Hold Me Close

by Rosalind James

  The boy looked at her collar. “Is that her name on there?”

  “Yep.” Luke rubbed at his nose ruefully. “Afraid so. I swear, we went into the store for a plain leather collar for a good, solid working dog. A man’s dog. And instead, I got suckered into this. She looked at me like she wanted it, and then the lady said they could put her name on it, and next thing I know?” He sighed. “I’ve got a dog with a flowered collar. Might as well give up my man card right now. What can I tell you? I’m a sucker for a pretty woman.”

  The boy smiled a little and kept petting the dog, scratching her neck around the woven yellow collar with a few flowers and the word ‘Daisy’ embroidered in white, the embarrassing proof of Luke’s moment of weakness.

  “Eli.” Luke turned at the call, and the boy did, too. “Come give me a hand, will you?”

  The boy was there in a moment, but Luke was right there with him, because the young woman was up in the truck again, trying to shove a scarred wooden tabletop out of it.

  Luke grabbed one edge. “I’ve got it.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “But we can do it.”

  “It’ll take me five minutes to help you unload, and I’d be glad to.”

  She stood in the bed of the truck and looked down at him, her finely drawn brows knitting over her straight little nose. “We’re good,” she said. “I don’t want to be rude, but we’ve got it.”

  “Ah.” He finished lifting the table out, because he couldn’t help it, then put out a hand to help her down. She ignored it and jumped to the ground on her own, her battered black canvas sneakers hitting the pavement hard. She stumbled a little, stood up a bit stiffly, and he wished she’d taken his hand.

  Sarah was there again now, grabbing a second box out of the truck. “I should introduce you, shouldn’t I?” she said. “Kayla, this is Luke Jackson. He lives right above you.” She pointed up to the house on the hill, its green lawn, spacious wooden deck, and gleaming white trim around the multitude of windows a decided contrast to the shabbiness below. “Kayla’s just moving in with her son Eli,” she told Luke.

  So he was her son. How old had she been when she’d had him? Fifteen? Luke said, “Eli. Great name,” and the boy looked up at him, the wariness back. There was something on Kayla’s face, too, that he didn’t understand.

  “Come on, Eli,” Kayla said. She picked up one end of the tabletop again, the boy grabbed the other, his wiry frame straining with the effort, and they headed into the apartment.

  “What am I missing here?” Luke asked Sarah.

  She hefted the carton in her arms, and Luke wanted to take it from her, but he didn’t. He was getting that much.

  “You’re missing—or you’re seeing—that she doesn’t want your help. The rest of it—” She shrugged. “That’s her business.”

  Luke watched her carry the box into the apartment, looked at the table legs and a plywood dresser that still sat in the truck, then snapped his fingers for Daisy and headed back up the hill.

  Whatever the woman’s story was, it looked like he wasn’t going to hear it. And whatever help she might need, it looked like it wasn’t going to be coming from him.

  It isn’t him, Kayla told herself as she tucked a worn white sheet into the end of the mattress and reached into the box for the first of the donated blankets. She only had two of them, one for each bed, but it was summer. By the time it got colder, she’d have earned enough to buy more. Hopefully. She finished putting their clothes into the drawers of the single dresser, then moved to the kitchen and began to wipe out sticky cupboards with a paper towel before taking the mismatched dishes Eli handed her and setting them inside.

  It was him, though. She knew it was him. The dark hair and laughing brown eyes, the easy grace and loping stride were the same, even if the man who possessed them now stood about six foot two.

  How could that be, though? What were the odds of Luke being her neighbor? Well, not impossible, not in a town this size, not if he’d left the farm.

  Why hadn’t she told him who she was? He probably wouldn’t even have remembered her.

  Because she was ashamed, that was why. Ashamed to be in this situation, to have fallen so far. “Lower than a smashed snake in a wagon rut,” her stepfather Bill would have said, once upon a time. To be cleaning out an apartment whose first and last months’ rent had been paid for by another organization for battered women. To be feeling so grateful for these pitifully few new belongings, every one of them donated by a kind member of a church congregation she couldn’t even thank, because she didn’t know who they were. Just people who gave what they could to help the downtrodden, and if anybody had ever been downtrodden, it was Eli and her.

