Quiet As It's Kept

by Monique Miller

  Morgan’s mood swings had always concerned him, but he just figured she was having a bad day or it was some kind of woman thing going on with her. Now he realized that maybe the mood swings she was having were not normal, and that maybe they were over the top.

  Will read more information that disturbed him. He read about the cycle of abuse. In the cycle, the abuser uses abuse tactics to hurt the victim, then the victim starts to feel guilt in order to rationalize the abuser’s actions.

  Then, for a while, the abuser acts normal, as if nothing ever happened, trying to gain the trust of the victim. Abusers may even say that they are going to change and be a better person, apologizing for their actions. Psychologically, these actions can put the victim on an emotional roller coaster.

  Will shook his head. The cycle of abuse sounded like what he was currently going through with his wife. The information about the cycle also said that abusers set their victims up by planning the abuse—often fantasizing about how they want to hurt their victims.

  Everything he’d read so far made his heart race so much that he had to put the papers down and walk around the den for a moment. He had to catch his breath. He was living a nightmare.

  Isaiah threw a ball near Will’s feet. Will smiled down at his little boy and felt like he was looking at a picture of himself as a baby. Isaiah looked just like he had. He picked the baby up and bounced him up and down in his arms.

  When the baby signed “eat,” Will pulled a can of baby fruit puffs out of the kitchen cabinet and set them in a bowl on the floor next to the baby so he could eat a few. He also fixed the baby a sippy cup of water to drink.

  Once Isaiah was content with his mid-morning snack, Will continued to read through the rest of the paperwork he had. The Secret Brotherhood had provided him with a domestic violence safety plan, which gave him information about how to stay safe while living in a violent situation. It also provided information about moving out and how to prepare to leave during a violent situation, and safety measures to take after leaving a violent situation while living at a new address, while on the job, or just out in public in general.

  Another piece of information provided a detailed list of things to take when leaving a home to move away from an abuser, and important telephone numbers. The list of numbers included 911, the police department’s domestic violence unit, the civil clerk of court, and a twenty-four-hour domestic violence crisis hotline.

  Everything the Secret Brotherhood had provided him with was like a domestic violence emergency kit. Will gathered all the pieces of information and held them close to his chest as he came to the reluctant realization that he was indeed a victim of domestic violence.

  Chapter 21

  Will hit speed dial to call Phillip back, and Phillip’s phone rang multiple times. Will prepared himself to leave a message on the voice mail, and was surprised when Phillip ended up answering.

  “Hello,” Phillip said.

  “Oh, hey. I didn’t think you were going to answer. The phone rang, like, seven times. I was about to leave a message,” Will said.

  “It only rang twice on my end. Interesting. You know modern technology can have its glitches sometimes. Is everything okay?”

  “I’m taking one day at a time right now, trying to figure out how to best deal with it all,” Will said.

  “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “I’ve been doing some thinking, and this morning when you called I was looking at information about domestic violence.”

  “Domestic violence?” Phillip asked. “Does this have to do with your suspicions about Morgan?”

  “It’s a long story. Remember when I told you about Morgan? Did you know that men can be victims of domestic violence?”

  “Yeah.”

  Phillip’s answer surprised Will. “You did?”

  “Yeah. I had an uncle whose wife used to beat on him all the time. The family tried to keep it all hush-hush. And my uncle was embarrassed about it all. But if his situation did not constitute female-on-male domestic violence, then I don’t know what would.”

  “Did you know it happens more than people realize?” Will asked.

  “Nah. And if it does, I am sure, just like my uncle, there aren’t too many guys who are going to broadcast that their wives are beating on them,” Phillip said. “I mean, if Morgan was beating on you, would you tell everyone you knew?”

  “No, probably not. But I would maybe at least confide it to someone I trusted, like I confided to you that Morgan is probably trying to kill me.”

  “Well, that is totally different.”

  “Actually, no, it isn’t,” Will said.

  “Huh? Come again.” Phillip was trying to get clarification for what he’d just heard.

  “Domestic violence abuse isn’t just when one person hurts another person by physically hitting or striking them. The abuse can also be emotional, psychological, and even sexual.”

  “What? Like when a wife tells a husband he can take a cold shower or sleep on the couch because he isn’t going to get any that night?” Phillip chuckled.

  “No, man, and this is not a joking matter,” Will said with all seriousness.

  Will could tell that Phillip immediately recognized the seriousness in Will’s voice when he said, “Sorry, you are right, this is not a laughing matter.”

  Will took a deep breath and didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “What’s up? It’s like you are an expert on domestic violence all of a sudden. Did you take a domestic violence 101 class or something?”

  “Something like that. As I said, long story, but I can’t go into it right now.”

  “Hold on a second,” Phillip said.

  Will waited while he listened to Phillip talk to his son.

  “P.J., we will leave in a few minutes. I know, son. We aren’t going to be late. No, first we are going to Duke Gardens, then we are going to CiCi’s Pizza. No, P.J., we aren’t going to Chuck E. Cheese’s. No, Chuck E. won’t be at CiCi’s Pizza.”

