by Tracy Wolff
* * *
THREE WEEKS LATER, she had her divorce and primary custody of Matthew, subject to the usual visitation schedule and swapping of holidays.
Detective Estevez might still be watching her, but, thank heavens, he hadn’t been back. She hated the idea of lying to his face.
Rebecca already felt tainted enough by a decision she knew wasn’t morally defensible. She imagined her mother shaking her head and chiding Rebecca with a gentleness that could still sting.
Yet, her mother had never shed her discomfiture regarding law enforcement. A fear of authority was bred into any Amish man’s or woman’s very bones by their bloody heritage. Throughout their history, the Amish had been driven out of one place after another by men in uniforms. Burned at the stake, tortured, imprisoned.
To go to the police about a family member’s behavior? No, Mamm would never have chosen that path. She would help that person see the error of his ways, guide him back to making godly choices. Punishing a wrongdoer wasn’t the aim of the Amish, and they never willingly went to the law.
Rebecca shook her head.
Her mother wasn’t here anymore. Rebecca was willing to live with a stain on her character if that was the only way to save Matthew from a life of being alternately shamed and molded by his grandfather.
* * *
THE DEAL HELD, although Matthew noticed the coolness between his parents. Worse, a couple of months after the divorce, he returned puffy eyed from a weekend with his father. Lower lip protruding, he stayed stiff when Tim hugged him.
Tim gave her an angry look, as if whatever had happened was her fault, then left. Rebecca followed Matthew to his bedroom and coaxed the story out of him.
Grandfather Gregory said some bad things about Mommy, and when Matthew objected, he had spanked him. Hard. And Daddy let him!
Furious, Rebecca hugged him. “Did he use his hand, or a belt, or…?”
Her little boy gaped at her. “A belt? Don’t people always spank with their hand?”
Well, that was something. “Is your bottom sore?”
He wriggled on his bed. “Uh-huh.”
She gave him another squeeze. “I’ll talk to your dad. Sometimes I think he’s a little afraid of your grandfather. He may have thought a spanking wasn’t that terrible. Especially if you were rude.”
“I wasn’t rude!” he exclaimed. “I just said my mom wasn’t a—” He sneaked a peek up at her. “He said a word you told me I can’t.”
She could imagine what Robert had called her. What she wondered was why. How much did he know about Tim’s part in Steven’s disappearance? And the leverage she held over Tim?
“Never mind,” she said. “Remember, ‘sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.’” Even so, he shouldn’t have to listen to her being vilified.
Together, she and Matthew decided the best thing was for him to say with dignity, Grandfather, I don’t want to listen when you use bad words about my mom, and then walk out of the room.
Forehead crinkling, Matthew repeated the line several times, then nodded firmly. “That’s what I’ll say.”
As far as she knew, he wasn’t spanked again. Perhaps Tim had confronted his father when Matthew wasn’t there. She wanted to think so.
Two months after her confrontation with Tim over the ring, he attended Matthew’s graduation ceremony from kindergarten. The three of them even went out afterward for pizza and had fun. At least, she thought they had, but when Tim drove them back to the apartment, he insisted on walking them up, where he asked Matthew to go to his bedroom.
He did it nicely enough, and Matthew shrugged and obeyed. Six now, he was growing like a weed and occasionally giving her glimpses of what he’d look like a few years down the road. That shrug was almost teenage. Rebecca wondered if he’d learned it from his fifteen-year-old babysitter.
She quit wondering when she glanced back at her ex-husband and saw the way his expression had tightened.
Feeling a little wary, she said, “What did you want to talk about?”
“Rebecca, you have to give me Steven’s things.” Tim kept his voice low, but urgency threaded every word. “Josh is pissed about this arrangement. He feels threatened, too.”
“Too?” she echoed.
“You don’t know what it’s like.” Hostility darkened his eyes. “Josh is after me, and Dad is angry because I gave in and let you have my kid. Sometimes I feel like that guy in the movie. I’m walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers. The only way off is to fall. That’s a shitty way to live.”
He was right. It was.
“I’d…like to think I can trust you, but I don’t trust your father,” she admitted. “Or Josh. And I’ve kept my word. I haven’t told anyone.”
“You know Josh is my best friend.”
She did know. Josh and Tim had met during orientation for their freshman year of college and had been roommates. Steven Stowe had been a much later addition, needed for his financial acumen. Because Josh had spent his summers working construction, he supervised the job sites. Tim’s gift had been convincing clients to choose G, G & S over other contractors. It was because of Tim that half the architects in the city recommended G, G & S to their clients. And when the company needed financing, Tim worked his magic on bankers.
“He’s leaning hard on me. You need to bend a little, Bec.” He hadn’t called her that in a long time. But then he said, “I don’t know how long I can keep protecting you. Be smart and think about it.”
She was speechless, and he departed without saying anything else. Rebecca almost lunged to flip the dead bolt on the door. Had he been telling her she needed to be afraid?
She tried to reason through the cloud of fear. Even if she returned the ring and the wallet and cards, she knew about them—about Steven. Even if she gave Tim the benefit of the doubt, what if Josh had killed Steven during an argument? Would he kill again to protect his secret? But there was the chance she’d given them to someone else as insurance.
Whatever he said to the contrary, keeping that proof might be the only way she could protect herself.
She put her back to the door and shuddered.
* * *
A COUPLE OF weeks later, Rebecca lay sprawled on the sidewalk, grit stinging her cheek. Dazed, she knew only that she was the near victim of a drive-by shooting, and that some man had tackled her to the pavement right after the first crack of gunfire.
I would have stood there frozen, like an idiot, she thought.
She groaned and pushed herself to a sitting position. People all around were babbling in excitement and alarm. The middle-aged man who had knocked her down was picking himself up, too. She heard an approaching siren.
Her phone rang and she groped in her handbag for it. She had to be sure someone from Matthew’s day camp wasn’t calling. Rattled, she stared at the strange number displayed on the screen. Even the area code was unfamiliar.
“Hello?”
A metallic voice said, “Call that a warning. You have something we need. Return it, or next time we won’t miss. And if you go to the cops? Your son is dead.”
Knowing the caller was gone, Rebecca began to shake.
Don’t miss PLAIN REFUGE by USA Today bestselling author Janice Kay Johnson. Available in April 2017 wherever Harlequin Superromance books and ebooks are sold.
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Copyright © 2017 by Janice Kay Johnson
ISBN-13: 9781488029240
EMBRACED by Tracy Wolff
First published as FROM FRIEND TO FATHER in 2009.
Copyright © 2009 by Tracy L. Deebs-Elkenaney.
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