“I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t have your phone number, and I had to tell you myself before you found out some other way,” Orla rambled, her lower lip trembling as she stared up into Harmony’s face from the rickety front step of the porch. “You needed to hear it from family.”
“Tell me what?” Harmony questioned, tightening her fingers around the woman’s wrinkled hand.
“Oh, Harmony, child I hate to do this to you, but they’re gone, sugar. They’re both just gone. You and Tanner need to come with me, darlin’, to your Momma and Daddy’s house,” Aunt Orla said through her own river of tears.
“Who’s gone?” Harmony asked, panicking. “What happened?”
“Your Momma and Daddy, Harmony,” Aunt Orla had informed her as gently as she could, grabbing Harmony’s arm when she stumbled in the doorway. “They died this afternoon in a wreck out on Severs Road. Ezekiel said they were hit head-on by a drunk driver. It was quick, honey. They didn’t suffer. Ezekiel and your Uncle Jethro are with your sisters now. I told them that I needed to be the one to tell you, but you need to come with me. Your sisters need you now.”
“No,” Harmony denied in a thin voice, vaguely feeling her long hair slap her cheeks as she shook her head from side to side as the truth sank into her bones. Her parents? Dead? This couldn’t be happening. “No!” she screamed, falling to her knees on the worn carpet just inside the front door.
“I’m so sorry, darlin’,” Aunt Orla whispered, catching Harmony against her as she’d fallen to her knees in front of the other woman. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“They can’t be gone,” Harmony begged, burying her face against her aunt’s chest as she clutched the older woman’s waist. “I never said I was sorry! I never told them I loved them! It’s a mistake. Tell me it’s a mistake, Auntie!”
Aunt Orla dropped one hand to Harmony’s head, cradling the younger woman against her as though she was a baby. “Shhhh…. They knew, sweet girl. They knew you loved them. Where they are now, they see everything now. Don’t you worry. Your Momma and Daddy know how much you love them, but we need to go now.”
~~***~~
Somehow, Aunt Orla had gotten her off that nasty floor and into the truck with her. Those hours following the blow of her parents’ death were still a blur. Vaguely, she recalled Tanner showing up a few hours later, but she’d been so entrenched in grief, that she didn’t really remember anything he’d said or done.
Not until the day after their funeral.
That she remembered vividly.
Chapter Eleven
“The first time Tanner ever hit me was the afternoon after my parents’ funeral,” Harmony’s deadened voice informed him tonelessly as she stared into space.
Jacob’s gut clenched at that stark confession.
“I never told anybody that,” she said matter-of-factly, no emotion in the words any longer.
Staring at her, Jacob couldn’t disguise his anger in that moment and spared a moment of gratitude that she seemed to be lost in her memories. He knew if she looked at him now, she’d see unfiltered rage burning in his eyes. “What?” he breathed, the single syllable spat from his mouth with the force of a gun blast. That motherfucker had laid his hands on her during what had to be then the most traumatic day of her life? What kind of animal did that?
Nodding, Harmony stared straight ahead.
“I was standing in my mother’s kitchen. I remember that I had just pulled a meatloaf that I’d been warming up for the guests out of the oven and I’d scorched the edges. I can still smell the burned meat.”
“He hit you because you burned a fucking meal?” Jacob barked softly, barely concealing the urge to begin throwing things against the wall.
“No,” she denied simply. “He backhanded me because I refused to ask the family attorney mourning in the living room about reading my parents’ will early. He hit me so hard that I tasted blood. I remember that I hid outside the rest of the afternoon. The others thought I was just caught up in my grief and wanted to be alone… and that was partly true. Mostly, I was just trying to hide the handprint he’d left on my cheek.”
“Jesus, fuck!” Jacob hissed through his teeth as Harmony seemed to fold in on herself, shrinking before his eyes as she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.
