by Ev Bishop
“So how did that happen anyway?” Brian asked after they’d crossed the clearing and started on the trail leading to Spring cabin.
“What do you mean?”
He jerked his head toward the parking lot as if Steve was still parked there. “How did you two . . . come to be?”
She sighed heavily and dropped his hand. “It’s an old boring story. You know, stupid naïve girl marries a charming monster. Ever heard it?”
Brian laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “More times than you’d ever believe. Relationships. They’re for idiots, aren’t they?”
Katelyn kept silent because after what he’d just seen and her own admission of naiveté, she couldn’t say she hoped not. But she did hope not. Surely, good relationships, good marriages, existed for some people. Look at Janet. Look at her own parents. Their union hadn’t been perfect, but it also hadn’t been awful. She knew it would be a long, long time before she was free and safe to try again, but she did hope she got a chance sometime.
“Do you mind my asking—” Brian faltered.
“Mind your asking what?”
“Why did you stay with him as long as you did, long enough to have two kids with him?”
Yep, that was the question, wasn’t it? The big one. The one she’d asked herself daily for a long time. The one she still didn’t have a completely satisfactory answer to.
Brian misunderstood her lack of an immediate response. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “That’s incredibly personal. Forgive me.”
Katelyn stretched her arms out in front of her and cracked her knuckles. “No apology or forgiveness needed. At all. It’s not like you haven’t shared some inner secrets of your own. It just doesn’t have an easy answer—or if it does I haven’t discovered what it is yet.”
“That makes sense. I read somewhere that there’s always some sort of psychological pay off for what we do, decisions we make or things we put up with.”
Katelyn shot him a disbelieving look.
Brian held up his hands apologetically. “I’m an ass. I was thinking out loud.”
“No, not all,” Katelyn said for a second time. “I’m just surprised. I read something similar once. It was really eye-opening for me.” She took a minute to process her thoughts, and Brian walked quietly by her side.
“I think it’s hard because that idea, that there’s some overarching ‘pay off’ that explains why a person stays with an abuser, suggests if we can figure out what it is, presto, everything will be magically fixed. It tries to make something that’s incredibly complex simple.”
Brian nodded.
“And then other times, I think maybe the answer is simple, that I only want it to be complex because it would help assuage my guilt.”
Brian’s mouth opened, no doubt to share some platitude about how survivors shouldn’t feel guilt—but she didn’t need or want to hear that right now. She shook her head, and he held back whatever he’d been about to say. She knew full well she wasn’t culpable for the abuse, but she still felt she’d been complicit in some ways—and dealing with the elements of her personality that opened her up to abuse, allowed her to put up with it for so long, was her way of making sure she’d never be in that situation again.
“But then, by thinking that, I realize again, no, it really is complicated.”
Brian looked confused—and she totally related.
“I don’t know what I got out of the relationship,” she said, frustrated. “At first, of course, like most people erroneously think—and not just about abusers, but about anything they find unpalatable in their partner—I thought I could change him, that my love was strong enough to be a cure-all. And he’d say that too—that I was a ‘rock.’ That I would be his ‘salvation.’ That he didn’t know what he’d do without me. That he didn’t deserve me.”
She took a deep breath. “Also, I had very elderly parents. My mom was forty-four when she had me and my dad was fifty-six. They were very traditional. He was the breadwinner and head of the house. His word was law and she, in every way, supported those notions. The difference was that my father was a very kind man, not a tyrant in any way, and though, yes, he was a chauvinist, he was the kind who thought that meant you needed to dote on, take care of, cherish the ‘fairer’ sex. Steve gave mouth service to similar ideas and I’d been too sheltered to not know the difference between chivalry and sexism.”
Brian seemed a little shell-shocked.
“T.M.I?” Katelyn asked.
He looked blank.
“Too much information?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. Please go on, if you want to, anyway.”
