Читать книгу Courage To Live - Morgan Q O'Reilly - Страница 10

Chapter 4

“Mom, there’s a message on the phone.”

Robbie had his head in the fridge, as usual. We had twenty minutes before we had to leave for TKD. Of course he was hungry. I’d often pondered why I took the trouble to put the food away when it was just going to be inhaled in the next twenty-four hours. The kid was gearing up for another growth spurt, I could just feel it.

“I’ll check it when we get home.” I had no desire whatsoever to deal with whomever. Despite changing, and unlisting, all the phone numbers, as well as removing Quint from the cellphone plan, I still had to deal with the callers. How they’d accessed my numbers, I didn’t know, but somehow, they’d ferreted out the information.

Since February, about a week after Quint had gone missing, I’d been doing my best to avoid his boss, buddies, jibes from the neighbors and occasional probing by the police. Unbelievably, someone had called him in as a missing person. Hadn’t been me, Ben swore it wasn’t him, and the caller had done his best to make me look guilty as hell. I suspected Quint’s boss, since it was clear the man hated me, based solely on whatever stories Quint had told at work. So far, the cops hadn’t found anything they could arrest me on. Considering I was innocent, I regarded this as a good thing.

I had to recreate the chain of events for the police numerous times, going over each detail I’d wanted to gloss over.

On Super Bowl Sunday, Quint had spent the day with the neighbors, watching the game at Jack’s. Mainly hanging with Jack, and Ben, incidentally Jack’s CO.

Quint and the guys had been drinking beer, swapping stories and yelling at the game. After spending the day doing the usual laundry, I’d also cleared my room of old clothes. We had a new, fancy, choose-your-number air mattress Quint had ordered at end of year clearance pricing. Rob and I spent a few hours assembling it, and hoping to rest a little, I’d hunkered down with my computer, trying to do a little writing.

The weather plays a big part in whatever happens in Alaska. For instance, Alaskan homes rarely have central air conditioning. Which, in the case of our home, was too bad. With large windows fully facing west, in the summer my second floor great room could grow stifling in a hurry. I opened all the screened windows on the second floor sometime in mid-May and didn’t shut them until September. I also kept the ceiling fan running day and night year round and used box fans as needed. The house could easily reach eighty degrees, or more, by mid-afternoon.

The open windows were half the reason the neighbors considered me the bitch of our marriage. With them open four months straight, everyone on the street could pretty much hear everything when our voices were raised. I tried to remain conscious of this, but Quint knew exactly how much they could hear and used his knowledge to push my buttons when he wanted a little sympathy from the guys. I wasn’t a screaming shrew. I bit back a lot of poison, mostly because when I did explode, I paid. In many ways. I’d say, generally, once a year he pushed me far enough to create a genuine, hair-raising hissy fit. So when I hit the end of my tolerance, I’d been simmering a good nine months since the last one and, with a malicious twinkle in his eye, Quint had been ramping up the pressure for several weeks. To the point I was sleeping in the living room most nights and Rob found excuses to hide when his father was home.

That year, though, it came about during the winter, when the homes were normally buttoned up tight. We’d had a warm spell with Chinook winds, however, and I had a few of the windows cracked to blow fresh air through before the next cold snap settled in.

After the game, Quint had come home to grill dinner. He came into the house with a platter full of ice cold, charcoal-black burgers. He was also pretty buzzed. A case of beer over the course of a day was an easy guess. The guys thought he was hilarious with his stumbling jokes. I knew he’d probably pee all over the bathroom, leaving a wet spot on the front of his jeans in the process, then later demand a blow job. Like hell. He hadn’t been able to get it up in over a year. I thought about going to bed, but seven o’clock was far too early. Hiding in my office and leaving Rob to fend for himself wouldn’t work either. Quint wouldn’t tolerate us abandoning him after he’d cooked dinner.

