, outright deceptions, insults, and the list went on into infinity. She had tried to forgive, to let them go, but she hadn’t forgotten a single one of them. At this moment, they flashed through her mind, like a reel of a film. She could see every frame clearly, yet they were flashing by so fast, she couldn’t focus on any specific instance.

Faith stood in silent shock, staring into her open garage. She was looking at the results of all her efforts and work of the past year. Her work had been reduced to a mountain of rubbish. Her entire creative spirit, her very soul, had been trashed. Sculptures that hadn’t been fired yet were shattered; framed watercolors were lying under broken glass. Her paintings! Dear God! Wet unfinished pieces lay smeared and ruined. One of her best efforts had a broken frame speared through it. Her work was destroyed, broken! Destroyed! Destroyed!

She felt something break inside her. Something vital had snapped, and she went numb. She couldn’t think. She could only stare at the pile and watch as a part of it tumbled to the concrete floor. A tube of red paint was squashed, and as she watched the crimson red spread across the garage floor. She knew at that moment it symbolized her life’s blood. Her spirit broke.

She didn’t hear the truck pulling in behind her. Didn’t see the look on her husband’s face when he stepped behind her.

“My God!” Ales exclaimed. “Honey, I’m so sorry.” He tried to wrap his arm around her, but she shrugged from his embrace and away from him.

“I had no idea she’d do something like this,” Ales exclaimed.

Faith walked away from his words. They had argued earlier, and he’d ignored her—again. This time it was different. This was the last time. She entered her home through the kitchen door.

Cybil Benedetti, Ales’ mother, turned in a wheelchair. She was a scrawny woman, thin, her skin was wrinkled and too darkly tanned. Her insistence at sunning herself every summer had given her complexion the texture of leather. She looked older than her age of sixty-seven. “It’s about time you got here to help me!”

Faith ignored her and kept walking. She went to the bedroom she’d shared with Ales for the last seven years. She was vaguely aware of her husband and her mother-in-law’s voices raised in anger. She went to her closet and removed a suitcase. She was already packed for a trip she’d canceled less than an hour before. She wheeled the piece of luggage across the room and slung a carryall bag across her shoulder.

Ales was in her way, and she moved around him. She had only one thought running through her mind. Get out! Escape!

Ales raised his hands in a helpless gesture. He was a good-looking man. His Italian ancestry had bestowed him with dark hair, and milk-chocolate-colored eyes. If he stretched a bit, he made the six-foot mark. He ran at least four times a week, although, with his work schedule, it was difficult for him to fit in the time.

He stepped closer to Faith, moved closer as if to hug her, but she dodged him again. “She didn’t know, Faith. It was a mistake. She hired a couple of teenage boys to move your painting materials to the garage. She thought she would be staying in your studio because that’s where she has stayed before. She didn’t mean to damage your work. Where are you going?”

Faith said nothing. She couldn’t think, speak, or breathe. She wheeled her suitcase to her vehicle, opened the back hatch, and shoved it inside.

“Where are you going?” Ales demanded again. “You can’t just walk out!”

Faith raised her eyes to the pile of what was her work, and felt a physical stab of pain. Her efforts, her creativity had been reduced to rubbish. “I’m done,” she whispered in a broken voice. She slammed into her car, floored the gas, and barely missed another vehicle when she pulled into the street.

The tears didn’t start for several miles, but when they came, Faith couldn’t stop them. She swiped at the tears on her face. She dug into the console compartment for tissues, but there weren’t any. Ales used them to clean his sunglasses, but he never thought to replenish them.

Her cell phone began to ring, but she didn’t reach for it. The calls went to voicemail, but it wouldn’t stop. She braked at a stop sign, grabbed her cell, and tried to silence it, but it kept ringing in her hand. Someone honked behind her, and she looked both ways, turning onto the road that would take her to the interstate. The car behind her, the honker in such a big hurry, turned at the next intersection.

The damn phone wouldn’t stop ringing! Faith was sobbing now, and she rolled down the window and threw her phone out with a furious motion. She watched through the rearview mirror as it shattered into pieces. It was somehow symbolic.