Resting her forehead on her knees, she shook her head slowly. “You’d think that would have set off a thousand warning bells for me, but he came after me. He held my hand in the garden all afternoon until the sun started to set in the sky. Apologized over and over again. He said it would never happen again… that he’d never lift his hand against me like that ever. He fed me some bullshit about just being caught up in the emotion of the day and acting out in haste,” she explained, her fragile voice distant as she closed her eyes. “I bought every single word. I think at that time I just needed someone to hang on to for dear life… even if it was a man that had done nothing but put me through hell since I married him. At any rate, for the next few weeks, he was the model of a perfect husband. He was kind and gentle. He helped out everywhere he could. He dropped Honor and Patience off at school, helped out at the diner, worked on the farm…”
“And how long did he keep that act up?” Jacob asked harshly, knowing that’s what it had been. An act. A sham. A fucked-up play to lure this sweet, sensitive young woman into a false sense of security. Honest to Christ, he wasn’t sure how he was going to keep himself from killing Tanner Suarez with his bare hands when the bastard showed his ugly face in Paradise.
“About a month,” Harmony confided, tightening her arms around her legs. “And he was good. So good at playin’ the doting husband. Convincing as hell. Even Aunt Orla thought Tanner had changed during that month after Momma and Daddy’s deaths – and she is not a woman that is fooled easily. She said that sometimes life hands us moments that make us grow up and be the people that we were supposed to become all along. I was so relieved. I started believing that maybe I hadn’t made a huge mistake. Tanner was finally being the husband that I wanted…no, I needed him to be. I should have known it was too good to last.”
“He’s a jackass, Harmony. He never deserved what he had with you,” Jacob growled.
“No. But I deserved him. After what I put my parents through… I deserved what I got,” Harmony whispered, her lower lip trembling.
“The fuck?” Jacob retorted. “Tell me that you don’t really believe that,” he demanded angrily, shifting from his seat beside her to kneel in front of her between the couch and coffee table. Gently gripping her arms, he shook her slightly. “No woman deserves…”
“You can save the standard abused-woman spiel, Jake,” Harmony interrupted him hoarsely. “I’ve heard it before. Do you wanna hear the rest of this or not?”
Taking a deep breath, Jacob ground his teeth together, nodding jerkily. There’d be plenty of time to change her faulty view on what she deserved after he’d finally digested the whole nasty story of Tanner Suarez.
“Tanner’s perfection lasted until about a month after my parents died. It was the afternoon the will was read. We showed up at the attorney’s office with the rest of my sisters and Aunt Orla. I don’t know what he expected exactly,” she muttered with a small frown. “He knew that my parents hated him. He and my father got into arguments on more than one occasion when they’d see each other in town. I reckon that he thought their love for me outweighed their hatred of him. Or, more likely, he just figured that they’d never thought of changing their will. I mean, nobody ever thinks of dying out of the blue like that. My Daddy, though… he was a planner. He believed in bein’ prepared for anything. Of course, he’d be smart enough to stay a step ahead of my husband. Either way, Tanner expected a payday of some kind. After the will was read and he learned that he didn’t get one, things turned ugly.”
“What kind of ugly?” Jacob asked, keeping his voice just below a growl.
“That night, when we got back to our trailer, we had a horrible fight. He demanded
that I contest the will. He’d already made a horrible scene at the attorney’s office, but it only got worse after he got me alone. God, I thought I’d seen him angry before, but he became almost inhuman that night. When I told him I wasn’t going to protest anything ... that I believed that it was my parent’s money to do what they wanted with … he grabbed me by the neck and slammed me into the wall with enough force to knock the pictures off the wall. He screamed and cursed and his hand around my neck just kept getting tighter. I remember seeing stars and thinking that this was it. I didn’t even mind,” she whimpered, her eyes filling with more tears. “It meant I’d see my parents again… that I’d finally be able to ask their forgiveness.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jacob hissed through his teeth.
“When he realized that I was gonna black out if he kept it up, he let go. He walked away from me, but he was still ranting. When he saw me eyeing the door, that’s when it really started.”
