The Scent of Rain

by Jones, Julianne

  “Hello. … Damien.” He glanced at Madeline. “Why would she be out at this time of night? And on a night like this? She hates driving in the rain. … I see. … Well, come if you must, but you won’t find her here.”

  Madi and her mother looked at each other, stunned at her father’s lie. Daddy never told anything but the absolute truth.

  Her father hung up and reached for the phone again. His face turned away, Madi wasn’t able to hear his words clearly, but she knew that the call involved her. After putting the phone down he turned and faced her.

  “You’d better go. He’s on his way. Here.” He pulled his wallet out and handed her several bills. “Take these. You’ll need them.” He scribbled on the back of a business card. “And this is the address for a place where you’ll be safe. I’ve let them know you’re on your way.”

  “Thanks, Daddy.” She embraced him. Gently he let his hand caress what remained of her hair before kissing her cheek.

  Wrapping Jaena more tightly in her blankets, her mother gently placed her into Madi’s arms and then kissed them both. With one last loving look, Madi stepped through the door and out into the pelting and frigid rain.

  *********

  Madi looked at Jaena curled up on the bed and sleeping soundly and let her mind go back over the events of the past forty-eight hours.

  On arriving at the refuge in the middle of the night, she and Jaena had been led to a room where she had gratefully allowed herself to feel safe for the first time during that night. Disinfectant, plasters and hot sweet tea had appeared as if by magic and gentle hands had cleansed her wounds. She had only dimly been aware that someone had taken photos of her battered face and recorded the details while someone else spoke soothing words and helped her into bed.

  To her surprise she had slept and it had been quite light when she had woken. There had been questions then and a physical examination and kindness – so much so that it made her cry. And then had come the interview with the counsellor. Madi clenched her hands as she thought back to that interview.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  Madi looked down at the tissue scrunched into a ball between her fingers and shook her head. How many times would she be asked this question and how many times would she not have an answer? “I don’t know.”

  “I could help you take out a restraining order against,” the counsellor looked at her notes, “against Damien.”

  “But he’s my husband.”

  Again the counsellor looked at her notes. “He cut off your hair with a kitchen knife, knocked a tooth out and broke another one, made your nose bleed, and bruised your left cheek. And that’s just this one time. I guarantee it wasn’t the first.”

  Madi shook her head. “No, it wasn’t the first. But he’s never hit me that hard before.”

  “But he has hit you before.”

  It wasn’t a question but Madi replied anyway, and rather wearily. “Yes, he has hit me before.”

  “Has he ever hit Jaena?”

  “No!” Madi was shocked. “He loves Jaena,” but even as she said the words she asked herself, Does he? Does Damien really love Jaena? Or does he just like playing at being father when others are around?

  “No, he’s never hit Jaena,” she repeated.

  “How soon before he does?”

  Madi started to cry. “I don’t know.”

  The counsellor waited while Madi dried her tears.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “He’s my husband. I love him. He loves me. I know he does.”

  The counsellor tapped her pencil against the pad on her lap. “Is this the way someone who loves you should treat you?”

  Madi shook her head and started crying again. The counsellor pushed the box of tissues closer. When she could speak again, she offered, “He could change.”

  “Perhaps.” The counsellor looked sceptical. “But only if he’s prepared to change. Has he ever admitted that he has a problem with anger?”

  “No.” Madi looked down at the floor. “He says I make him angry. … That if I was … a better wife he wouldn’t get so upset and angry. … I tried … I really tried … but it’s never good enough.”

  There was silence until eventually Madi looked up. “What am I going to do?”

  “Only you can decide that. But you need to think about your own safety and Jaena’s safety.” The counsellor closed her pad and dropped her notes to the floor. “Madi, I know this isn’t easy, but we’re here to help you. No one’s going to force you to do something you don’t want to do. But in my experience, unless a man is ready to admit that he has a problem with anger and is willing to seek help, then nothing changes. He might tell you that he’s sorry and will change, but it won’t happen. Not without help. It won’t happen, believe me.” Madi was stunned at the bitterness in the other woman’s voice. “Shall I tell you what I think will happen?”

  Against her will, Madi nodded.

  “I think if you go back to him, he’ll try hard for a short while – weeks, perhaps even months – but then the cycle will start up again. Only this time it will be worse. You’ll leave again. He’ll say he’s sorry, you’ll go back, the pattern will continue. And nothing will change until one day he’ll go too far – he’ll raise his hand to Jaena or he’ll just about kill you – and then – then – you’ll realise that you have to get out.”

  Madi was silent.

  “Is that what you want?”

  It was a while before Madi answered. “I just want to have a happy family.”

  “That’s what we all want. But you can’t have it with this man. And sooner or later you’ll realise that. But there is someone out there who can give you what you want. Do you really want to waste the best years of your life on a man who is going to slowly and systematically destroy you?”

  The tears came thick and fast. “But he’s my husband,” she whispered so quietly that the counsellor had had to bend forward to hear.

