The truth was, she did want to give in to him. She knew her mother was right, and she had to get over this assumption that under every nice guy was a demon. Her father was a great guy, so was her brother—she had to stop thinking they were merely exceptions to the rule.
And her own junk…well, regardless of whether or not she decided to date Joshua, she had to figure out how to get past her mistakes and start trusting herself again. She wasn’t the only woman in the world who had been suckered. Get over it already. It was five years ago. Why are you still holding on?
Because there’s safety in the status quo.
The answer dawned slowly, growing more and more obvious the longer she thought about it. It was the same reason so many women stayed with abusive men—it had become their normal. Leaving it meant leaving the reality their lives were now built on. It meant accepting truths about yourself that you didn’t necessarily want to accept—that you were not always the best judge of character, that you were willing to allow yourself to be mistreated. It meant breaking the inertia of your existence, jumping the rail, and forging a new path. And new could be scary.
For abused women it meant redefining the basis of their worth, the fact that they had worth, the fact that they could in fact survive without the person who claimed to be indispensable. For Debbie, it meant admitting she’d been foolish and prideful, that she’d let visions of a wedding and babies get in the way of common sense and discernment. It also meant giving herself a little grace and recognizing that she was not necessarily doomed to repeat her mistakes.
Her inbox forgotten, Debbie stared out the window, alternating between praying and mulling over this revelation. Shadows had shifted along the floor by the time she pulled herself from her thoughts and back to the present. A tentative peace had formed in her heart, and for the first time in five years she thought she might be able to leave the past in the past.
Which meant a relationship with Joshua was not out of the question.
“HI DADDY!” MADDIE BOUNDED OVER to Joshua and wrapped her arms around him in a fierce, quick hug. “Guess what? Austin threw up this morning right after snack. There were little bits of fishy crackers and grapes in it because that was his snack, and it was on the floor and his chair and it was so gross!”
Joshua helped her tie her shoes and put on her jacket. “Well that’s…interesting. Poor Austin, I hope he’s okay.”
“Yeah, we should pray for him. And for Christie, too, because she cried when Austin got sick. I think she was scared of the throwup.”
Joshua laughed and led her out to the car. “I’m surprised you weren’t.”
She shrugged. “It was kinda cool.”
“Hm. Maybe you’ll be a doctor someday if you think stuff like that is cool.”
“Yeah, maybe. What’s for dinner?”
“Remember, kiddo? Tonight I’m going out to dinner with a friend, so I’ll make you dinner but I’m not going to eat. And then you’re going to Miss Carlotta’s house.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot!” Her feet kicked the back of his seat, a sure sign of her excitement. She launched into a list of things she wanted to do with her friends that evening, and Joshua listened with half an ear while he thought about what his evening would hopefully entail.
At six-thirty Joshua walked Maddie down to Carlotta’s unit. “Come on in! The kids are so excited for Maddie to come and play tonight,” she said with her usual welcoming smile. “I keep telling them she’s not spending the night, but they’re building forts with sleeping bags anyway. If nothing else they’ll have fun, right?”
Joshua agreed with her as he gave her a house key. “Just in case Maddie wants to get something from our place—plus I thought it might be good for a neighbor to have a key. I’ll give you my cell phone number too. And I promise not to be too late.”
Carlotta patted his arm. “Don’t you worry. I don’t mind the kids staying up late, and if she wants to sleep, we’ve got an extra sleeping bag. Take your time and have a good night. I know you don’t get many chances to get out on your own.”
He gave her his cell number, then yelled a good-bye to Maddie, who had raced off to her friends as soon as they’d entered. “Bye, Daddy!” came her reply from the bedroom. Seeing how comfortable she was here made him even more excited to get out for the evening. It was a relief to not have to worry about her.