Jacob ran a hand down his face as Harmony started to tremble. “Baby…”
“When I started to make a move for the door, that’s when he grabbed me by the hair. He was careful, though… he didn’t leave a single mark that anybody could see. He kicked and punched and…” Harmony swallowed, unable to continue as her body began to shake more violently. “I don’t know why he finally stopped hitting me that night,” she whispered as Jacob grabbed the afghan draped across the back of the couch and wrapped it around her quaking shoulders. “Maybe he got tired. Maybe he realized that he was on his way to killing me. All I know is that he finally stopped. I can still remember the way he stood over me as I was sprawled on the floor, his sweat dripping on my face as he caught his breath. He told me if I said a word to anybody, he’d kill me. And, dear God, staring in those crazy eyes of his, I believed him.” Lifting an unsteady hand, Harmony brushed at the wet tracks on her cheeks. “I stayed on the floor until I heard the front door to the trailer close behind him when he stormed out of the house. Then, I managed to pick myself off the floor and get myself cleaned up. That was the first beating Tanner ever gave me, but it wasn’t the last. It wasn’t even the worst.”
Shifting to sit on the coffee table in front of her, Jacob reached out to take one of Harmony’s cold hands in his. “Listen to me, Sweetness. You can stop now if you want to stop. I don’t wanna push you into a corner where you feel you can’t get out. If you never wanna say another word about that sack of shit, I won’t push.”
Meeting his concerned eyes, Harmony shook her head. “I can’t stop now. If I do, I’ll never make you understand….you won’t see…”
“All I see… all I’m ever gonna see is a woman that’s had the shit end of a miserable stick for entirely too long. I’m looking at a beautiful woman that should have been loved and protected, but was verbally and physically abused to the point where she can’t even recognize that these sins belong to one person. And that person isn’t you, Harmony. It was never you, baby. I know this story gets worse and if you wanna share it, I’m here. I’ll listen. I’m here for you however you need me to be,” he promised, chafing that chilled hand in his as he did his best to bring her some warmth. God as his witness, if it was the last thing he did on Earth, he’d find a way to exact some justice for the woman in front of him.
Breathing hard, Harmony bit her lip. “I wanted out, but I was afraid of him from that night onward. It was like he was two people. One for anybody watching us and another behind our closed door. After a while, he stopped making noises about contesting the will. No matter how bad those whippings got, I never caved… I never gave him that satisfaction. In public, he was still doing his best to show folks that he was a changed man. He started steadily working at the café, helping Aunt Orla manage the place. She didn’t exactly trust him, but with raising three girls, she needed the help. Uncle Jethro oversaw the farm, and life went on as best it could. Looking back, I can see what he was doing, trying to drill a path to the family money through the back door. Then, though, I was so confused that most days I couldn’t tell you if it was day or night. He still continued to go into his rages once we got home, although even those lessened because he wasn’t around much. He’d started really stepping out on me by then. It was okay,” she said quickly when Jake’s face turned thunderous. “If he wasn’t there, he wasn’t hurting me. Occasionally, he still wanted to… you know … but at least he wasn’t using force. As long as I laid there…”
“Harmony, I’m beggin’ you, darlin’, unless you want me to find a gun and hunt this bastard down tonight, leave that statement where it lies,” Jacob warned tightly, unable to bear the idea that this asshole had regularly raped his wife. There were some places that he couldn’t allow his mind to go and that was definitely one of them.
“Okay,” Harmony agreed huskily, licking her dry lips. “I let the Jekyll and Hyde act go on for about three more months,” she explained tightly. “Until he let something so awful happen that I couldn’t… I WOULDN’T ignore it. Not ever.”
Jacob knew he could stop her and tell her that he already knew what happened… that she didn’t need to put herself through this emotional torture, but something in her glistening eyes stopped him. She was purging the poison. It was a violently explosive way to do things – letting her do it all at once like this, but he had to hope that once the toxins permeating her memories were released, she’d begin to heal.
“It was October 27. That was the day I knew I was done with him… that was the day he hurt somebody that I loved a lot more than I loved myself.” Glancing at Jake, Harmony withdrew her hand from his and gripped the soft afghan he’d draped around her body in a hold that whitened her knuckles. “You know what happened to my baby sister, Honor, don’t you?”