  Will continued to listen as Phillip tried to clarify things for his child. The child started to cry when he realized that Chuck E. wasn’t going to be at the pizza place.

  “P.J., stop crying or you’ll stay here and all your other friends will go to CiCi’s and you’ll be staying here with Daddy.”

  In the background, the child sounded as if he was trying to get his act together when his crying turned in to intermittent whimpers.

  Phillip returned to the phone. “Sorry about that. If I hear anything about CiCi’s Pizza one more time, I think I am going to pull my hair out. All morning long, all I have heard is ‘CiCi, CiCi, CiCi.’”

  Each time Phillip said “CiCi,” Will remembered something in the back of his mind. It tugged at his memory. The day of the accident, the woman at the mall had called Morgan Ci Ci. Morgan had dismissed the woman like she was an annoying fly buzzing around.

  “Hold up,” Will said.

  “Huh?”

  “Ci Ci,” Will said.

  “Oh what? Are you going to try to torture me now too?”

  “No, no. The name Ci Ci.” Will paused. Almost under his breath, he said, “I had forgotten all about that.”

  “About what? The food is okay. If you want to meet P.J. and me over there you can. I am helping chaperone his preschool class to Duke Gardens, and then they are going to eat lunch at CiCi’s Pizza.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Will paused for a moment, thinking, trying to remember what else the woman had said.

  “Will, are you still there?” Phillip asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Listen. That day I had my car accident, I met Morgan for lunch at the mall.”

  “Yeah, I know. You told me that’s when you thought she put the toy under the brake,” Phillip said, confirming that he remembered what Will had said.

  “Not that part. There was another part I forgot about until just now.”

  Will went on to explain the strange encounter with the woman who claimed sh
e knew Morgan as Ci Ci, and said that they had both cheered on the same cheerleading squad in high school. He also went on to explain that Morgan basically dismissed the woman as if she was a bother, wishing she would just disappear. And he had forgotten about it because Morgan never said anything about it either, acting as if the entire incident had never even happened.

  “So why do you think that means anything now?” Phillip asked.

  “I just have a feeling.”

  “So what now? Is there any way you can find out if there is anything to what the woman said? Where is Morgan from? Where did she go to high school?”

  Will didn’t want to answer, because he knew he couldn’t. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”

  “You’re joking, right? You don’t know where she is from?” Phillip asked with his voice filled with disbelief.

  “Nah, Morgan never talks much about her past. Even when we met she would only gloss over where she was from, and since her parents are both dead, she would always get misty whenever she started to say too much. I never pressed her.”

  “What about brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents?” Phillip asked.

  “She is an only child of parents who were both only children.”

  “Wow, that’s got to be hard. It’s like she is the only one left in the world from her family line. Well, except for Isaiah. But now it is only the two of them.”

  “I don’t know. Something just doesn’t feel right. The woman didn’t act like she was crazy or anything. And before she told Morgan off she looked as if she was surprised to see Morgan acting as if she didn’t know her. It looked like she was hurt for a second, until she started telling Morgan that she would never be anything even though she had fixed herself up.”

  “She said that?” Phillip asked.

  “Or something close to that. She walked off in a huff,” Will said.

  “Daddy.”

  Will heard Phillip’s son in the background, whining.

  “Look, let me let you go ahead and take care of P.J. I am going to check some things out.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Technology isn’t all bad. You can find a wealth of information on the Internet, my friend. I remember her saying something about being from a little town that started with a W. I think it was Waxhaw or Wausau. Something that sounded foreign. I just need to type some words that are close to the spelling and start finding the right combination of search words, then I’ve got to come up with something.”

  “What else can you remember that might help you find out?” Phillip asked.

  “I think the high school was James Kent, or something like that. I am pretty sure the woman thought Morgan’s name was Ci Ci Jackson.” Will couldn’t wait to check out his suspicions. His intuition was nudging him hard.

  “Let me go ahead and get this boy ready to get out of here. I’ll call you later to see what you found out.”

  “All right, man. Catch you later.”

  As soon as Will got off the phone he logged on to the Internet. He immediately started using key words like “North Carolina” and “high school” and “James Kent.” His search yielded Web sites that had the key words but not a James Kent High School.

  Then Will broadened his search by adding the word “Wausah.” He found a high school called Wausah, but it was in Wisconsin. He shook his head slowly as he thought and typed. He was going to have to narrow his search. This time he started his search over and simply typed “North Carolina High Schools.” The search engine added the word “listings” on its own.

  This search gave him a Web site with a directory of high schools in North Carolina. He was pretty sure the high school the woman mentioned started with a J and it was James something. So at the top of the directory, he clicked onto the J and scrolled down. There were only two high schools that had James in the name. One was James B. Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina. The other school was James Kenan High School. When Will saw where James Kenan High School was located, he knew he’d hit pay dirt. James Kenan High School was located in Warsaw, North Carolina. Will was pretty pleased with his memory. He’d been spelling Warsaw wrong, but at least he had been heading in the right direction.

