“Well, if you can’t get the church, you can always go to the courthouse.”
“Thanks. Not exactly the most romantic spot for a wedding.”
“Well, no, but we’ll have a very romantic party afterward.”
“I love you, Hannah, but let’s not even think about John saying no.”
After she’d disconnected from that conversation, Tadie approached Rita about the shopping spree.
“A girls’ day out?” Rita said. “Count me in. Mama too.”
“You don’t think it’s too much for Elvie?”
“If it gets to be,” Rita said, “I’ll take her someplace to rest.”
* * * * *
Greenville couldn’t compete with Raleigh for stores, but it was hours closer and provided what they needed. Tadie’s new cream-colored wool suit made her feel slim and attractive.
Elvie Mae, approving, said, “You need a hat. Miss Caroline would have said so.”
Tadie imagined the hats Elvie might want. “None of those British aristocracy confections,” she said. “How about one of the new veils? Instead of a hat?”
“You gotta at least look.”
Elvie led them to the hat department, where Rita stopped in front of a simple, big-brimmed white hat. “Killer,” Rita said. Her mama just raised her brows, but Tadie bought it.
Elvie Mae chose a turquoise wool suit for herself with a small-brimmed hat to go with her tiny size, but Rita declared she already had the dress she planned to wear and needed only new shoes.
Jilly bounced in her seat on the way home, bubbling about her deep blue velvet dress with a creamy satin sash. “My bow will match yours,” she told Tadie. “Can I hold my box now?”
“We’ll open it when we get home. You don’t want to get your pretty dress dirty.”
Jilly looked at her hands, which had been passing grapes and cookies from baggies to her mouth. She wiped them on her pants and checked again. “I guess you’re right.”
* * * * *
Tadie tucked Jilly in bed with Eb at her side and returned to the kitchen to fix a cup of herbal tea while she waited for Will’s call. She sipped it as she listened to him speak sweet nothings in her ear, and as she whispered them back into his.
My, could that man make her yearn.
Saying goodnight, releasing him to sleep, took a ridiculously long time, but she eventually hung up the phone and climbed slowly to her own room, dragging her fingers along the banister, her entire body delighting in the thoughts she captured.
She brushed her hair and stared wistfully at nothing. She heard Rita in the bathroom not long after she’d slid beneath the sheets, and then there was silence, with only the occasional old-house moan or the soft whir of the furnace to disturb it.
One more day and she’d have Will across the hall. Three more days and she’d be Mrs. Will—William?—Merritt.
My goodness. She didn’t even know his full name.
Staring at the darkness, she sifted that thought. Did not knowing bother her?
She turned on her side, smoothed her fingers across the sheet, and imagined him there beside her. She saw Jilly, perched up on her knees between them. Jilly with her little-girl smells and giggles.
No, it didn’t matter. Because, deep down, Tadie knew Will.
She was drifting on the edge of sleep when her door opened. She patted the mattress and said, “Come in, sweetie,” and then wondered why Jilly didn’t answer.
Loud breaths followed the click of the door latch. Tadie tried to silence her own rapid breathing, but she couldn’t stop the blood pulsing loudly in her ears. She recognized the scent of the man, the stench of alcohol that oozed through his pores. She opened her mouth to scream for Rita—then closed it. She didn’t want to wake Jilly.
“Who’s there? Is that you, Alex?” Maybe if she seemed unafraid, he’d leave her alone.
Right. He’d broken into her house and crept to her room. Was he likely to slink away now?
She could sense him approaching, but saw only an outlined form, black against black. She didn’t move.
Lord, help me. Please, help me.
Her bathroom door closed quietly, and the light flicked on behind it. Rita was up, just behind the door, unaware of the danger here.
Tadie opened her mouth to cry for Rita when a hand clamped over it. She tasted dirty sweat as he forced her jaw shut. “Get off me,” she screamed behind the hand, but it came out in muffled yelps, pitiful even to her ears.
She slapped at him, tugged at his fingers, tried to bite.