Yeah. That was his take. I prepared the meat, toasted the buns, sliced the cheese, onions and tomatoes, made the potato salad and set the table, all in an effort to make it seem like summer in the middle of a long dark winter, then finished up by doing the dishes. According to Quint, he’d given me a night off from cooking. Some treat.

I’d been biting my tongue for a long time because of Rob. Were I on my own, I would have walked a lot sooner. But in order to leave, I had to be able to provide a home for my son. I’d crunched the numbers. I could make it month to month on my salary, but I needed several thousand dollars of seed money. First, last and deposit on an apartment, money to buy furniture, plus a nest egg for a retainer and the unexpected. And I needed a place near Rob’s school. With him moving on to middle school in the fall, our options had widened considerably. However, I was about fifteen hundred dollars short of my minimum goal. It would mean having only one bed–Rob’s–and we’d be sitting on the floor for awhile, but I’d have my grandfather’s desk, my uncle’s lawyer’s bookcase, the desk set and dresser we’d bought for Rob, my laptop and a few dishes. If I could just hang on a few months longer, five ideally, we could pack up and leave. I had just the place in mind, a building with a secure entrance.

Would a secure entrance stop Quint? No, but it would slow him down. I couldn’t afford a place with a security guard, but the complex I had in mind had security cameras in the lobbies and the underground parking garage. Not much, but it was something. It also required a hefty chunk of cash to get in the door, provided there was an available apartment. So I kept my mouth shut, socked away every penny I could and quietly sold a few things online. Things small enough I could carry out in my purse, tote bag or lunch bag. Things I could quietly send off from the office. Picking just the right items that would bring in at least twenty dollars was tough. But I managed and was adding about two hundred fifty dollars a month to my kitty.

I took one look at the burned burgers and knew I couldn’t last much longer.

Quint slapped me on the butt and told me to serve it up. That was my first bruise.

Everything else was on the plates. I pushed the platter back at Quint. “Eat ’em if you want, I’ll pass.”

“What? A little black not good enough for you, princess?” The words slurred through his sneer as he swayed in the kitchen. Beer fumes enclosed him like a fog. That and sweat. “Give me a blow job first and the burgers will taste better. I deserve one for cookin’ dinner for you. Hell, you should like ’em, you seasoned them.”

“Think about a shower and an early night, Quint.” I said it quietly, fury digging deep into my soul. So deep, a wave of resigned weariness immediately followed. This dance had been choreographed before, but he’d never gone so far as to use the words blow job in front of Rob. Too embarrassed, I couldn’t look over to see my son’s reaction. I slapped one of the patties on Quint’s bun and handed him the plate. “Dinner first.” Maybe ignoring his statement and getting some food in him would help.

Mollified for the moment, he took the plate and leered at me. “Gonna need my strength for later. I’m feeling a need for sweet dessert tonight. Nothing like poking some Candy in the ass, eh, babe? Gotta break in the new mattress.”

Determined not to rise to the bait, I reached into the fridge for some lunchmeat. Rob and I would just have sliced turkey on our buns. No big deal. If only I’d had roast beef, it would have looked more like the burgers.

Quint noticed. “What? You not eating the meat I cooked for you? You bitch about standing over a hot stove and expect me to eat the slop you produce. What about me standing over a hot grill?”

“You had plenty of beer to keep you company.” Balancing Rob’s plate and mine on one arm, I grabbed a bowl of cucumber salad to carry to the table and pushed past Quint. Rob was at the table and cast a wary glance at his father as he reached for his plate.

Quint pulled his chair up to the end of the table and sneered at the food. “What’s the matter, Bobby-boy? You not man enough to eat a real char-broiled burger? Have to eat the candyass pussy food your mama feeds you?”

Rob kept his eyes on his plate and tucked his paper towel napkin into his lap without a reminder.

I glared at Quint. Abusing me was one thing; turning on our son was another. “Your stomach is made of cast iron. We haven’t built up such a tolerance.” I sat down and placed my napkin in my lap.

