Читать книгу My Sister, Myself - Tara Taylor Quinn - Страница 7

SHE WAS ALMOST there.

Shelter Valley, once a two-day drive away, was now just two miles ahead. How had more than thirty hours passed without her being aware? What had she driven by along the way?

Was she going to take the exit? Or wasn’t she?

How could she possibly make a decision when she wasn’t ready?

If Christine didn’t show up to take this job, she’d lose it.

Another green sign whizzed by the passenger window of Tory’s new Ford Mustang. Shelter Valley, 1 mile.

Christine. Tears flowed from Tory’s eyes, as they’d been doing for most of the trip, trailing almost unnoticed down her face. Christine. So beautiful. So worthy.

What do I do? How do I go on without you?

And then, to herself, How do I not?

Tory’s life had been spared. That made no sense to her. Justice had not been served.

“What do you want me to do?” she cried to an absent Christine when the silence in the car grew too overwhelming. “Bruce thinks he killed me, not you.” Pulling over to the shoulder of the road, Tory barely got her car into park before the sobs broke loose.

Her beloved older sister had only been dead a week.

Tory was all alone. Completely and totally alone for the first time in her godawful life. And she’d thought, after spending two years fleeing a maniacal ex-husband, that it couldn’t get any worse.

Her tearstained face turned toward the sky, she tried, through blurry eyes, to find some guidance from above. Was Christine up there in all that blueness somewhere? Watching over her, guiding her?

There were no answers from up there. But straight ahead was another green sign with fluorescent white lighting. Shelter Valley, this exit.

Twenty-six-year-old Tory Evans had been searching for shelter her entire life. But she’d never found it. Was this time going to be any different?

As long as Bruce thought her dead, she’d be safe from him.

Coming from old New England money, he had widespread influence. His tentacles were everywhere. They’d infiltrated every city, every small town, every hut she’d ever inhabited while trying to evade him. Bruce Taylor had never been denied. His mother, having found him perfect in every way, had refused to allow any kind of discipline in his life—still refused to see that her grown son was less than exemplary, making excuses for him at every infraction. And his father, a shipping magnate, had assuaged the guilt of his neglect with everything money could buy. He’d even bought off someone in the legal system the one time Tory had gone to the law for help regarding Bruce’s physical abuse. Somehow the tables had been turned on her, the innuendoes so twisted that Tory had known, even before she’d faced the judge, that she was going to lose.

She would never have gotten her divorce if she’d gone about it the normal way—filing, having him served. In her desperation, she’d come up with a pretty clever plan: coaxing Bruce to accompany her on a Tiajuana get-away and then, in the middle of his three-day drunk, taking him to the local courthouse for a quickie divorce. He’d demanded the divorce be nullified. She wouldn’t agree to it, but he still hadn’t accepted her no.

At thirty, Bruce didn’t know the meaning of the word no. He took what he wanted, accepted it as his due. And he wanted Tory. Was obsessed with keeping possession of his ex-wife. The only way to be safe from him was to be dead. To stay dead. And to let Christine live.

It was never going to work.