  Right now, anyway. Right now. Just until the job started. It was cleaning offices, and in the evenings, too, neither of which was ideal. She couldn’t afford to be picky, though, because she needed money, and she needed it bad. She needed the paycheck that would allow her to supplement the canned goods, bags of dried beans, and blocks of cheese from the food bank with fresh vegetables from the grocery store, that would let her know she could pay the next month’s rent, that they could stay. She’d have done just about anything to avoid the panicky dread that had her pulling out her manila envelope every night and counting the dwindling number of bills inside as if that would stop them from flying away so quickly.

  At least she and Eli weren’t in the shelter anymore. At least she didn’t have to sleep with the envelope tucked into her underwear, ashamed not to be able to trust the other women more. But the stakes were too high, her security too shaky, her faith too thin for that kind of trust.

  So, yes, she was ashamed, and she was scared, too. Scared to reveal anything to anyone she didn’t have to.

  Maybe she was wrong. Maybe, when Alan hadn’t been able to find her, he’d moved on. Maybe it wouldn’t be like the last time. The day she’d tried to leave before, the day after the first bad night. After the wooing and flattery and presents and full-court press of the early weeks and months had gradually turned into impatience, then anger, once she and Eli had moved in and she’d quit her job. When the sexy possessiveness had become something else, until she’d been afraid to even look at a man when she was out with Alan.

  It had started with a few shoves, some thrown plates and cutting words, sudden outbursts of anger that had left her shaken and crying. But, always, the apologies the next morning, the promises, the presents. And the explanation of what she’d done to set him off, of how she’d messed up. Again.

  And then the bad one. The night after a humiliating loss in court, the important case that Alan had been sure he’d win. When the shoves had become slaps, and then, when she’d tried to go for Eli and leave the house, had turned into something so much worse. When there’d been no apology, no present, no promise that could have convinced her that this was going to get better.

  She’d been so scared to leave without any money, without a job or a car, with nobody but Isabel to go to. A friend she hadn’t seen in months, because Alan didn’t like her. She’d left, even though she’d begun to believe that she really couldn’t make it on her own. As Alan had continually reminded her, she hadn’t done a good job of that so far. She’d left anyway, though, because she’d been more scared to stay.

  But that morning, he’d found them, because she’d kept her phone.

  He’d pushed them into the car as they’d left Isabel’s apartment, had shoved Eli out at the school gates, had grabbed Kayla by the shirt and hauled her back in when she’d tried to scramble out after her son. Had punched the locks and driven home in icy silence, ignoring her frantic bargaining, her tears, and dragged her into the bedroom by her hair. And much later, when she’d been curled into a ball in the corner, trying not to make a sound, not to whimper in the way he hated, he’d told her that if she ever did it again, it would be worse. And that after he’d finished with her, he’d make sure sh
e lost her son.

  She shut her eyes, swallowed, opened them again, and forced herself to keep wiping out the fridge. No, she wasn’t wrong to be scared. She was normal, whatever “normal” was. “Normal” wasn’t here, and it wasn’t now. But maybe someday it would be. Maybe. If she tried hard enough. She’d been to hell, and she’d gotten out. Anything else had to be an improvement.

  And this was more than an improvement. This was Paradise. Nowhere Alan would associate with her, because he didn’t know about the summer when she’d visited Bill’s family with her mother, during that good year when Bill Jackson, Luke’s uncle, had been her stepdad.

  She’d sat in the pickup the week before, watching as the tires ate up the miles of highway, the river rushed on its busy way, and the pines stood sentinel over it all, tall, straight, and dark. She’d watched, and she’d remembered.