“Hell, woman, he’s my son. Take that back and slap a patty on it. That expensive deli meat is pussy food.” Quint grabbed Rob’s plate and slapped it, upturned, on my chest. “Now make him a man’s plate.”

Rob, the boy who’d held his tongue his entire life, chose that moment to talk back. “Why can’t you leave her alone? That plate was just fine with me.” He pushed back his chair, preparing to stand. Probably to help me clean up the food now dropping to the carpet in large wet plops. Great. Ketchup, mustard, potato salad… I’d have to dig out the carpet cleaner I’d bought a few months earlier when Quint had peed on the bedroom carpet in a drunken stupor.

I was just standing when Quint’s right hand drew back in preparation of backhanding Rob. For once, his drunkenness played to my advantage. He moved slowly enough I was able to grab his arm and keep it from swinging to make contact with my son. Drunk as he was, Quint still had the strength to drag me part-way across the table. Swearing a blue streak and calling him every vile name I could think of, I ended up wearing food from all three plates and the vinegary cucumbers I’d set down. Quint planted his fist in my face and used it to push me away and down to the floor at the same time a left backhand crushed into my stomach.

Rob raced around his dad to get to the phone base sitting at the end of the kitchen counter, all the while screaming for Quint to back off and get the hell out. That’s probably what the neighbors had heard, those who’d also opened their windows for a rare chance at fresh air in winter. Rob’s voice hadn’t changed yet, and on the phone he’d been mistaken for me more than once, to his great disgust.

Trying to catch my breath, I yelled at Rob to get away from his dad. Quint ripped the phone from Rob’s hand and threw the entire base unit across the dining area, where it hit a wall. Six inches to the left and he would have broken one of the windows over the stairwell. Rob already had his hand on my cellphone, which had been charging on the counter. Quint quickly demolished that and turned on Rob in fury, his voice never rising above a normal volume. He was good at that. Let me do the screaming, or in this case, Rob.

I threw myself at Quint’s legs and knocked him off balance so Rob could escape from the confines of the kitchen. Rob was heading for the door when Quint kicked me. I screamed loud enough for the whole street to hear, hoping, for once, just one of them would come to the door to see what the hell was going on.

My scream brought Rob back, but Quint pushed past him, down the stairs and out the door. As consciousness wavered in and out, I heard Quint rev his truck and the tires squealed as he tore out of the driveway. The snow just beginning to fall muffled the sounds of his truck as he drove away.

Except for Rob’s cries, not a sound followed.

No one knocked on the door. No one touched the doorbell.

Hell, not even police sirens ripped through the air. I could have died, for all my neighbors noticed. Rob could be lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck.

But all I could think, as I clung to the shreds of consciousness, was thank God. Quint was gone. Now if only he’d stay that way.

For all their silence on Quint’s departure, somehow word of my auto accident made it onto the neighborhood grapevine. Since the detective’s visit, a few of the neighbors quietly began to take care of me. Lieutenant Sunshine and Ben had mowed my yard and he informed me they had plans to scrub the driveway over the weekend and put down a new layer of asphalt sealant. Ben, the general and Jack had already planned to do their drives, they just added me to the schedule. I had a week’s worth of casseroles filling the fridge. I’d been able to call off the committee a couple nights earlier. It was more food than we could eat, and some of it didn’t look all that appetizing, although the Korean ladies down the street made some fabulous spring rolls.

Our mailman’s wife, who lived three houses down, offered to drive Rob to Tae Kwon Do, but I was reluctant to accept too much help. After all, these people had thought the worst of me. However, I wasn’t above accepting a few tokens of their abject apologies for misjudging me. I made an effort to wave, and if they stopped me, I chatted for a few minutes, then gently excused myself. Rob had invites to play basketball with the mailman’s son, who was a year older, and street hockey with the young teen directly across the street. They were the two black families in the neighborhood and the only kids close to his age. The Koreans didn’t speak much English, but they smiled shyly and weeded the flowers along my walkway. My violas, herbs, daisies and hanging baskets had never looked better. Molly from next door, the one Rob called the crazy cat lady, kept them watered.