Katelyn sighed heavily. “My parents died in a car accident just after I graduated. I was vulnerable, lonely. Steve was there, protective and strong, wanting to take care of me—and in the beginning of our marriage, incidences were few and far enough between that I’d think, hey . . . it’s working. I’m doing it. I’m fixing him.” She stopped talking and shot Brian another look, but he still didn’t appear shocked or disappointed in her. His expression was merely . . . compassionate.
“And also, he would be so sad, so seemingly genuine in his regret—and so flamboyant and passionate and over the top in the ways he’d try to make up for his ‘failings’ that I felt . . . ” she broke off, feeling nauseous, “loved, like it was the price you pay for a huge, deep, passionate all-consuming love—that you get a little consumed.”
A small choking sound escaped Katelyn before she could swallow it. She was shocked by the intensity of the shame, sadness, guilt and hopelessness that talking about this still triggered.
“It was hideously hard on me when I realized that the extreme highs and lows of our relationship were pretty much a cliché of every battering situation.”
“Rough,” Brian said. His voice held no judgment and no further questions, only commiseration.
“Most of all though, I just didn’t recognize it for what it was. It took me a long time to realize that the elements of our relationship that were making me so crazy and sad were abuse. No one wants to think they’re a victim—or can even see abuse as abuse, at first. Or I didn’t and couldn’t anyway.”
They were almost at Spring cabin. Lacey’s flutelike voice carried over to them, chatting about something to do with the swing set, though she was out of sight, around the corner of the building.
Brian’s pace slowed. “Thank you for sharing all that. I’m honored you trust me with it.”
Katelyn rolled her neck. “Oh, yeah, lucky you.”
Brian’s eyes creased and his voice was soft. “I do feel lucky.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Then nodded. “Well, thank you.”
Brian clapped his hands, then rubbed them together briskly, and Katelyn could see him mentally changing gears, getting ready to be back in Aisha and the kids’ company again.
“So,” he said, “you’re going to write down what happened with Steve back there and send the details to Marilee, right?”
“Um, I hadn’t thought about it yet.”
“You should. Every run-in you have with him, no matter how small it seems, should be on the record. He wasn’t happy today. Not at all. And if he thinks you and I have any sort of thing going on, it may finally hit home that you guys are really over.”
Brian didn’t have to finish his thought; Katelyn did it for him. “And he might stop holding back in the hopes he can lure me back. He might lose it once and for all.”
Brian’s expression was grim. “Yeah, you know the drill, hey?”
Katelyn’s stomach dropped and she laughed inappropriately. “Right near the top of the chart for causes of death in women, right? Heart disease, cancer, husbands.”
“It’s not funny.”
Katelyn bit her lip. Nodded. “I know. And I don’t actually even believe that. I just don’t know what else to do sometimes, you know? I have to laugh or I’ll—” She stopped talking, didn’t bother to fill in the blank with go crazy, start crying a
nd never stop, become homicidal—all of which felt terrifyingly true from time to time. She cupped her palm over her left eye, a bizarrely simple but effective technique that staved off tears.
Brian stopped at the staircase to Spring’s porch, patted her shoulder in a silent farewell, and left.
Before he walked five paces, however, he turned back. Katelyn tilted her head questioningly. She hadn’t moved yet, had needed a moment or two to compose herself and transition from prey to protector and mom. Lacey and Sawyer had been part of too many awful scenes. Since they hadn’t witnessed this one, she wanted to spare them its emotional fall out.
“What?” she asked finally, when he still hadn’t spoken.
“I, well . . . ” Brian pounded his fist lightly into his palm. “Ah, shit, I’ll just say it. I’d thought a casual friendship might be nice for both of us, but I should’ve known it would be misread. I don’t want to complicate things for you with your psycho ex, so maybe we should cool the running thing for a bit, you think?”
No, she didn’t think that. Not at all.
Brian watched her, sad and patient, and she realized she’d only responded in her head. “No!” The word came out too loud. Katelyn darted a look toward her unseen children, but there was no break in the burble of conversation coming from the yard, and no small people came running. Katelyn closed the distance between her and Brian in rapid steps.
