Читать книгу Tiger Lilly - Sharon Vander Meer - Страница 6

Annie moved with sluggish precision. She had put Caleb to work cleaning the garage. He’d been the one who insisted the stupid dog had to come with them.

“What’ll happen to him, Mom? If we don’t take him he’ll go to the pound and you know what they do.”

Marie, always alert to an opportunity for drama, had come in at that moment.

“Not take Krank? But Mo-om, if we don’t take him he might die!”

“He’ll die, all right,” Caleb had said, taking advantage of this unexpected support. “They’ll kill him dead at the pound.”

Marie’s eyes had grown big and she’d wailed. “Dead? Mom we gotta take him, we gotta!”

Alex, who had been sleeping, awoke to all the commotion and entered the fray with hiccupping sobs in defense of he knew not what, just that his brother and sister were upset, which for Alex was quite enough.

She’d given in of course. For one thing the dog was a good companion for the children. There were times when she had to be at work and there was no one to watch after them. Krank wouldn’t hurt a fly but just the size and look of the gallumping animal would scare the pants off a person.

Annie was putting things away in the drawers of the dresser Mrs. Irish had told her she and Marie could share. She looked up and caught her reflection. She wanted to look away but couldn’t tear her eyes from the image confronting her. God, when had she gotten so old looking? Was it that she was tired? With a little rest and a lot less stress would that beaten, bedraggled look go away?

She ran long slender fingers through her mass of chestnut hair. Like the rest of her it looked dull and lifeless. She picked up a tube of lipstick and toyed with the idea of adding color by painting her lips, but set the tube back down. It would take a lot more than lipstick to improve the way she looked. There wasn’t much of anything that would make her feel better.

Had she made the right decision? Coming to her aunt, a woman whom she hadn’t seen in years, was a risk but she had run out of options. She couldn’t stay living in the city. The unsettling feeling she was being followed or watched grew to the point she couldn’t walk five steps without looking over her shoulder. It had started not long after Marie was born and grown more persistent and oppressive over the years.

She’d thought she’d escaped when she’d moved to San Diego but instead she’d walked into a different kind of hell. Oh, she had brought it on herself, no doubt. Elvin Caparelli, her boss at the fine dining restaurant where she worked, had come on to her countless times, but she had always put him off with a joke. When he caught her alone one night after closing he’d cornered her and laughed off her protests.

“You’ve been coming on to me since you started working here, now it’s time to get down to business.” He was drunk, he was bigger, he was stronger, and really he was right, after all. When they first met she wasattracted to him, until she found out he was married.

When he was done with her he’d walked away without a word, buckling his belt and humming You Are My Sunshine. Even now, years after the rape, hearing that tune made Annie sick to her stomach.

For hours after Caparelli left she sat huddled in a corner shaking uncontrollably. She should have left that night, picked up her kids and taken off, but she made good money at the restaurant. As the sole support for Caleb and Marie she couldn’t afford to walk away. She thought about reporting him, but that would lead to a nightmare her kids would get caught up in. She’d never thought of Caparelli’s flirting as sexual harassment. To make such a charge after the fact would lead to a he said/she said free-for-all she didn’t want to deal with. She hadn’t encouraged his attention but wasn’t sure how her actions would be seen by others.

Still angry, traumatized and sick with shame she went to work the following day not knowing what to expect, but it was like nothing had happened. The man ignored her, as if she didn’t exist, and then the reports of poor performance began to show up. She was called in by the restaurant owner and questioned about incidents that never occurred or were blown out of proportion. Popular among customers and the rest of the staff she was able to ride it out. About the time everything settled down (probably because Caparelli had set his eyes on one of the newest waitresses), she realized her missed periods were more than the unpredictable nature of her menstrual cycles. Had it not been for Caleb and Marie, and the baby growing inside her, she might have driven her car off a cliff and ended her crappy third-rate soap opera existence.

Annie closed her eyes and held back the sobs that desperately tried to escape, the way they had the night before when she’d found Marie in Mrs. Irish’s bedroom. There was something about the woman that comforted her, giving her permission to cry. Was it because she was her mother’s sister? They looked nothing alike. Mrs. Irish was a sweet looking woman, comfortable in her plumpness and at peace with herself. Still she didn’t want that to happen again. The woman would think she was a wreck.

“Momma?” Alex tugged at her jeans.

She bent slightly and picked him up. He was getting too big to hold in this manner, but sometimes the comfort of holding one of her children was all it took to center her. She made herself smile and was rewarded with a real one from her son.

“Can I have a soda pop?”

“No, you little charmer. We’re going to a laundry place and then to get your brother and sister registered at school. I don’t want you hyped up on sugar.”

He wiggled to signal he wanted down. It didn’t take much bending for his feet to touch the floor. When had he gotten so tall? What was happening to the days? She couldn’t recall a time when she didn’t have children and wasn’t moving from one place to another, running from that feeling of being hunted, by what or whom she didn’t know, but the fear was real and as present as her own heartbeat. She didn’t have to worry about being followed here. She had never told anyone about the aunt who lived in New Mexico.

One promise she’d made to herself and intended to keep was to never again get involved with a man, any man, any time, anywhere. She bit her lip, tamping down regret and shame.

Annie looked around the room she was sharing with Marie. It was decorated in a feminine style with pastel curtains, a restrained floral print wallpaper and white furniture. The floor was hardwood covered by a large area rug in burgundy and blue. It added warmth to an otherwise neutral décor. She wondered about the cousin who had grown up in this room, living in a house where she doubted screaming was an everyday occurrence or drunken arguments the norm. Harve Irish—Harvard Colin Irish, such a formal name for such a down-to-earth guy—had always stood out in her mind as the epitome of what a man should be. Maybe because her mother would launch that accusation like a missile at Trey when he would come home drunk or late or after losing one more job.

“You could take a lesson from Lil’s husband,” she would yell, or taunt, or softly say, depending on the circumstances, “Now there’s a man for you!” And the battle would be on.

Not that he didn’t have it coming. Her father had been a brute—again, her mother’s words. She tore her mind away from going down that road. She did not, would not, revisit the day of the accident.

In an effort to feel better she snapped up the lipstick and applied it with a less than steady hand. She then twisted her hair into a roll and secured it with pins. One thing she didn’t have to worry about was trying to impress some man.

Annie tucked her shirt in, emphasizing her slender waist. She had the kind of body clothing looked good on, no matter what the style. Her usual attire leaned toward jeans and T-shirts, but rather than looking unkempt, she looked casually chic. Tendrils of hair escaped the upsweep and danced around her face in charming wisps. She had the look of the Hadleys, which she rather resented. Why couldn’t she look like her beautiful mother?

She made a face at herself in the mirror and prepared to take on the rather mundane task of doing laundry. For the first time in months she felt as though she could breathe.