Faith kept driving, although she didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t care where she went, but she had to go somewhere. The road would lead her somewhere. They lived six miles from the downtown area of Cumberland, a small city in western Maryland. She had never minded the drive to town. Living there gave them the benefits of small-town living, yet they were centrally located only hours to the surrounding states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. She drove a short distance to Frostburg University every day as an art teacher.

Gradually, Faith began to calm down, but she felt strangely hollow inside. She kept seeing her work, tossed aside like trash. Destroyed! She’d have to call the James Gallery and tell them she wouldn’t be able to fulfill her commitment. She would never get a better opportunity; never be offered a chance to show her talents again. Her work was gone. Her mind kept screaming. Destroyed! Destroyed!

She turned onto Frederick Street to connect with interstate 68 west. She was the second in line approaching the stoplight, and it turned green. The car in front of her cleared the intersection. She didn’t see the white convertible that ran the red light to the left of her. Faith felt the sudden impact, screamed as the metal of her vehicle twisted around her. Her head hit the window, and everything went black.

Alessandro Benedetti, Ales to everyone, had never seen such a disheartened look of shock on his wife’s face. His Faith was animated, so happy all the time. She was the glass half-full, as opposed to half-empty kind of a person. She’d left, and she hadn’t looked back. The only time he’d seen that look of sadness and despair on her face before was when her parents had died.

He turned and looked at the mess in the garage. His wife’s easels were tossed helter-skelter in that pile. The leg of one of them had skewed a portrait through the face. He pressed the garage door remote, wincing as the door caught on the leg of an easel, and the pile shifted again. The safety mechanism caused the door to rise. It was probably closing the door that had caused the contents of Faith’s studio to tumble together in the first place.

Whatever had caused the damage, she wasn’t going to forgive it. She’d said, ‘I’m done,’ and although Ales wasn’t exactly sure of the meaning of those two words, he wasn’t stupid. It definitely referred to his mother. He was afraid it was also aimed at him, and their marriage.

He went inside the house, already dialing his wife’s phone, but she wasn’t answering, and his calls went straight to voicemail.

“Where is Faith?” Cybil Benedetti demanded as she pushed the wheelchair through the doorway from what had been a family room and had been converted into an art studio. “It’s just like her to take off when someone needs her!”

“That’s not true, and I don’t know where she went,” Ales said. “Why are you here? I told you to wait for me at the hospital.”

“I couldn’t wait around for you all day!” Cybil screeched. “You should have come when I called! I had to take a taxi, and when I got here, my room hadn’t been set-up!”

“We weren’t going to house you in the studio,” Ales said, his voice even with no hint of the anger he wanted to release. “We were going to let you stay in my office. We had a Murphy bed built into the new cabinetry in there.”

“I stay in the studio,” Cybil exclaimed. “That’s where I have always stayed! Where is Faith?”

“I don’t know,” Ales said. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Mother?”

“I asked those nice boys to clear Faith’s junk from the room, and I paid them. What’s wrong with that?” Cybil demanded.

“They destroyed Faith’s work, and I think you have destroyed my marriage,” Ales said.

“Don’t be silly,” Cybil said, dismissively. “Faith paints. She wastes all her time painting or doing that artsy-fartsy stuff when she should be taking care of her family. This is your fault, Alessandro. You should never have let her go to work at that college. Now she thinks she’s better than everyone.”

Ales walked past her, repeatedly hitting redial on his phone, and still not getting an answer. He went into his office, closed the door, and called his sister Jillian.

“Hello,” was Jill’s bright answer.

“I need you,” Ales said.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, recognizing her brother’s voice.

“Mom called this morning and told me she was in the emergency room, and about to be released.”

“What’s wrong with her this time?” Jill asked.

“She broke a toe,” Ales said. “I talked to the doctor, and she said it was a minor injury.”

“Nothing with Mom is minor,” Jill said.

“Tell me about it,” Ales said. “The doctor said it wasn’t a bad break, and all she needed was an air-cast—that she would be fine in a couple of weeks. Mom insisted on renting a wheelchair from the pharmacy in the hospital. She was released, and she called me to pick her up. I was in the middle of a meeting with a client, and when I got there, she had already left. She took a cab to the house, let herself in and...”