“I know enough to know that she’s suffered more than any woman should,” Jake replied evenly.
“Yes, she has. Of all us McKinnon girls, Honor has always been the sister that we wanted to protect. She’s the youngest, the smallest... the kindest. She possesses the gentlest soul of anyone I’ve ever known. And thanks to Tanner and me, she now bears the burden of a past filled with memories she’ll never be able to forget.”
“Harmony, what happened to Honor was not your fault,” Jacob rumbled. “You’re trying to take the blame for events that were beyond your control… that were beyond anyone’s control except for those monsters that hurt her.”
“You have no idea,” Harmony countered achingly. “It was my husband that was supposed to pick her up and take her safely home after that football game. Tanner! My fucking husband!” she shouted in his face. “I brought him into my family. I allowed him near my sisters. And I’m the one ultimately responsible for what happened to her that night.”
“Damn it, Harmony! That’s just not true,” Jacob countered quickly, his own voice rising to match hers.
“While my baby sister was being gang-raped in the woods and left for dead, he was out getting trashed. He wasn’t where he was supposed to be because he was out partying and drinking and, in all likelihood, fucking some whore. We’d had a fight that afternoon and as usual, he’d stormed off and I forgot, Jacob! I forgot that he was supposed to pick her up!” Faith shrieked, her voice cracking completely as she burst into sobs that wracked her entire tiny body.
But she didn’t stop talking. Jacob almost wished she had.
Because what she said next broke his heart.
Harmony’s breaths were choppy and labored, but she powered through the panic etched on her face. “A-after we found Honor and my mind realized just how those b-bastards had gotten to her,” she choked, her pretty face scrunching up in a grimace of pain and disgust, “I wanted to kill Tanner. Have you ever been so furious that you can feel all that anger consuming you, Jake? Have you ever felt so, so much that you thought those feelings would swallow you whole? I hadn’t. Not until that night.”
“Once,” Jacob acknowledged softly without elaborating. He couldn’t allow his mind to go to that moment where he’d been out of control with grief over his sister
’s death. Harmony was already buckling under the strain of her emotional baggage. He wouldn’t add the weight of his own luggage to hers for anything in the world.
“Then you know that when you feel like that – that completely overwhelming need to act… to fight - the only thing that centers you…the only thing that will bring order to your fucked up little world that’s spun so far out of control you feel like you’ll never stop reeling is focusing your wrath on the person responsible for it all.”
“Yeah,” Jacob assented softly, keeping his eyes glued to his woman’s pale, wet face. “I understand that need, baby. It’s a lead weight that sits in your gut, shoving you down until you find a way to push past it. It’s like acid, eating through you until it reaches your soul.”
Nodding, Harmony inhaled shakily, trying to pull some much needed oxygen into her aching lungs while she stared at him with huge, disillusioned eyes. “Yeah, and I only knew one way to shove that lead weight sitting on my chest off of me that night. I waited as long as I could - until we received word that Honor was as stable as she could be, considering her injuries. I remember every second that I sat in that ER waiting room, holding my breath and praying that they’d come and tell us that she’d live. I bargained with God, and I seethed. I promised Him that if he’d just let her live, I’d get justice for her. I’d make sure that Tanner never hurt her or another living soul again.”
Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, she worried her delicate flesh while Jacob watched her face, silently worried that he’d finally pushed too far. Maybe he’d been wrong. Perhaps she hadn’t been ready to share these memories yet. It was too late now, but it didn’t stop him from second guessing himself. That, in itself, was an anomaly. It was rare that he ever doubted himself, but seeing that shattered innocence reflected in her eyes was enough to make him wish he could hit the rewind button on the evening.
“I waited until everybody was distracted to leave that night. I remember grabbing Patience’s car keys out of her purse while she and the others were interrogating Cain about Honor’s condition. I’d heard everything I needed to hear; she was gonna live. So, I waited until everybody’s attention was somewhere else and I left. I know what you’re thinkin’. What was a little wimp like me gonna do about anything…”
Hard as Stone (Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnnon Sisters) Page 10