Water ran in the bathroom as she clamped down on a finger. His other fist connected with her cheek. Agony shot through her, making her feel woozy, disoriented.
And furious.
She flailed her arms, batting at him as he climbed on top of her. When she tried to kick, blankets tangled around her legs. He plopped down on her thighs to still them, then grabbed one of her wrists and forced it against her side, wedged beneath his knee.
She groaned and tried to pry open her lips so she could bite him again even as she clawed with her free hand at the fingers covering her mouth. Failing that, she reached for his face.
He cursed when her fingernails pulled at the ski mask and caught his lip. She’d hoped for an eyeball.
Was that a noise from the bathroom? She was thrashing too much to be sure. Then he had her other hand. His fingers twisted against her skin, burning her, pinching. Pressing down on it with his knee, he leaned forward and hissed. His breath suffocated her.
“Stop … fighting … me!”
Stop fighting? Did he think she was just going to lie here and let him do whatever he wanted? Hannah’d been right. The man was a fool—a dangerous one.
She heard what sounded like a length of tape being pulled from a roll. She tried to yank her hands from under his knees while he was distracted, but he only pressed them more deeply into the mattress.
He was going to break her wrists. And the hand on her mouth pressed her lips so tightly against her teeth they were probably bleeding.
The tape thing wasn’t going well with only one hand and those teeth. He obviously hadn’t thought this through. If he’d been smart, he’d have brought a gun and kept her silent with it. Thank the good Lord, his only forethought had been the mask and the tape.
Of course, maybe he did have a gun but hadn’t thought he needed it yet.
The tape ripped. She could just make out the shine of his teeth against that partly-masked face. Teeth she’d once admired.
He needed pointers, but they wouldn’t come from her. Instead, she readied herself to scream when he moved the hand on her mouth and before he brought the tape to take its place.
As he began to lift the one hand, he slammed an elbow into her stomach, whooshing out all the air she had in her lungs along with a garbled whimper. Slapping the tape on her lips, Alex grabbed her chin with one hand to hold her still and pressed the tape securely against her skin with the other. She tried to jerk her head away, but his fingers dug more tightly into her jaw, and she felt the bite of his fingernails.
Dear God, I’m going to suffocate.
“Hold still. I mean it,” he hissed next to her ear. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, Tadie. You keep quiet and you’ll be fine.”
Fine?
He withdrew one of her hands from under his knee and taped it to the brass headboard. Then the other. She tried yanking free of the tape and of him. The pain knifed through her.
Alex was a sadist. How had they all missed this?
As he leaned toward the headboard, she tried to kick him off, but she was so tightly tangled in blankets she barely accomplished anything before he was back, sitting on her thighs, his weight pressing her flat. He slid down to her knees.
He was going to break her legs. He’d failed to break her wrists. Now he was after her legs.
She squirmed and arched her pelvis, trying to buck him off, but she could barely hike up more than a couple of inches. Yanking up one side of the cover, he g
rabbed an ankle and pulled it free while he sat on her other leg. If she survived, she’d probably require knee surgery.
She almost loosed a kick, because his angle wasn’t as good as hers, but he clawed her bare foot.
Either that, or he bit it.
She’d kill him. If she ever got free of this, she was going to make sure Alex suffered—big time.
There. She managed one good blow with her probably bleeding foot before he got it laced to one side of the brass rail and went after the other one. If her feet hadn’t been bleeding before, they were now.
She was bound, gagged, and spread-eagled.
Oh, God, no. Help me, please.
She felt his hands on her thighs, pushing up her gown. “I couldn’t let you get married without knowing what you’re missing,” he whispered into her ear. “Without experiencing a real man. Oh yes, I heard about the wedding. In a hurry, are you?”
She wanted to yell in his ear and remind him how much fun prison was going to be when he got to be someone’s lady friend.
Please, God, not this way.
He’d have to kill her to keep her still and quiet.
Maybe that’s what he meant to do. But Alex, a murderer?
No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
She heard his zipper.
He yanked her nightgown all the way to her neck and climbed on top of her. Again, she tried to buck him off.