  The Web site only listed the address of the school and the phone number. It did not list a Web site. So, next, Will did a quick search for the high school to see if there was a Web site. He found a Web site for alumni of James Kenan High School. But since he wasn’t a member, he wasn’t able to look up any information for a Ci Ci Jackson. He also saw other Web sites with basic information about the school, but nothing that could help him see if a Ci Ci Jackson did exist.

  Will tried to do a search for a Ci Ci Jackson in Warsaw, but nothing turned up. Then he changed the last name, because he could have been wrong about it also. But there weren’t any Ci Ci Johnsons, Jenkins, Jamieson, or any other Ci Ci’s that he could find located in Warsaw.

  Since Will had never heard of the place, he decided to do some research on it. He found a Web site for the town of Warsaw, and a Wikipedia listing for Warsaw. When he opened the page for Wikipedia he found that Warsaw was a small town of only about 3,000 people. The state map of North Carolina showed that the town wasn’t that far from Silvermont. It was only about two hours away.

  Will hadn’t ever thought about exactly where Morgan was from. But now that he realized the town was less than two hours away, he was starting to wonder why she had not taken him there at least once. She always got misty-eyed when talking about her parents, who’d passed away, so he thought it would have been too emotionally hard for her to go back there.

  Now that Will thought about it, Morgan hadn’t told him very much about her past. He knew things that he considered important to know, like her favorite color and favorite food. He also knew that she loved to travel, although the only real trip they’d been able to take was their honeymoon.

  He knew who her friends were, but she never said she had a best friend. And the friends she did have were all recent acquaintances from her current job. She didn’t talk about any old friends from school. Will wondered to himself why he hadn’t questioned any of these things earlier.

  The rest of his searches didn’t yield him anything of use. So he decided to look around the house to see if he could find out anything else about his wife. After searching high and low, he hadn’t found anything to suggest that his wife was Ci Ci. Nor had he found anything about his wife dating back any further than a year before he met her. It was as if his wife didn’t have a past, and her life started when she met him. It was like she’d come out of thin air or something.

  But he felt like he had a couple of important pieces of information. He had the name of the high school and the name of the town where Morgan was from. Now he had to figure out just what to do with the information he now had. The more he thought about it, he realized that he knew exactly what he needed to do. It was time for him and Phillip to take a road trip.

  Chapter 22

  “What address do I need to put into the GPS?” Phillip asked.

  “Just put Warsaw, North Carolina in. According to the information I found on the town, it isn’t that big. Once we get there we can look around and go from there,” Will said.

  Phillip punched the information for Warsaw into his global positioning system. The system gave them directions to head toward the interstate. Once they were on I-40, the system told them to drive 123 miles east on I-40.

  It was 9:30 in the morning, and they were on a mission to find out if there was anything at all to the story the woman in the mall told. He hoped what he’d heard from the woman wasn’t true, but something just didn’t add up for Will. And he knew he wasn’t going to rest until he found out exactly what that was.

  “So what did you find out when you did your search?” Phillip asked.

  “Not much. Nothing on a Ci Ci Jackson, or any other last name that began with a J. But I did find a high school that started with the name James. I had the
whole name wrong, but like I said yesterday, there is a great deal that can be found on the Internet. It only took me about five minutes to find out what I did find out.”

  Phillip nodded. “The World Wide Web.”

  “I can’t believe her hometown is only two hours away and she’s never taken me there,” Will said.

  “I find that a little strange. I mean, it’s not like she’s from another state or anything.”

  “You know, at this point I just don’t know what to think. I feel like this is all a nightmare and I’ll wake up at any moment.”

  “You’re right about it being a nightmare, but, sadly enough, this is all happening, because I know we can’t both be having the same nightmare right now at the same time,” Phillip said.

  Will looked in the back seat at his son. Isaiah had fallen asleep. He smiled.

  “You’ll get through this,” Phillip said.

  “I hope so,” Will replied.

  “You will, and this is only a test. You’ll pass, but remember, most tests aren’t easy, but when we finish the test we come out better than before the test. We are more knowledgeable, and the information we’ve learned will help us to go further in life,” Phillip said. He used the same philosophical voice he used when he taught Bible Study at the church sometimes.

  They were both silent for a moment.

  “P.T.?”

  “Yeah.” Phillip’s voice was solemn.

  “Why does what you just said sound so familiar?”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. What you just said sounds really familiar.”

  Phillip began to whistle, and looked out of his side window as if looking at something on the highway that suddenly interested him.

  “Man, don’t act like you don’t hear me or like you’ve got amnesia,” Will said.

  Phillip smiled. “Dag, I can’t get anything over on you, can I?”

  “No, especially not when I was the originator of those very words. Let’s see; I distinctly remember telling you those same words freshman year when you decided you were going to quit school at midterms.”