“And what?”

“She paid a couple of teenage boys that were walking by the house to move all of Faith’s artwork from her studio to the garage.”

“No!”

“Yes, and worse than that, it was stacked or piled, or maybe it was thrown in there, I don’t know. Nearly everything Faith has been working on in preparation for her show has been damaged or destroyed.”

“Has she seen it?”

“Yeah,” Ales said.

“Give me ten minutes to find my boys, and I’ll be over,” Jillian promised.

Ales kept dialing Faith’s phone.

“Alessandro!” Cybil’s voice was screechy and demanding.

“What?” he demanded angrily.

“I need help!” she squawked.

“In what?”

“I need to lie down! You haven’t brought a bed into my room yet!”

“It’s not your room, Mother,” Ales said. “It’s Faith’s studio. Why do you think you need assistance? You broke a toe. You can move around on a broken toe!”

“Well, excuse me for wanting a little assistance from my son,” Cybil snarled. “I’m in a wheelchair!”

“Because you wanted to be in it, and rented it,” Ales said. “It’s a minor fine-line fracture. The hospital issued an air-cast because that was all you needed. It will hurt for about a week, and it’s just a matter of staying off of it until it heals. A wheelchair wasn’t necessary.”

“I’m the one in pain!” Cybil exclaimed. “I’m your mother, and you should be caring for me!”

“I should be caring for my wife too, but she’s gone because of what you’ve done!”

“She’ll be back,” Cybil said dismissively. “That girl knows when she’s got it good.”

There was a knock on the front door. Ales rushed over, hoping it would be his wife. It wasn’t, and he let his sister in.

“I sent the boys to the backyard to kick their soccer ball around,” Jill said. She rushed past her mother, went straight to the studio, and looked around. Then she ran through the kitchen, through the small mudroom, and opened the door to the garage, turning on the interior lights.

Jill returned to the kitchen with a stunned look on her face. “Faith saw that?” she asked again, although she already knew the answer.

Ales nodded. “She saw it, said “I’m done,” took the suitcase she’d already packed to go to that class she’s supposed to take in Arlington, and drove off. She’s not answering her phone.”

Jill looked at her mother. “You are not staying here!”

“I’ll stay where I damn well please,” Cybil exclaimed.

“Ales go look for Faith,” Jill ordered. “I’m going to take Mother home. If she needs assistance, she can call a nursing service. It’s a broken toe, not a coronary! I’ll come back and start sifting through this mess and see if there’s anything that can be saved.”

Ales nodded as his sister started pushing the wheelchair toward the door.

“Stop it!” Cybil screamed. “I don’t want to go home! I’m going to need help!”

“Enough Mother,” Jill said bluntly. “You’re a hypochondriac, and I’m sick of it! We’re all sick of it!”

“How can you treat me like this?” Cybil demanded.

“It’s easy,” Jill said. “I’m treating you like you’ve treated your kids all our lives. The only thing that has ever mattered to you was what you wanted! I learned from the best!”

Ales shoved his phone into his pocket. Faith wasn’t answering. She’d been upset when he’d called her from work. She had interrupted a class to take his call because they had an agreement not to call unless it was an emergency. Otherwise, they were to send messages, even if that message was to call as soon as they were free. Faith did not consider his mother and her problems an emergency.

Faith had been insistent that his mother was not coming to their house. She didn’t have the time or the patience to play nurse and be at the beck and call of his demanding mother. “Not this time!” she had said bluntly.

Cybil Benedetti, his mother, was a demanding woman. After the last time his mother had stayed with them, Faith had stated emphatically that she was not moving out of her studio to accommodate his mother again. Enough was enough, and it was time for another member of his family to take a turn. They didn’t have a spare bedroom, and his mother had a perfectly good home of her own.

Faith’s art show wouldn’t happen now, thanks to his difficult mother. Cybil never understood any perspective other than her own. It was her way or no way. After a lifetime of her unwillingness to get professional help, all three of her adult children were at their wits end in trying to deal with her.