He moaned and grabbed her breasts. His fingers dug into her flesh as if he needed something more to get him going. He seemed to be having trouble there.
She wondered why, but was grateful for small favors.
Still, it wouldn’t be long. Not the way he was panting.
Why wasn’t someone coming? Surely, Rita must have heard something.
Oh, please, let her have heard something. Let her even now be summoning help.
Before he went from mauling her to more.
Please …
Suddenly, her door burst open. The overhead light flipped on, and Alex gaped as he stared down the barrel of James’s shotgun.
James motioned Alex away from the bed. “You move one inch except to climb off there and back away from Miss Sara, and I’ll shoot you right where you don’t want to get shot.” James spoke over his shoulder. “Rita, honey, you go tend to Miss Sara. Just do it from this side so you don’t get anywhere near that man. And keep your eyes off’n him.”
Alex ripped off his mask and backed up, tripping over his pants. When he bent to straighten them, James barked. “Nope, no way I’m letting you diddle with the evidence before the police get here.”
“I was just—”
“Ain’t no question what you were just doin’. Now get your hands up.”
Rita pulled Tadie’s gown down over her legs and set about freeing her mouth. “Your face. Oh, Daddy, look. He hit her.”
James didn’t take his eyes off Alex. “Rita, girl, you keep your attention where it’s at. And you, Alex Morgan, got a whole lot of somethings to answer for.”
Tadie couldn’t see beyond Rita’s hands working at the tape, but Alex must have tried to lower his, because James said, “No you don’t. You keep them arms up high so’s I know you can’t get up to any tricks. Even if I wasn’t so good a shot, I could do plenty of damage between here and you. And I tell you this without bragging—I can get me a duck at fifty yards.”
Tadie cried out as Rita yanked the last of the tape from her mouth. As soon as she could gasp out the words, she said, “In the night table.”
Rita rifled in the drawer until she found a pair of scissors to cut the tape off Tadie’s hands and feet. “The police are on their way,” she said, slipping the scissors between the tape and the bed frame. “I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do first when I heard noises in here—and not ones you’d normally make. I’d have barged in to find out, but I figured if he had a gun, I’d just make things worse. Sorry we took so long.”
“I’m just glad you made it.”
As each of Tadie’s hands fell free, Rita cradled it and set it down gently. “Oh, honey, your poor wrists.” Tadie’s ankles brought another sympathetic groan. “I’ll get you some compresses and aspirin.”
Tadie waited with her eyes closed until Rita returned. Rita helped her sit up and handed her two aspirin and a glass of water. Those swallowed, she let Rita drape her wrists in a warm washcloth.
“Now you’re untied,” James said, “you young ladies need to go on outta here and let me wait with Alex till the police come.”
“No, Daddy. He might try something sneaky. I’d rather you not have to shoot him.”
“Then you two sit on this side of the bed lookin’ elsewhere while you take care of Miss Sara, Rita.”
A car door slammed. “That’ll be the police,” Rita said, heading down to let them in.
She returned with Clayton Dougherty and another officer.
Clay had been in the same class as both Alex and Tadie. He nodded at James, who’d lowered the shotgun and set it out of the way. “What do we have here? Tadie?”
“Hey, Clay,” Tadie said hoarsely, holding the cloth to her face. “It’s like this …”
She began to speak, but Alex came up sputtering and denying, until Clay quelled him with a finger pointed at his face. “I wouldn’t,” Clay said.
They told the story while the other policeman shot photographs of a cuffed and exposed Alex, with a knit mask on the floor beside him and the cut tape still hanging off the bed. Clay told his partner to haul the now-dressed Alex downstairs.
“I never liked him, boy or man, Tadie, but I’m sure sorry he hurt you,” Clay said. “You need a doctor?”
“I’m okay. Nothing a few compresses and a painkiller won’t cure.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t destroy all the evidence.”
Rita glared at him. “You didn’t expect me to leave Tadie lying here like that, did you? You’ve got enough evidence and you’ve got our word, which ought to be good enough, even for you, Clayton Dougherty.”