“Don’t,” she said. “Please. I mean, I totally understand if it’s too much for you. I’m a friend with a lot of baggage, I get it. But this is what he does. Waltzes in wherever and whenever I make a new friend or I’m just starting to get a life of my own again and does his crazy thing and totally wrecks it for me. Scares people away. I’ve even lost jobs because of him. He wants me isolated, alone and dependent. That’s all he has ever wanted.”
She took a gulping breath. “I can—and I will—keep running on my own, but . . . I don’t want to.”
There was a moment of silence as deep and all-encompassing as the quiet of the woods and sky around them.
Then Katelyn reached out and placed her hand on Brian’s forearm. Somehow this contact felt bigger than their casual handholding earlier—and maybe he felt similarly, because he flinched. But his flesh was warm and strong under her palm and she stayed her course. After a moment, he covered her hand with his, and Katelyn realized that her fingers had been freezing, but she hadn’t noticed until she felt his heat.
“Okay,” he said. “But I don’t want to cause problems for you, you know?”
She nodded. “I do know that. And I appreciate it—but you don’t cause problems for me. He does. Also, no one gets to dictate what I do anymore. Not him out of selfishness. Not you out of selflessness.”
Brian’s gaze rested on her, intense but comforting at the same time. Then he laughed. “You’re something else.”
The heaviness of the moment lightened, and relief or something like joy coursed through her. He was going to continue running with her. She couldn’t keep from beaming. “Don’t think compliments today will keep me from kicking your butt tomorrow.”
“I’m not that big an idiot,” he assured her with mock solemnity. Then he grinned and loped off. At the bend in the trail that would steal him from view, he turned and looked her way again. Somehow she’d known he would. She waved. He smiled, shook his head, and disappeared.
Katelyn inhaled deeply, then headed around the corner of the cabin to rescue Aisha and to listen to her kids’ stories about their morning adventures.
Chapter 14
Brian stood in his old living room, futilely grabbing at pictures and books and people that disappeared into oily smoke and flames the minute his fingers touched them. The acrid reek of burnt plastics and other manmade materials permeated his nostrils.
He jolted awake, breathing hard and sweating, from what was becoming a regular nightmare. He was sure his hair and clothes smelled as foul as the apartment building had. He couldn’t get memories of the smell and the devastating sight of his demolished home out of his mind, waking or sleeping.
He checked his phone for the time, knowing he wouldn’t rest any further, and was relieved it wasn’t indecently early. He could start his day without looking insane.
As he dressed, he continued to obsess. He couldn’t help it. He was supposed to be consoled that the insurance company had offered fair compensation from a financial point-of-view—but he’d expected nothing less. After all, he had a notarized list of his valuables and extensive photographs documenting his possessions, which he kept safe and sound in a safety deposit box at his bank.
“You’re thirty going on eighty,” an ex-girlfriend had teased years back. Later, when they broke up, she referred to it again. “You only play at being No Strings Attached Guy. Really, you’re all about holding on—and until you realize you can’t control everything, you’re never going to possess the things you crave most.” Her words rankled, but even then he’d suspected there was some truth to them.
He shook the memory away as he shaved and brushed his teeth in the guest room’s en suite—another thing that was starting to press on him. No matter how he enjoyed staying at River’s Sigh, he couldn’t sponge off Callum and Jo indefinitely. He needed to start making plans, something more concrete than collecting boxes of new crap to replace his old crap.
The house was quiet and his socked feet were equally silent as he padded down the stairs. A flash of movement caught his eye and he heard a soft laugh as he walked past the open archway that led to the living room. He stepped back, shielding himself from sight, just as Jo and Callum moved into view.
Jo was twirling around in a bright cherry print dress with a flaring skirt. “Isn’t it pretty?” she asked happily. “Katelyn made us all matching dresses for the Spring Fling, one for herself, one for Lacey, Jo, Aisha, and even a mini one for Mo.”
