The Great Escape

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  “She has good taste.”

  “I don’t know what I’d have done if she hadn’t ordered. Well, I do know, but I’m glad I didn’t have to.” She nodded again as Lucy held up an unopened bag of carrots. “I can’t abide the idea of being financially dependent on Mike. Been there, done that, not doing it again.”

  “Poor Mike. All he wants is to take care of you, and all you want is to take care of yourself. You’re going to have to marry him soon.”

  “I know. But the thing about Mike Moody …” A dreamy smile came over her. “He’s steadfast. That man is not going anywhere.”

  Lucy swallowed her pain. “Other than in and out of your bedroom window every night.”

  Bree actually blushed. “I told you about that in confidence.”

  “The same way you told me what a lusty lover he is. Something I could have gone to my grave not knowing.”

  Bree paid no attention to Lucy’s objections. “I really believed Scott when he said I was the one with the problem, but now all I feel is pity for his poor little nineteen-year-old.” The dreamy smile was back. “Who would have thought a straitlaced, religious guy like Mike could be so—”

  “Lusty,” Lucy said, cutting her off.

  Bree’s face clouded. “If Toby catches us …”

  “Which he’s bound to do sooner or later.” Lucy added a block of Parmesan cheese and—resisting the urge to shatter it against the wall—an unopened jar of Panda’s orange marmalade.

  “Mike’s getting more nervous about sneaking around. He actually threatened to withdraw his, uhm, services … until I agree to set a date. Blackmail. Can you imagine?”

  Lucy closed the refrigerator door. “What’s holding you back, Bree? Really?”

  “I’m just so happy.” She swung her legs, thought it over. “I know I have to get over my aversion to marriage, and I will. Just not yet.” She slid off the counter. “You’ll come back to the island to see us, won’t you?”

  Lucy never wanted to come back to the island again. “Sure,” she said. “Now let’s get this stuff over to the cottage. And no long-drawn-out good-byes, okay?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  But they both knew it wouldn’t be that easy to hold back tears. And it wasn’t.

  EVENTUALLY PANDA STOPPED COUGHING AND his energy began to return, but he felt as if he had a limb missing. His reflexes were no longer sharp—not bad enough for anyone else to notice, but he knew. At the shooting range, his aim wasn’t as true, and if he went for a run, he lost his rhythm for no reason. He knocked over his coffee mug, dropped his car keys.

  He read Lucy’s interview with the Washington Post. No mention of him, and why should there be? But he didn’t like the way her face was all over the news again.

  He noticed a couple threads of gray in his hair. As if that weren’t depressing enough, his job wasn’t going well. The actress who played the secondary lead in the film had started hitting on him and wasn’t taking no for an answer. She was out-of-this-world beautiful, with a body that almost rivaled Dr. Kristi’s, and tumbling in bed with a new female would be the best way to wipe out memories of the last one, but he couldn’t even think about it. He told her he was in love with someone else.

  That night he got drunk for the first time in years. He awoke in a panic. Despite all his care, the ghosts he’d been able to keep at bay for so long were coming back. He called the only person he could think of who might be able to help.

  “Kristi, it’s me …”

  LUCY FOUND AN APARTMENT AND a job in Boston while Nealy’s press secretary dodged an avalanche of calls from the media. Ms. Jorik is beginning a new job soon and too busy for additional interviews. Lucy intended to stay too busy until her first book tour.

  On her last night at home in Virginia, she sat with her parents on the patio of the estate where she’d grown up. Nealy wore one of Lucy’s old college sweatshirts to keep warm but still managed to look patrician as she sipped from a mug of hot tea, her normally neat honey-brown hair rumpled from the early October breeze.

  Her mother’s fair complexion and Mayflower lineage provided a marked contrast to her father’s darker good looks and steel-town toughness. Mat put a log on the fire in the new fire pit. “We took advantage of you,” he said bluntly.

  Nealy cuddled her warm tea mug. “It happened so gradually, and you were always so cheerful about stepping in, that we were oblivious. Reading what you wrote … It was clearheaded and heart-wrenching.”