Ales had no idea where Faith would have gone. Her best friends were his sisters Jill and Carrie. If his wife had called either of them, they would have called him. He called his younger sister Carrie, but she hadn’t heard from his wife. Carrie had heard from Jill, and she didn’t sound very friendly toward her older brother.

Faith had a lot of friends and colleagues at the university. Their circle of friends included many of them whom she saw outside of work hours, although, like him, her free time was limited. They would get together a couple of times a year, usually in the summer months, for backyard barbecues or during the holidays for parties. He knew their names, but he didn’t have their numbers on his phone. He called Faith’s university office phone and left a message.

He didn’t know which direction to go. Would his wife return to work, or had she decided to go southeast and attend the seven-day accelerated sculpture class? Only twenty students would be accepted in the class by a world-renowned sculptor. She’d been thrilled to be one.

They’d argued over her being gone the week before her summer class was to start. The summer vacation had barely begun when their son, Ricco, had gone to a baseball camp. Faith had signed up for the master’s class in sculpture. The university had approved of her taking the course; it was a credit to her skills to have been offered a place in the class.

Ales glanced in his rear-view mirror when he heard a siren behind him. He pulled over as soon as it was safe and lowered his window.

“Sir,” the officer said, leaning over and speaking through the lowered window. “You are driving and using a hand-held device. It’s against the law in Maryland.”

“I know the law,” Ales said honestly. “I’m usually the one complaining about people ignoring it. I’m...”

“Are you all right, sir?”

“No, actually, I’m not,” Ales admitted. “I’m sorry. It isn’t anything you can help me with. I’m looking for my wife. She was upset, and I don’t know where she would have gone. I’ve been leaving phone messages, but she’s not responding.”

“We all have domestic issues at one time or another, sir,” the officer said. “You still can’t break the law.”

“I’m not arguing, or making excuses,” Ales said, handing over his license, registration, and proof of insurance cards.

“Keep your hands on the steering wheel in plain sight, sir, I’ll be right back.”

Ales watched as the officer returned to his vehicle, and he closed his eyes.

“Sir?”

“That didn’t take long,” Ales said, surprised.

“Sir, what kind of car was your wife driving?”

“Oh, God!”

“Calm down, sir. I’m just checking,” the officer said.

“A Subaru Outback, a two-tone blue, and gray,” Ales said.

“Do you know the tag number?” the officer asked.

“Yes, it’s a vanity plate, Art is Lov, and there are three handprints below the rear window, in silver paint—mine, hers and our son’s when he was three.” Ales’ voice broke. “Please don’t tell me she’s been in an accident.”

“I don’t know anything yet, sir,” the officer said, although he knew there had been an accident with a fatality downtown. He hadn’t been on the scene, so he didn’t know the details. He did know that traffic was at a standstill, and was being diverted from the intersection. “Stay calm, sir, I’ll be right back.”

Ales watched through his rearview mirror, as the police officer was speaking to someone in his vehicle. Then another police vehicle pulled in front of him, with two officers in it. The three officers converged at his door, and his hands began to shake.

“Mr. Benedetti,” the first officer said.

“What? What has happened?” Ales demanded.

“I am sorry to inform you, sir, but there has been an accident involving a car that fits the description and the vanity plate of your wife’s car.”

“Is Faith alive? Is my wife alive?” Ales demanded.

“Yes, sir, as far as we know,” one of the officers said. “There was an accident at the intersection of Frederick Street and Queen City Drive. The driver in the Subaru was taken to Western Hospital. Could anyone else have been driving the vehicle?”

“No, I have to go,” Ales exclaimed.

“Yes, sir,” one of the newly arrived officers said. “Mr. Benedetti, we don’t want you driving upset. My partner and I have already signed off-duty, sir. If you wouldn’t mind, my partner will drive your truck to the hospital parking lot, and I’ll give him an escort so we can get you there quickly and safely.”

“Okay, thank you,” Ales said, beginning to feel himself go numb with fear. He turned to the officer who had pulled him over. “What about the ticket?”

“I’ll let it pass this time,” the police officer said. “Just remember the law, and good luck!”