  Remembered eating breakfast at a round oak table in a big white house. A storybook house with wide plank floors, big rooms full of old furniture, and mysterious, secret spaces under the stairs. Remembered looking down the drive and across the gravel road to the rolling hills beyond, where the wheat ripened to gold in the Idaho sun. Swaying gently in the porch swing, listening to the chains creak while Aunt Raylene—who wasn’t an aunt at all, not really—walked around the broad porch, watering hanging baskets of bright flowers with a battered metal watering can.

  And, most of all, the barn.

  Climbing the rickety wooden ladder after Luke, so scared the first time. He’d said, “Come on. It’s easy,” and she’d done it, because she hadn’t wanted him to think she was a baby. Had clambered awkwardly over the scratchy, sweet-smelling hay in the loft while Luke’s brother Cal, tall and superior, pulled the knotted rope back, climbed onto the topmost bale in the corner, then swung out in a wide arc in the dim light of a single window.

  Cal had been so far beyond her, big and hard-muscled even at ten, and Theresa, the boys’ older sister, had been working, driving a truck during harvest even though she couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

  Luke, though . . . Luke had been Kayla’s idol, and her hero. It had been an eight-year-old Luke who’d wrapped her hands around the rope swing and told a six-year-old Kay, her pale-blonde braids neat and prim, her skinny legs shaking with fear in her pink shorts, “Just hang on and push off. It’s fun.”

  “I’ll fall,” she’d quavered, and Cal had sighed, but Luke had said, “Falling’s the funnest part,” and grinned at her. So she’d done it, and it had been fun.

  Luke, pumping up the tires on the little bike for her. Then, later, hopping off and waiting for her to finish pushing her way, panting and sweaty, up the dusty dirt road through the fields when her legs couldn’t make the pedals turn any more, while Cal had already been riding down the other side. No hands, because Cal could do that. Luke could, too. How she’d admired them both as she’d watched them fly, their arms spread wide. Fearless. Magic.

  She’d braked her cautious way down behind them through the sunshine and wished she could stay there forever. That Aunt Raylene and Uncle Stan really were her aunt and uncle, and that Luke and Cal really were her strong, handsome, glamorous cousins, boys with muscles and brown chests who could do everything: swim and dive in the deep end at the city pool, play basketball on the concrete slab outside the farmhouse and make baskets, jump high on the trampoline in the yard and do tricks. They knew how to weed the garden and shuck corn and start a fire in the burn barrel, and she wanted to live there and learn how to do those things, too. Or at least to visit again.

  It hadn’t happened, of course. Her mom had promised they’d go, but one rainy day when school was almost out for the summer, when it had been almost time, her mom had come to pick her up after school, and they hadn’t gone home. They’d gone to live with another uncle instead, and Kayla hadn’t seen Bill again, hadn’t heard his deep voice or his big laugh. She hadn’t seen any of them again.

  But she’d remembered. The ice cream store in town, where it was cool on the hottest day, and you could get a banana split with whipped cream and a cherry on top, so big you couldn’t come close to finishing it. Your feet pumping up the Maple Street hill under the shade of the huge old trees until you got to City Park, where you could go down the slide and swing on the swings and watch your cousins play basketball with the other big kids, your chest swelling with pride because Cal and Luke were the best, the strongest, and the coolest of all. And then having Bill throw your bike into the back of the big pickup hours later, so you could climb into the narrow backseat of the cab and ride home beside Luke. Sleeping in the tree house one starry night and not being scared, because your cousins were there, too, and they were brave even if you weren’t.

  When she’d needed someplace to run, someplace Alan’s influence wouldn’t reach, someplace safe for herself and Eli, it had been Paradise she’d thought of. The place where a little girl who’d moved too much had felt safest, and the place that had felt like it could be home. Not because she knew anybody. She’d known the Jacksons for one short summer, and you couldn’t show up on the doorstep of a man whose brother had once been married to your mother—until your mother had left him. He wouldn’t exactly welcome you.

  But all the same, it was where she’d chosen to come. She only hoped it was the right choice. That it had been far enough to run. That it hadn’t been another mistake.