  “I’m glad you’re going to keep writing,” her father said. “You know I’ll help however I can.”

  “Thanks,” Lucy replied. “I’m going to take you up on that.”

  Out of nowhere, her mother hit Lucy with one of the roundhouse punches that were her political specialty. “Are you ready to tell us about him?”

  Lucy tightened her grip on her wineglass. “Who?”

  Nealy didn’t hesitate. “The man who’s taken the sparkle out of your eyes.”

  “It’s … not that bad,” she lied.

  Mat’s voice dropped to an ominous rumble. “I’ll tell you one thing … If I ever see the son of a bitch, I’m going to kick his ass.”

  Nealy lifted an eyebrow at him. “One more reminder of how grateful we all are as a country that I was elected president instead of you.”

  PANDA WALKED AROUND THE BLOCK twice before he worked up the nerve to go inside the three-story brown brick building. Pilsen had once been home to Chicago’s Polish immigrants but now served as the heartbeat of the city’s Mexican community. The narrow hallway was covered in bright graffiti, or maybe they were murals—hard to tell in a neighborhood where bold public art figured so prominently.

  He found the door at the end of the hallway. A hand-lettered sign read:

  I’M ARMED AND PISSED OFF

  WALK IN ANYWAY

  Where the hell had Kristi sent him? He pushed open the door and stepped into a room decorated in early Salvation Army with a cracked leather couch, a couple of unmatched easy chairs, a blond wood coffee table, and a chain-saw-carved eagle sitting beneath a poster that read:

  U.S. MARINES

  Helping bad guys die since 1775

  The man who emerged from an adjoining room was about Panda’s age, rumpled and beginning to bald, with a big nose and Fu Manchu mustache. “Shade?”

  Panda nodded.

  “I’m Jerry Evers.” He moved forward, arm extended, his gait slightly uneven. Panda’s gaze inadvertently strayed to his leg. Evers shook his head, then tugged up the leg of his baggy jeans to reveal a prosthesis. “Sangin. I was with the Three-Five.”

  Panda already knew Evers had been in Afghanistan, and he nodded. The Marines in the Fifth Regiment had been hit hard in Sangin.

  Evers waved the file he was holding in the general direction of an upholstered chair and laughed. “You were in Kandahar and Fallujah? How’d you get to be such a lucky son of a bitch?”

  Panda pointed out the obvious. “Others had it worse.”

  Evers snorted and slumped down on the couch. “Fuck that. We’re here to talk about you.”

  Panda felt himself being to relax …

  BY THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER, Lucy had settled into life in Boston and the apartment she’d sublet in Jamaica Plain. When she wasn’t writing, she was at work, and even though she was tired all the time, she’d never been more grateful for her new job and busy schedule.

  “What do you care?” The seventeen-year-old sitting on the couch across from her sneered. “You don’t know nothin’ ’bout me.”

  The spicy scent of tacos wafted into the counseling room from the kitchen where, each day, the Roxbury drop-in center served dinner to fifty or so homeless teens. They also offered showers, a small laundry area, a weekly medical clinic, and six counselors who helped the runaways, couch hoppers, and street kids as young as fourteen find shelter, get to school, work on their GEDs, secure Social Security cards, and look for jobs. Some of their clients had substance abuse problems. Others, like this girl with the
beautiful cheekbones and tragic eyes, had fled terrible physical abuse. The counselors at the drop-in center dealt with mental health issues, medical issues, pregnancy, prostitution, and everything in between.

  “And whose problem is it that I don’t know anything about you?” Lucy said.

  “Nobody’s problem.” Shauna sank deeper into the couch, her expression sullen. Through the window in the door, Lucy could see some of the kids pulling down the Halloween decorations: flying bats, black cardboard witches, and skeletons with red glitter eye sockets.

  Shauna took in Lucy’s short black leather skirt, hot pink tights, and funky boots. “I want my old social worker back. She was a lot nicer than you.”

  Lucy smiled. “That’s because she didn’t adore you like I do.”