He made a quick stop to the flower shop down the street and picked up a bouquet of tulips, then pep-talked himself the entire drive to her apartment. Despite the coolness of the April evening, he was sweating in his sport coat and kicked himself for not taking it off before getting in the car. He jacked up the A/C and turned on the radio to distract him from thinking of everything he might do wrong to screw up the night. This was his one shot. He had to make it count.
“You even got flowers?” she said when she opened the door for him. “You really didn’t have to do that.”
“Hey, you’re finally giving me a chance—I had to go all out.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t lose her grin as she took the flowers into the kitchen. “Give me a minute to get these in a vase,” she said. “Would you, um, like a drink?”
“So long as it won’t impair my driving, sure.”
He heard her chuckle. When she came out she was carrying two glasses of lemonade. “So where’s Maddie tonight?”
“With a neighbor down the hall. They’ve got four kids, one of whom is Maddie’s age.”
“How old is she now? Five?”
“That’s right.”
“Kindergarten’s right around the corner, eh?”
He sighed. “Yeah, it is. It’s hard to believe. She’s looking forward to it, which is good. I don’t know what I’d do if she was miserable in school. Lara and I used to talk about homeschooling, but now…” He shrugged. “But what can you do, right?” He took a sip of his drink, then shifted in his seat. Idiot—you don’t bring up the dead wife in the first five minutes! New topic. “So tell me about what else you do.”
Her brow furrowed. “What else I do?”
“Yeah—hobbies, that kind of thing.”
“Oh, um…” She shrugged. “I don’t actually have any hobbies. I don’t have the time, you know? I’m at the shelter seventy hours a week sometimes, so even when I am home I’m catching up on bills or sleep, or watching lame TV to relax. How about you?”
Joshua swirled the remnants of his drink. “Same as you, really, unless you count imaginary tea parties and watching countless episodes of Blue’s Clues as hobbies.”
She grinned. “Better than my sorry excuse!”
He motioned to the clock on the wall. “We should get going to dinner before we realize we have nothing else to talk about.”
They managed to keep the conversation flowing on the way to Chin’s, but by the time they had ordered they’d exhausted all the usual safe first-date topics. “Well, now what?” he asked.
She stared at the centerpiece for a few seconds, then said, “Tell me about your wife.”
He raised a brow. “Seriously?”
“Unless you don’t want to talk about it, that is. I totally understand that.”
He shrugged. “I don’t mind—just surprised you wanted to know.” He sat back in his seat and thought for a moment. “Well, she died about a year and a half ago. She had cancer—breast first, then liver, then lymph. The third time the doctors weren’t very optimistic, and I did some research on alternative medicine that Lara decided she wanted to try. But nothing worked, and by the time she decided to go back to Western treatments, it was too late.”
“That’s awful.”
He gave her a small smile. “Yeah, it was. It’s been a rough ride since then. The medical debt is just unbelievable. Maddie and I are renting a place now—I sold the house to pay off some of the bills and shrink my monthly costs. It’s working, but there are still a lot of bills to pay. God’s provided, though, and I don’t have a lot of choices other than to just trust he’s got my back.”
&
nbsp; “Do you have any family that helps? I remember you mentioning your in-laws—”
He laughed. “Yeah, Lara’s parents are local. Unfortunately they’re a couple of head cases.” He stopped and held up a hand. “Actually, that was uncharitable. They’re mourning. Lara was their only child. But they blame me for her death because I’m the one who thought of trying unconventional treatments. And now they’re desperate to get Maddie because they want a second chance, per se, with Lara, and Maddie’s the only option they’ve got.”
Debbie frowned. “What do you mean, ‘get’ Maddie?”
“They want custody.”
She let out a laugh, eyes wide. “What? Are you serious? On what grounds?”
“Oh, they’re getting very creative. They think I don’t know how to be a parent, that I don’t feed her right, that I’m endangering her by living where we live. And it doesn’t help that they heard Rick and Kim the last time they were over.”
Debbie nodded. “I remember you mentioning that. They haven’t been back since then?”