“Oh, it is. No problem here. I figure we got him red-handed.” Clay slapped James’s back and winked. “Oh, man, red-something’d all right.”
“Tadie, what’s going on?” Jilly slipped in, rubbing her eyes. “Eb and I woke up. Why are all these people here?”
Ebenezer jumped up beside Tadie, and Jilly ran into her arms. “It’s nothing, sweetie. Everybody is leaving now.”
“But you’re hurt. Who hurt you?”
Tadie looked pleadingly at James and Rita. Rita knelt in front of Jilly. “It’s all taken care of now, Jilly. This nice man came to get rid of someone who wasn’t being kind to Tadie.”
“Who?” Jilly asked Rita, turning from her to James and back to Tadie. “Who was it?”
As the child obviously wasn’t going to drop that bone, Tadie said, “You remember Hannah’s brother-in-law, Alex?”
Jilly nodded her head. “Him?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I told you he was a bad man.”
“Yes, you did. I should have listened better.” She certainly should have. She hated that Jilly had to know about any of this.
Jilly nodded as if that were all the explanation she needed. She climbed up on the bed with her feet hanging off next to Tadie’s, and pulled Eb into her lap.
Clay crouched down in front of Jilly. “Who’s this young lady?”
Tadie circled Jilly’s shoulders with her arm and drew her close. “This is my soon-to-be-daughter, Jilly. Gillian Grace. Jilly, Clay is an old friend of mine from school.” She left off Clay’s status as a detective.
“Glad to meet you, Miss Jilly. I heard tell you were getting married, Tadie. Congratulations.” Clay stood and headed toward the door. “I’ll talk to you more later. Hope you can get some sleep now.”
James had moved the shotgun out of Jilly’s line of sight as soon as he’d heard her voice. Now Rita stood between him and Jilly, and together with Tadie, occupied the child’s attention so he could whisk it out of th
e room. When the coast was clear, James poked his head back in to say, “Rita, you come down and check on the doors when I leave, hear?”
“James, thank you,” Tadie called. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you did battle for me.”
“You’d of done the same for me and mine, Miss Sara. Now you git on back to bed, all of you.”
Jilly cuddled closer. “Can Eb and me sleep with you now? Just so you won’t get scared?”
Tadie smoothed the soft hair. “I would like that. You climb right on in. Eb’s already waiting.”
She tucked covers up around Jilly’s shoulders and leaned down to kiss her. Jilly made it all better. All of it.
Rita stuck her head in the door after saying goodnight to her daddy. “You two need anything more? You need to soak anything? A hot toddy to drink?”
“As good as a toddy sounds, what I really need is a hot shower. The aspirin is helping already.”
“How about I bring up the toddy for you to drink when you get out?”
Tadie relaxed for the first time since Alex had entered her room. “Thank you,” she told Rita. One more kiss to Jilly’s head, and she said, “I’m going to have a quick wash. Can you keep Eb company while I do that? And then I’ll climb in here with you.”
“Kay,” Jilly said, snuggling deeper under the covers as Eb circled to make a nest next to her. “Love you.”
“I love you back, sweet girl.”
In the bathroom, Tadie examined her wrists and ankles. They were merely abraded and would heal. Her face would heal too, but it might sport some color first.
She turned on the shower to let it run, accepting the toddy at Rita’s knock and pulling Rita close. “Thank you. So much.”
“Oh, honey, I’m just glad something woke me and I heard you.” Rita wiped her eyes. “You need anything else, holler, will you?”
“I will.”
Tadie closed the door, sipped the hot liquid, dropped her gown, and climbed under the steaming water. If it was the last thing she did tonight, she’d get rid of Alex’s stench from her skin and from her mind.
At least she’d never have to resort to another shower because of Alex and his maulings, not with him locked up and rotting among like-minded souls. Too bad for him.
Becalmed: When a Southern woman with a broken heart finds herself falling for a widower with a broken boat, it's anything but smooth sailing. Page 33