  “Now you’re just being sarcastic.”

  “Nope.” Lucy gently laid her hand on the teenager’s arm and spoke softly, meaning every word. “You are one of the universe’s great creations, Shauna. Brave as a lion, cunning as a fox. You’re smart and you’re a survivor. What’s not to love?”

  Shauna whipped her arm away and eyed her warily. “You’re crazy, lady.”

  “I know. The point is, you’re a real champion. We all think so. And whenever you want to get serious about keeping a job, I know you’ll figure out how to do it. Now go away.”

  That outraged her. “What do you mean, go away? You’re supposed to be helping me get my job back.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “By telling me what to do.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t have no idea? I’m turning you in to the director. She’ll fire your ass. You don’t know nothin’.”

  “Well, since I’ve been here less than a month, that might be true. How can I do better?”

  “Tell me the things I have to do to keep a job. Like showing up on time every day and not disrespecting the boss …” For the next few minutes, Shauna lectured Lucy, repeating the advice she’d received from other counselors.

  When she finally wound down, Lucy nodded in admiration. “Wow. You should be the counselor instead of me. You’re good at it.”

  Her hostility vanished. “You really think so?”

  “Definitely. Once you get your GED, I think you could excel at a lot of jobs.”

  By the time Shauna left, Lucy been able to solve at least one of the teen’s problems. It was such a small thing, but it posed a monumental barrier to a homeless kid. Shauna didn’t own an alarm clock.

  Lucy gazed around at the empty counseling room with its worn, comfortable couch, cozy armchair, and graffiti-inspired mural. This was the work she was meant to do.

  She left the center later than usual that night for her apartment. As she headed for her car, she popped open her umbrella against the chilly evening drizzle and thought about the writing she still needed to do before she could collapse into bed that evening. No more haunting the halls of Congress; no more banging on corporate doors to see big shots who wanted to meet her only so they could brag that they knew President Jorik’s daughter. Turning a book into her public platform was far more satisfying.

  She sidestepped a puddle. A floodlight illuminated her car, one of only two vehicles still left in the parking lot. She’d nearly finished her book proposal, and half a dozen publishing houses had already asked to see it. Considering how many writers struggled to get published, maybe she should feel guilty about that, but she didn’t. The publishers knew that her name on the spine of a book would guarantee big press and big sales.

  She’d decided to tell the personal stories of homeless teens through their eyes—why they’d fled their families, how they lived, their hopes and dreams. Not only disadvantaged kids like Shauna, but the less publicized suburban teens living a nomad’s existence in affluent communities.

  As long as she focused only on her work, she was energized, but the moment she let her guard down, her anger returned. She refused to let it go. When she was bone tired, when her stomach refused to accept the food it needed, when tears sprang to her eyes for no reason … Anger was what got her through.

  She’d nearly reached her car when she heard the sound of someone running. She spun around.

  The kid came out of nowhere. Wiry, hollow eyed, in dirty, torn jeans and a rain-soaked dark hoodie. He grabbed her purse and shoved her to the ground.

  Her umbrella flew, pain shot through her body, and all the fury she’d been holding inside her found a target. She screamed something unintelligible, pushed herself off the wet asphalt, and chased after him.

  He hit the sidewalk, passed under a streetlight, and glanced back at her. He hadn’t expected her to give chase, and he ran faster.

  “Drop it!” she shouted in a rush of adrenaline-fed rage.

  But he kept running, and so did she.

  He was small and fast. She didn’t care. She was juiced on vengeance. She raced down the sidewalk, her boots slapping the pavement. He swerved into the alley between the drop-in center and an office building. She went right after him.

  A wooden fence and a Dumpster blocked the exit, but she didn’t retreat, didn’t think about what she’d do if he had a gun. “Give that back!”

  With an audible grunt, he pulled himself on top of a Dumpster. Her purse snagged on a sharp corner. He dropped it and threw himself over the fence.

  She was so rage-crazed that she tried to climb the Dumpster after him. Her boots slipped on the wet metal, and she scraped her leg.