“I told them they couldn’t come without calling first. They have a tendency to spring themselves on us, trying to catch me in the act of neglecting Maddie, I guess. Anyway—they haven’t called. I’m a little surprised, actually; I didn’t expect them to give up this easily.”
“Maybe they finally realized you actually do know what you’re doing.”
“I hope so.” He drained his glass, then nodded to her. “Your turn. Tell me about how you got involved with the shelter.”
Debbie swirled the soda in her glass. “I was hired on as a counselor first, but after two years of that, they asked me if I wanted to oversee all the day programs. I did that for a while, and then Gloria, the head director at the time, felt like it was time to move on. She asked the board to consider me as her replacement, and they did. That was three years ago.” She smiled. “Not the most exciting story.”
“But what made you want to work there in the first place? It seems like a pretty emotionally challenging job. Not the kind of thing most psych majors aspire to. Private practice is a lot more lucrative and cushy, I’d bet.”
“Yeah, it is.” She took a deep breath. “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked why I started working there. Except Gloria, when she first hired me.”
He smiled. “I had a feeling there was a deeper story there.”
She nodded. “That there is.” She took another deep breath and folded her arms on the table. “So, my sister Gina was dating this guy, back when she was a freshman at MSU and I was a junior at CMU. She was always a big drama queen, so when she started moaning about the guy and what a jerk he was, we all told her to end it, then, and stop whining. No one considered that there actually was some drama there.
“She called me one night and told me he’d hit her. I basically said, Why are you staying with him when he’s such a jerk? If you’re not going to do what you need to do, then stop crying to me about it. Real compassionate, right?
“She ran away that night, took off on her bike. Her roommate said she was crying when she left but wouldn’t talk about what was wrong. She got hit by a car on Sunset, over by the cemetery, and was killed.”
“Good Lord. I’m so sorry, Debbie.”
She gave him a small smile. “Thanks. It was…devastating. I felt horrible, of course, that our last conversation had been so awful. And then we found out from her friends that the guy had been hitting her for a while—she just hadn’t told us. She’d even told one friend she was suicidal. Then I felt really horrendous. So I decided to change majors, go into psychology, and figure out what made a woman stay in a relationship like that and what had to happen to get her out. So that’s how I ended up at the shelter.”
Joshua’s feelings for Debbie doubled with her story. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her he understood now why she took on so much of the shelter’s burdens—more importantly, wanted to tell her it was okay to let some of it go, that it wouldn’t reflect badly on how much she loved her sister. But such words weren’t appropriate from a colleague. Instead he simply said, “Your drive makes sense now.”
“Yes, I do have my reasons.”
“If I may say so,” he said, choosing his words with care, “I think Gina would be honored by what you’ve done for her.”
She smiled, and for a brief moment, he saw the wall come down. It rose again in a heartbeat, but knowing he’d said something she needed to hear gave him hope that this date with her would not be the last. “Thank you, Joshua.” Then she straightened in her seat, looking around the restaurant. “Do you see our waitress? I think we need to see a dessert menu.”
JOSHUA PULLED INTO HIS LOT at 10:00 p.m. He hadn’t meant to stay out so late, but they had lingered over their desserts and been so caught up in conversation that he hadn’t noticed the time. He was about to pull into his space when a vehicle a few spots down caught his eye.
George and Alisha’s Cadillac.
He parked the car, noticing that the lights were on in his apartment, and ran up to the door, fishing for his cell phone as he unlocked the door. The voicemail icon was lit on the screen. He’d never heard it ring in the restaurant.
Groaning, he steeled himself and went inside.
Alisha was perched on the couch, but was on her feet in a second. “Glad to see you didn’t intend to leave your daughter at a stranger’s house all night.”
Don’t let her rile you. “I never heard my cell phone. I just saw that I had a message but haven’t listened to it yet—is it from you?”
“No, it must be from Carla.”
“Car—oh, Carlotta. Why, what happened?” He saw Maddie’s bedroom door was shut. “Is Maddie okay?”