  The session had finished then and Madi had returned to her room. Jaena had been cared for by one of the other women in the refuge while Madi had talked to the counsellor. Thanking the woman, Madi fed Jaena and put her to bed. Observing her sleeping now so peacefully, a lump came to Madi’s throat. She could put up with anything if it was just herself she had to worry about, but she couldn’t allow anyone to hurt her beloved daughter.

  Tiptoeing out of the room she went down the hall and picked up the phone that was for the residents’ use. Her father answered after three rings.

  “Daddy.”

  “Madi.” The relief in his voice was audible.

  “I –” She couldn’t go on. Didn’t know what to say. How could she tell Daddy of the pain that was in her heart?

  “Madi, are you okay?”

  Grasping the receiver tightly, she tried to comfort him who had always comforted her. “I’m okay, Daddy. Safe and tired, but okay. Jaena is asleep now, but she’s okay too.”

  She heard him breathe a prayer of thanks and smiled. How often had she heard him do the same thing when she was growing up? It was good to know that some things never changed and that there were good upright men in the world like her father.

  “How long do you think you’ll be staying there?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know, Daddy. They want me to take out a restraining order against Damien.”

  “That’s probably not a bad idea.” There was silence on the other end of the phone and then she heard her father take a deep breath as if reaching a decision. “Honey, Damien’s been looking for you.”

  “He has?” Hope rose in her chest.

  “He seemed contrite at first, but when I told him that I’d seen your injuries and knew how they had occurred he became quite angry. He accused us of planting lies in your head to turn you against him.”

  “Oh, Daddy.” They both knew it wasn’t true.

  “Honey, I hate to say it, but I’ve seen what he’s like and I don’t think he’s going to change.”

  “That’
s what the counsellor said.”

  Silence. She knew her father could say more, but was trying to spare her feelings.

  “I think the counsellor thinks I should divorce Damien. But Daddy, he’s my husband. I still love him.”

  She started to cry even though she knew it would hurt her father.

  “You don’t have to decide right now.”

  She sniffed and wiped at her tears with her sleeve. “No. But I’ve been thinking and I don’t think I can go back to him either. I know that doesn’t make sense. I can’t divorce him, but I can’t live with him either. I hope you can understand.”

  “You’ll always have a home here.”

  She almost wept again, this time with relief. “Thank you, Daddy. But I don’t think it would be safe. Damien would find me and make me go back. I can’t do that. Not yet anyway.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to help you find somewhere safe, but where we can still see you and Jaeney-honey.”

  Silently she thanked God for her father’s understanding. This couldn’t be easy for him. She knew, from years of hearing her father preach, just how highly he valued the sanctity of marriage. To have his only daughter walk out on her husband went against everything he believed in and lived by. But then Daddy would never have raised a hand to her mother. His love and respect and admiration for his wife of thirty-eight years had been an example to each of his five children. That his four sons had happy marriages and held their wives in high esteem was very much due to the example set by her own parents. No child could have had a better upbringing or a finer example … so why had her own marriage failed after only three years?

  Her father was speaking again and she realised that she hadn’t been listening. She was about to ask him to repeat his words, when her mother’s voice sounded on the line. Her mother asked about Jaena and talked as if nothing had happened but they both knew otherwise. For the first time Madi realised that her mother had suspected the truth for a while. That’s why she wasn’t shocked. It wasn’t because she didn’t care or refused to face the truth, but because it had confirmed what she had suspected. Perhaps more so than Daddy, her mother was a realist.

  After satisfying her mother that she and Jaena were safe, Madi hung up and returned to her room. Jaena slept on. Madi picked up a brochure to read and then threw it down impatiently. It had only been two days, but already she hated the inactivity and the feeling of confinement. She couldn’t go back home – not to Damien or to her parents – but perhaps she could make another home for Jaena and herself.

  ********

  At first Madi had been appalled by the type of house she could rent. She knew she wouldn’t have a lot of money, but she had expected something bigger than the tiny two-bedroom house she eventually settled on.

  She had decided to move away from the city she’d grown up in to a town several hours’ drive north. Her parents hadn’t been pleased at first – they had wanted her close so they could support her and Jaena – but they had eventually seen the wisdom in it: a clean start away from Damien and his family and people who knew them. Even Daddy was thinking of a fresh start – a new ministry. They’d even hinted that they might move out of the city now that she was no longer living there.

  Her eldest brother, Paul, had come down to help her parents assist her in moving. A large man, he was as gentle as a lamb, but just his physical presence had made them all feel safer. She had arranged to do it when Damien would be at work, but it hadn’t stopped her from feeling afraid that he would come home and stop them. On entering the house she had stood appalled. Damien had always insisted that she keep the house spotless, but in the three weeks that she’d been gone from home, it had turned into a pigsty. She barely recognised the place that they had called home.

  A further shock awaited her. Many of her belongings had been damaged or tampered with in some way. In the end she had managed to rescue some of her clothing, Jaena’s bed, the rocking chair that had been a gift from her parents (and which now bore marks from where the wood had been deliberately gouged with a sharp object), her sewing machine, a few kitchen items, and a few books and other personal belongings. As they were about to go out the door for the last time, she suddenly grabbed a wedding photo from the wall in the hall.