  Sanity slowly returned. She gulped in air, her fury finally spent.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  She retrieved her purse and limped back toward the sidewalk. Her leather skirt had offered some protection when she fell, but she’d torn her hot pink tights, scraped her leg, skinned both knees and hands. Still, despite the ringing in her ears, nothing seemed to be broken.

  She reached the sidewalk. Stupid. If Panda had seen her run into that alley, he’d have gone ballistic. But if Panda had been nearby, the kid wouldn’t have gotten close to her.

  Because Panda protected people.

  An awful dizziness swept through her.

  Panda protected people.

  She barely made it to the curb before she collapsed, her boots sinking into the rushing gutter, her stomach heaving, the words he’d spoken coming back to her.

  “… out of nowhere, he slammed her into the wall. Broke her collarbone. Do you want that to happen to you?”

  She cradled her forehead into her hands.

  “I don’t love you, Lucy … I don’t love you.”

  A lie. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. It was that he loved her too much.

  With a clap of thunder, the sky opened. Drenching rain pounded her shoulders through her trench coat, stung her scalp like sharp pebbles. The soldier who tried to strangle his wife … The man who’d beaten up his girlfriend … Panda saw himself as a potential danger to her just like them, another enemy she needed to be protected from. And he intended to do exactly that.

  Her teeth began to chatter. She considered the possibility that she was making this up, but her heart knew the truth. If it hadn’t been for the steadfast anger she’d so carefully nurtured, she would have seen through him earlier.

  A white van slowed and stopped. She looked up as the driver’s window came down and a middle-aged man with a grizzle of gray hair stuck his head out. “You okay, lady?”

  “I’m … fine.” She struggled to her feet. The van moved on.

  A flash of lightning split the night, and with it, she saw the anguish in Panda’s eyes, heard the phony belligerence in his voice. Panda didn’t trust himself not to hurt her.

  She turned her face into the grimy, rain-soaked sky. He would lay down his life to protect her even from himself. How could she fight an iron will like that? She could see only one way. With an iron will of her own.

  And a plan …

  Chapter Twenty-six

  WHEN THE FILM SHOOT ENDED, Panda went back to the i
sland, as if that would bring him closer to her. The house sat wet and lonely in the gloomy November afternoon. Leaves plugged the gutters, spiderwebs decked the windows, and tree branches littered the ground from a recent storm. He turned on the furnace and walked through the quiet rooms, his shoulders hunched, his hands in his pockets.

  He hadn’t gotten around to finding another caretaker, and the furniture held a light coat of dust, but Lucy’s touch was everywhere: in the bowl of beach rocks on the sunroom coffee table, the comfortably rearranged furniture, the clutter-free shelves and tables. The house no longer felt as though it were waiting for the Remingtons to come back, but it didn’t feel like his either. It was hers. It had been since she’d first stepped inside.

  The rain stopped. He pulled an old extension ladder from the garage and cleaned out the gutters, barely avoiding falling off when he slipped on a rung. He threw one of Temple’s disgusting frozen dinners in the microwave, popped a can of Coke, and tortured himself by going to bed in Lucy’s old bedroom, the one that used to be his. The next day he ate a cold breakfast, drank two mugs of coffee, and set off through the woods.

  The cottage had a fresh coat of white paint and a new roof. He knocked on the back door, but Bree didn’t answer. Through the window, he saw a pot of flowers on the kitchen table and some school papers, so she and Toby were still living here. Since he didn’t have anything else to do, he sat on the front porch and waited for her to come back.

  An hour later, her old Cobalt came into sight. He rose from the damp wicker chair and wandered to the steps. She stopped her car and got out. She didn’t seem upset to see him, merely puzzled.

  She looked different from the person he remembered—rested, almost serene, no longer quite so thin. She wore jeans and an oatmeal-colored fleece jacket with her hair pulled up in one of those casual buns. She walked toward him with a new confidence.

  He dug his hands into his pockets. “The cottage looks good.”

  “We’re getting it ready to rent out next summer.”