“She’s fine. Stomach bug, I suspect. Carlotta called us at eightthirty, saying she’d tried to reach you but couldn’t. Madeline had been sick and wanted to come home, and of course Carlotta didn’t want her own children getting ill.” She sniffed. “Do you know they have four children living in that tiny apartment? You’d think someone would have explained contraception to them by now.”
Steady, steady. “Thank you for picking Maddie up; I appreciate it, and I’m sure she does too. Don’t let me keep you…” He opened the door and stepped aside, the most blatant and least offensive way he could think of at the moment to tell her to leave.
Maddie’s door opened and she tottered out, half-asleep. “Daddy, are you home now?”
Alisha frowned. “Go back to bed, Madeline.”
“Hey, kiddo!” Joshua met her in the middle of the living room and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get Miss Carlotta’s call, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay. Gramma gave me medicine.”
Joshua looked to Alisha. “What did you give her?”
“Pepto-Bismol, of course.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Let me guess; she’s allergic to it.”
He sighed. “No, but that’s not for kids. Didn’t you read the label? It’s got aspirin in it, so you’re not supposed to give it to kids who have the flu; it can cause Reye’s Syndrome.”
“Well—back when Lara was a child…” He didn’t often see Alisha flustered, but she was now. He tried not to enjoy it too much.
“Daddy, am I going to be sicker now?”
“Of course not,” Alisha snapped. “You’re fine and your father is just trying to scare you. Go back to bed, Madeline. You should be sleeping.”
“But Daddy—”
Joshua stood. “Alisha—”
“Madeline, obey your elders. I said go to bed. Don’t you make me say it twice.”
“Alisha!” Joshua’s tone was harsher than what Maddie had ever heard him use. Face crumbling, she knelt and bowed her head to the floor, burying her face in her hands and bursting into tears.
Joshua dropped back to his knees and began to rub her back. “Aw, Maddie, it’s alright, sweetheart.”
Alisha scoffed. “You let her get away with that kind of melodrama? Paddle h
er good just once and you’ll knock that nonsense right out. She’s far too old to be pulling that kind of thing.”
He kissed Maddie on the back of her head, then stood and walked to Alisha. His fists were balled at his sides, trying to protect both himself and Alisha from his anger. “Don’t you ever talk to her like that again. And don’t ever suggest again that I hit my child. I don’t care what it is she’s done.” He pointed to the door. “Good night.”
“Fine. Raise a spoiled brat if you want to. George and I will set her straight.” She slammed the door behind her. He heard the baby begin to cry in Kim’s apartment. He bit back the string of epithets that swam through his head on the waves of his anger and went back to Maddie to comfort her.
TWENTY
The next month was a roller coaster for Kim. Anne’s ceaseless crying had abated, only to be replaced by teething that stopped and started without rhyme or reason. At her request, Rick had purchased an assortment of teething remedies, and between gels and tabs and frozen teething rings Anne seemed to improve. When things were good with the baby, things were usually good with Rick and Kim as well. When the baby’s crying kept them up at night, Kim knew Rick would come after her at some point. She became an expert at managing Anne’s teething, only to have it replaced after a few weeks by a rash that wouldn’t go away. Kim felt like she couldn’t win.
On top of that Rick thought it necessary to remind her that he wouldn’t tolerate another attempt to leave him. It didn’t take much to trigger him—an off-handed comment about an actor on TV, a question about the weather in the coming days. Anything that hinted at her attraction to someone else or her desire to leave the apartment would send his hand flying. Eventually she just stopped talking.
Kim thought all the time about leaving, so she figured Rick’s response was the universe’s way of telling her she needed to remain, to continue to pay back her debt. She tried to ignore the thought that she’d already paid enough, but the voice was getting stronger every day. If it weren’t for her fears for Anne, she’d try again, and again, and again.
The Weight of Shadows Page 25