  “For Jaena. For when she’s older,” she had explained at her father’s puzzled glance, and then ran her hands through her short hair, now transformed into a stylish new cut by a local hairdresser. With a new hairstyle and bruises healed, there was nothing to show the casual observer the damage her husband had inflicted on her that night. Yet Madi knew she would never be able to block out the image of her husband coming at her with a knife or the knowledge that her husband was not the man she thought he was.

  Paul and Daddy had unpacked her belongings into her new home and then Daddy had gone shopping for the items of furniture she still so desperately needed: a bed for her to sleep in, somewhere to put her clothes, a table to eat at, and something on which to sit. Her mother made curtains and gave her a hooked rug for the floor and went through her own cupboards for items of bedding and linen that she no longer used. When it was all set up, Madi had looked around and smiled. It bore little resemblance to the home she had shared with Damien. Damien had insisted on the best and the latest, whereas this home was a mishmash of different styles and time periods. But it was home and it felt safe and that was the main thing.

  Chapter Three

  Madi knew instinctively what the large white envelope contained when it arrived in the mail. There was the name of a well-known solicitor in the top left hand corner. She left it sitting unopened on her dining room table.

  After some weeks, Jaena took to decorating the envelope with her coloured pencils. One day she picked up Madi’s kitchen scissors and cut through one corner. Madi didn’t care. She wasn’t going to open the envelope and she certainly wasn’t going to sign anything that was inside the envelope.

  Eventually other items hid the envelope from view but Madi still knew it was there. Her husband wanted to be rid of her … permanently. There could be no greater pain.

  *********

  Madi was hanging out the washing when the phone started ringing. She had half a mind not to answer it but her sister-in-law was due to give birth any day now and she was anxious for news of the new baby. Glancing at Jaena happily pegging her doll’s clothes to a child-height clothesline, she decided it would be safe to leave her for the few minutes it would take to answer the phone.

  To her consternation there was no one on the other end. She hung up and was about to return outside when she heard the washing machine finish its cycle. It was only a few items and she opened the lid and grabbed them and turned to the back steps. Jaena wasn’t at the clothesline, but she was not unduly concerned. There were many places for a young child to hide and Jaena had often crawled into the disused dog kennel and pretended to hide from her mother.

  However, as Madi got closer to the clothesline she couldn’t hear the telltale giggle that let her know Jaena was anticipating being found and the laughter and games that would ensue. Madi dropped the clothes into the basket and walked over to the kennel. Bending down she discovered it was empty. She straightened and looked around the yard. Jaena wasn’t in the garden so Madi checked behind the garden shed. No Jaena. Checking one side of the house and then the other, Madi felt fear rising within her chest.

  “Calm down,” she tried to tell herself. “Perhaps she followed you inside and you missed her.”

  Moving quickly now, Madi checked inside the house before once again checking outside. She tried not to panic but the awful truth couldn’t be ignored: Jaena was nowhere to be found.

  Picking up the phone she dialled her parents’ home as she continued to walk through the house again, searching under beds and behind furniture – anywhere a young child could hide.

  “Madi, I was just going to ring –”

  Madi cut her mother off. “I can’t find Jaena.”

  “What do you mean you ‘can’t find J
aena?’”

  “I was outside when the phone rang and I thought to answer it in case it was Caleb with news of Hannah – you know she’s due now – I wasn’t gone that long – I did get the washing out of the machine – it was only half a dozen items – I didn’t even get the basket – just carried them out to the clothesline – Jaena wasn’t where I’d left her – I thought she might be in the dog kennel – she wasn’t – I crouched down but she’s not there – she’s not behind the shed or around the side of the house – I can’t find her anywhere!”

  Madi’s voice had risen and she knew she was close to losing it.

  “Calm down. Have you checked everywhere?”

  She was openly crying now. “Yes. And I can’t find her. She’s not here.”

  “Madi, listen to me. Get off the phone and ring the police. I’ll try and get onto your father – he has the car today – and I’ll come over. But ring the police. Now. You got that?”

  Madi nodded, then realising her mother couldn’t see her managed to whisper, “Yes”.

  She hung up the phone and grabbed the phone book and searched for the number of the local police station. It didn’t occur to her to ring the emergency number. Later she would wonder why, but it would be something she would never be able to answer to her own satisfaction.

  The impersonal voice on the other end of the phone took Madi’s details and promised to send an officer around immediately.

  “Try not to worry,” the voice said before hanging up.

  Madi knew that was impossible.

  *********

  Madi didn’t remember much of the next few hours – in fact, the next few days. She knew that Marcus had been there and in her distressed state she had clung to him thinking he was Damien.

  Our little girl is missing, she had silently cried over and over again, trying to reassure Damien as much as herself.

  Only it wasn’t Damien and Damien was the one who had taken Jaena. At least that was what the police thought.

  Finally her parents had arrived and Daddy had taken charge and answered the remaining questions. Her mother had bathed her face and put her to bed – very much like she’d done when Madi was a little girl and similar to what Madi had done with Jaena.