Not everyone felt the need to apologize. Many kept their distance, treating me no better, no worse than before.

As for who’d left a message that day, I didn’t want to think about it. The microwave beeped and Rob pulled a burrito from the oven. “You want one?” he asked.

“No. Thanks. I’ll just grab a power bar.” That, some water and a book would keep me company while I camped out in the car during the class at the dojo.

Rob grabbed a bar from the pantry shelf and handed it to me.

I wanted to ruffle his hair, but couldn’t reach so high.

“Don’t you want to know who called?” Rob asked.

“No.” Rob and I both had new cellphones, just not data-phones, to his great disappointment. I also had two hard-wired phones to go with the cordless handsets and the new house number. “Unless you recognized the number from Caller ID?”

“No. Blocked caller.”

“Then I definitely don’t want to know. Probably some politician or a survey company.” We’d certainly had plenty of those calls. “Hurry up, you need to change.”

He shoved the last bite of burrito into his mouth and took the stairs down to his room, making enough noise to compete with a herd of elephants. A loud thump announced his arrival at the bottom just as the doorbell pealed.

My fear of Quint returning hadn’t entirely left, so my stomach clenched hard.

“I got it!” Rob called out. The door opened and I held my breath, listening.

The voice that carried up the stairs as a rumbly murmur came from a man.

“Mom, the lieutenant is here.”

Damn. “Come up.” My stomach relaxed, while my pulse zinged.

The boy was getting persistent. Apparently he was the leader of the Take Care of Candace Committee. I saw him every day and he greeted both of us with a smile. Rob showed an eagerness for the man’s company that both soothed and frightened me. Maybe as much as I feared growing interested myself.

Until I knew where Quint was, and my divorce came through, I had no clue what the future held. Although I’d removed my wedding rings, I had trouble getting used to the idea of being single. Until the decree was in my hand, probably many months, if not years, down the road, I couldn’t in good conscience date. Nor did I want to. I had one man in my life–my son. I didn’t want to rely on anyone. I had to take care of Rob and that was that. A fly-boy who might be around six months or a couple years before jetting off wasn’t even a possibility.

And yet, there he was.

Golden and smiling with cheer that seemed to come straight from the Emerald Isle. The echo of the Celts could be heard in the lilt of his voice. His bright humor reminded me of my father and my younger brother, Rory, both of whom I missed dreadfully. Neither of whom were in a place to help, although they sympathized mightily and called regularly to check up. My grandmother sent small checks when she could, and every little bit helped.

Rory had offered to come up after my accident, but he had a new baby, they were barely making it on his paycheck, and his wife needed him. Dad had his hands full caring for his mother, Grandma Aileen. My middle name came from her. Mom had passed on a few years ago, so we were pretty diminished. All three of them urged me to take leave and come down. Or better yet, move home. Another tempting thought, but California was too expensive. Rob was in a good place, the school district had him on the gifted track, and we were aiming for the International Baccalaureate program. Besides, I liked my job, made good money, and compared to the North Bay Area, the cost of living was manageable.

For the most part, I felt at home in Anchorage. I was still considering a move to the secured apartment complex–it wouldn’t be much cheaper than trying to pay the mortgage on the house–but other expenses would drop. Still, I didn’t have to jump immediately. If Quint had split for good, then I had to decide what to do about the furnishings. I’d have to reduce the volume by seventy to eighty percent to fit into a two-bedroom apartment.

Cay’s head popped over the half-height wall that separated the dining area from the stairwell. A second later, his tall form dominated the space at the top of the stairs.

“First time you’ve let me up here,” he said. “Nice.”