  ISABEL

  Alan saw her the moment he walked in. Isabel Sanchez. The fat waitress Kayla’d run to last time. The one he was sure she had run to again.

  She was setting salads down in front of a couple of women, and he took a seat two tables over and waited. He saw the moment when she recognized him, when her eyes widened with guilty, frightened recognition, and knew he’d guessed right.

  Even through his impatience, it was a sweet victory. Just like that perfect moment when you trapped your man on the stand. When you saw his eyes dart from side to side, because he knew you had him, that you’d won, and he’d lost. The moment Alan lived for, the reason he was a prosecutor.

  She’d finished at the table, but she hadn’t turned his way. He lifted a hand and snapped his fingers, and she glanced at him.

  “Yeah, you,” he said, putting a smile on his face. “Isabel, right? Come over here, will you?”

  She approached him with obvious reluctance, stopped a few feet away, and said, “Brandy will be right with you.”

  “Well, that’d be good, if I wanted to talk to Brandy. But I want to talk to you.”

  “Sorry. This isn’t my section. Brandy will be right with you.”

  She turned to leave, but he stood up, shoving the chair back with just enough force to make her jump. “Where’s your section, then? I’ll sit there.”

  She didn’t answer, and he chose a table on the other side of the two women. She approached as cautiously as a deer in a meadow, filled his water glass, and set a menu in front of him.

  Charm time. You got them nervous, and then you switched it up, made them doubt what they’d felt. Back and forth, your very own good cop/bad cop. Worked so well on women, conditioned as they were to doubt themselves, to appease.

  “Good to see you again,” he told her. “I haven’t been here in too long.”

  “I’ll be right back to take your order,” she said without acknowledging his greeting, and if he’d needed proof that Kayla was with her, he had it.

  “I’m ready now,” he said, and she pulled out her pad, clicked her pen, and looked at him. “Diet Coke. Pastrami and swiss on rye, salad on the side. No dressing. And I’d like to know where my girlfriend is.”

  “Pastrami on rye, salad, Diet Coke,” she repeated, and picked up his menu.

  His voice was low now. Sincere. “Please. I need to know where she is. If you know—please tell me. I only want what’s best for her. I want to help her. And Eli, too. He’s nothing but an innocent victim. He doesn’t deserve to be dragged through this.�
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  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked him in the eye, but he could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest, could smell the fear. “Last I knew, she was at your house, getting the shit beat out of her.”

  His hand clenched around his water glass for a moment before he released it with a deliberate motion. “Oh.” He sighed. “That’s her story. I should’ve guessed.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You must know. You must be seeing it. Not like you can miss it. At first I thought it was something mental—bipolar, maybe. Schizophrenia, at the worst. But I started thinking ‘meth’ a while back, and I don’t mind telling you, it’s had me terrified, because nothing I said got through. She was getting so skinny. Jumpy, paranoid. Not sleeping, losing touch with her friends. I’d ask what she’d been doing all day, and—” He shook his head. “I could never get a straight answer. Started having to check up on her, because I was worried about the company she was getting into, and then she turned on me, too. I’ve been going nuts anyway, and now that she’s run? I can’t sleep anymore. She’s out there doing God knows what, and the worst is, she’s got Eli with her. I thought of you, and I tell you what, I’m just praying that’s where she is. Please tell me she came to you.”

  “She didn’t.” Her voice was flat, pretend calm. “I haven’t seen her for months.”

  “I sure hope that isn’t true. That you’re lying to me out of some misguided effort to protect her. But whatever she told you—” He made his tone urgent now, wrenched his face into lines of pain. “Please believe me. It isn’t true. I’m not blaming her, not really. She can’t tell what’s true herself anymore, and I know it. I just want to get her help, and I think—I hope—you care enough about her and Eli to help me do that.”

  “Think what you like. Hope whatever you want. It’s a free country.” She put the order pad back in her apron pocket, turned around, and left.