Callum ran his hand along the sweetheart neckline and fitted bodice. “Very nice,” he said. “Very, very nice, in fact.”
Brian felt like the world’s biggest creep watching his brother and his wife have a moment, but if he moved now, they’d notice him and that would be even more awkward.
Callum’s head dipped and kissed the curve of Jo’s cleavage. “I’ve always been a supporter of easier access.”
“Perv.”
They laughed, but then Jo inhaled sharply. Brian didn’t want to know why.
His feet unfroze and he backtracked as silently as he could, face burning, heart thumping. Yes, it would be embarrassing to have them hear him and realize what he’d already observed, but that would be better than seeing anything else.
On one hand, he couldn’t care less that his brother was getting lucky and that he’d seen a little more than either Jo or Callum might be comfortable with. But on the other hand, it made something ache deep within him. Damn, he wanted that. Not the sexual relationship, or not merely. That was the easiest bit to come by. He wanted what they had. He craved the silliness, the friendship, and the obvious-to-all deep affection and love to go with the lust.
But his mushy longing was nonsense, of course. He was just rattled from the fire, feeling sentimental and a bit lost because he no longer had a place to call his own.
Nonsense or not though, a certain heart-shaped face and pixie grin flooded his brain and a specific tinkling laugh filled his ears, and Brian had to face facts. It wasn’t that he wanted all those things Jo and Callum enjoyed that bugged him so much. It was that he wanted them with Katelyn.
But that was nuts. It didn’t matter that he already felt like she knew him better than anyone else did. They hadn’t known each other long enough for their attraction to be more than an infatuation. It was irrational, completely irrational—but even so, the desire intrigued him. He had never yearned for closeness and companionship with any other woman. He had never even believed that a relationship like that was truly a possibility. Friends were friends and lovers—well, lovers were temporary. This stirring, the temptation to blur the lines, was unnerving. Be
yond unnerving.
Jo’s merry voice in the hallway jolted Brian from his uncomfortable thoughts. “Oh, Callum, you poor boy—but I’m serious, and think of it this way. It’ll motivate us to get our chores done. Just let me change and we can get out of here.”
Callum grumbled something in a joking tone, but Brian couldn’t make it out. A few minutes later, the front door slammed and he heard Jo’s pickup start.
When he was sure they were really gone this time, he slipped into the kitchen. A note on the fridge caught his eye. It had a smiley face and his name was underlined three times. Full cabins this weekend. Season’s starting with a bang! (He had to give it to Jo. She really didn’t seem to see the crazy amount of work she did as actual work.) C and I have headed to town to do a massive grocery shop, then we plan to sneak a fancy lunch out—oohlala! Want to do steaks with us tonight? Hope so. Will buy plenty in case. Eat 6ish. ~ Jo. (Another happy face.)
Yes, Brian wanted to eat dinner with Jo and Callum. He pretty much wanted to eat every meal with them. He liked having a family around. In fact, the only thing nicer, more relaxing—and more distracting from his homelessness—was spending time with Katelyn. Just like that, his brain was back to its favorite obsession.
They had another movie night scheduled for later that evening, and it couldn’t come fast enough. He wanted to see her now, in fact. But it was the middle of the day. The kids were awake. Would Katelyn mind if he jogged in and out of their lives, the way he did hers? He didn’t want to be a nuisance, but he wasn’t used to having so much time on his hands—and he still had another week of his leave of absence left.
He glanced out the big window. Katelyn’s little beater was parked beside his Jeep. Score. She wasn’t at work. He rummaged in the fridge for a worthy excuse and found a bag of nectarines. Good enough. He plucked four of the ripest ones, then bounded through a misty shower of rain—sometimes it felt like River’s Sigh poured 24/7—to Katelyn’s cabin.
Three knocks later, he heard a questioning, “Hello?”