I glanced around the room nominally divided into dining, living room and media, kitchen and a small study area for Rob against the north wall. He’d voluntarily moved up from the office and set up his desktop computer so I could easily look over his shoulder. He didn’t want me to worry about him hitting internet porn, he’d said. What a kid. He had a way of making me laugh. Where his ideas came from, I had no clue.

“Like oak, do you?”

“So?”

“It goes nice with the green.” He nodded at my jungle of indoor plants crowded against bookcases, all under grow lights near the south corner window.

“Seems to work with the white walls and cheap carpet.” I hadn’t gotten around to painting the walls the soft sage and taupe I wanted. Quint had never agreed to it, and without his paycheck, I couldn’t afford to.

“Hope you like football. I’ll be spending Sunday afternoons over here soon. Pre-season is about to start.” Cay grinned at the sixty-inch flat-screen perched on top of the most original of entertainment centers, one we called the honeymooner special, made with cinder blocks and pine boards. Hey, it was cheap and held speakers, receiver, Blu-ray, cable box and three game consoles. With room left over for a couple plants and a few pictures. Not original, not pretty, but functional. The entire set up could probably add a grand or two to my escape fund.

“Depends on who you cheer for. If you like the Niners, you’re in. Denver, Dallas or Oakland and you’re out.”

“Niners are good. I’m told Seahawks are the local team here, but I’m something of a Chicago fan, even though I should root for Detroit.” He shrugged with an adorable sheepish grin. “My dad would disown me if he knew how I really felt.”

“Where are you from?”

“East Lansing, Michigan. You?”

“Northern California.”

“Oh yeah? I just moved from there. I was at Travis and my sister is in Livermore.”

Damn. He’d practically come from my hometown. “Benicia.”

His grin widened. “I know it well. What do you know, a sunny California girl with roots in Ireland. Can’t ask for better than that.” He stepped closer and touched a strand of hair hanging over my shoulder.

I could smell the remnants of the aftershave he must have slapped on hours earlier, that and the unique scent of his skin. Heart fluttering, leaving me completely flustered, I stepped back and moved to stand behind a chair on the far side of the dining table. Was I back in high school, hoping the cute jock would ask me to the dance? “Is there a point to this chit chat? Was there something you wanted? Needed?”

“My car arrived today. I cleared out the boxes and want to take it for a run. Go with me? It’s too pretty a night to sit at home.”

“Rob has Tae Kwon Do in half an hour.” I looked away from him to shout down to the kid. “You about ready?”

“Almost!”

“Let me drive you,” Cay pleaded. “The car needs to stretch its legs, so to speak. Warm up the tires, move the oil around. I don’t want to take Jack for a drive. He’s not even remotely pretty enough.”

Something hot and sweet lanced through my veins. This was so not happening. “I–I can’t. Don’t ask. I can drive Rob just fine.” I reached for my purse hanging off the back of the chair. “We’re going to be late,” I called down.

“Just have to pee,” Rob answered.

Cay chuckled. “Reminds me of home. Five brothers, one sister. She’s dead center, five minutes younger than me.”

“A twin?” Why did that surprise me?

“Tiny little thing like you, but her hair’s more orange and wild with corkscrew curls.” He ran a hand over his hair. “Mine would be the same if I didn’t buzz it off every four weeks. What’s the harm? I need to learn my way around, it’s a gorgeous night, which I’ve been told is all too rare, and winter will be here before you know it. Please?”

“Please, Mom?” Rob bounded up the stairs in his gi, the green belt he’d earned only a few weeks ago in hand. “I saw the car. It’s a Mustang. Major coolness.”

It was the first true spark of excitement I’d seen from Rob since everything had fallen apart. All spring, he’d alternated between clinging to me and occasionally letting on how much he missed Quint. Ever since the accident, he’d been especially good as gold. And while I could say no to Cay, I couldn’t to my son. “Sure, honey.”

Rob whooped and Cay smiled. Between the two of them, I was toast.