by Eve Gaddy
She very carefully didn’t look in the mirror. Tomorrow was soon enough to deal with what she looked like. She’d hit the ice machine first thing and filled up the plastic bags the clerk had provided for her face. It couldn’t hurt, she decided, and she lay down on the bed with washcloths and ice packs covering her bruises.
Her ribs hurt like hell, even though she’d taken prescription pain meds at the hospital. She’d hurt worse tomorrow, she knew. She would make do with OTC pain relievers for the rest of the night, since she had work tomorrow and couldn’t afford to be groggy.
Tomorrow she’d also have to decide whether to try to force Glenn to move out or move herself. Even if she left, she needed to pick up some things, but she sure as hell didn’t want to go when Glenn might be there. But since she couldn’t say for sure if he’d be there or not, she should take someone with her. God knows what Glenn would do when he found out she was filing for divorce. She wasn’t taking any chances that he’d hit her again, though. The beating she’d suffered that night had been more than enough.
She couldn’t sleep. Exhausted as she was, she kept seeing Glenn, furious and towering over her. Felt him punch her, kick her. Remembered cowering on the floor like a victim. Hell, she was a victim. No other word for it. God, she hated that label.
So she thought about Jonas. How kind he’d been. He’d taken care of her. Hadn’t blinked when she showed up at his door. He made sure she did the right thing, the smart thing, when she’d have done something foolish. Like stay with him.
Why was Jonas so familiar? Even more disturbing, why did he look like the man in her dreams?
April 1859
IT WAS ODD, Sarah thought, that the only times she felt truly alive were those moments she snatched with Elijah. She’d run across him while she was out seeing to the tenants. No one was nearby, so she had climbed down from the wagon and convinced him to talk to her while they led her horse.
“Why haven’t you tried to escape yourself?” Sarah asked Elijah. Since becoming involved with the Underground Railroad, Sarah had discovered the many others who were part of the underground. Elijah among them. “Why do you help others, but not yourself?” Sarah couldn’t understand anyone being so selfless, at least without a reason.
“I reckon I will. Someday. But—” he stopped and looked off in the distance. She could tell he was thinking about something. Someone.
“Long time ago, I tried to help a woman escape,” he finally said. “We was both plannin’ on goin’, but I got held up. They didn’t know it was me who was s’posed to go with her. They caught her, but she wouldn’t tell ‘em nothin’.”
“What happened to her?”
“Sold her. After they took the lash to her. Don’t know where she is. Dead, I reckon.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, it broke her heart. “Did you love her?”
He looked at Sarah then. “Slaves don’t have no feelings. Don’t you know that?”
“Oh, Elijah.” She touched his arm. His skin was soft, warm from the sun. She felt the muscles bunch beneath the skin. “Tell me. Did you love her?”
“Never got the chance. Might’ve, though.” His smile flashed, white teeth in a dark face. “She was shorely pretty.”
“Have you . . . do you have a wife?” No business of hers if he did. But she realized she didn’t want him to. Didn’t want to . . . share him. Oh, Lord, what was she thinking?
“No ma’am. Not allowed to. The master don’t hold with slaves marryin’.”
“That doesn’t stop them. I know, Celia’s told me.”
“Don’t have a wife. Don’t intend to. Not ‘long as I’m a slave, and she would be too.”
“We’re getting closer to the house. I should probably get back in the wagon in case Victor sees us.” He wouldn’t approve of her walking beside Elijah and talking to him just as she would a white man. But then, he didn’t like her talking to white men, either. Or anyone, really.
Elijah put his hands on her waist to help her up into the wagon. As he held her a little longer than necessary, they both stared at each other. She felt it, and wondered if he did too. Some sort of connection. As if fate had spoken.
Fate. Why did it sound so tragic?
October Present Day
UNSURPRISINGLY, JONAS had a hard time getting back to sleep. He didn’t regret kissing Claire, but he sure as hell regretted her slime of a husband finding out and using it as an excuse to beat the crap out of her. He’d been sorely tempted to pay the bastard a visit and see how he liked dealing with a man. But Jonas knew that while punching the bastard might have given him satisfaction, it wouldn’t help Claire. Eventually, he slept.
October 1968
“CALVIN?”
“Yeah.” They were snuggled together on a blanket, out at Dream Lake. Bella’s favorite place. The one place they could relax and be together without worrying about who might see them.
“I love you. Being with you makes me so happy.”
“Why do I hear a but in there?”
“No but. Sometimes I’m just afraid it won’t last. Because we’re too happy.”
“Don’t borrow trouble.” He had those same concerns, but he didn’t see any point in telling Bella so.
“You’re the one who’s always worried about what we’ll do if my father finds out about us.”
His arm tightened around her. She rested her head against his chest, so trusting. “Your father’s a scary guy.”
“Is that why you won’t make love to me? Because of him?”
Calvin groaned. God, he was so tired of being strong. Of resisting her for her own good. “Bella, we’ve talked about this. You’re a virgin.”
“So? What difference does that make?” She rose on her elbow to look at him. He saw mischief in her eyes by the light of the moon. “Besides, you’re a virgin too.”
“It’s different for guys,” he said gruffly. Why he’d admitted he’d never done it, he didn’t know. “You need to be sure. I don’t think you are.”
“Maybe you’re the one who isn’t sure, Calvin.”
“Maybe I’m not.” But that wasn’t true. If there was anything Calvin was sure of, it was that he loved Bella Cantrell and wanted to make love to her. And he would, when the time was right.
Right now he’d go on being strong. For her own good.
October Present Day
“I CAN’T IMAGINE why your doctor’s appointment is at the crack of dawn,” Glenn said to Lawrence. “Didn’t they have a later time?”
Crack of dawn, my ass. “I asked for the first one so the damned fool doctor wouldn’t get busy and make me wait forever. The later in the day your appointment is, the more likely you are to have to wait.”
“You might have considered that I have to get up even earlier, as well as take time off work. Next time have the nurse drive you.”
Lawrence ignored his son’s griping. At least he was home, where he could sleep in his own bed, eat decent food, and not have to listen to the damned idiot in the other bed moaning, snoring, and worst of all, talking incessantly.
Swear to God, if he’d had a gun he’d have shot the noisy bastard.
He glanced at Glenn, then took a closer look. Even for an early morning, he looked rough. “You look like shit. What happened to you?”
Glenn scowled. “Nothing.” He muttered something that sounded like “goddamn women.”
“So it’s Claire. What did she do now? Come on, spit it out.”
Glenn’s jaw worked. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “The bitch is having an affair. I found out last night.”
“So? It’s not like you’ve never had a little on the side. Forget about it. She will soon enough.”
Glenn’s scowl grew darker. “She’s my wife. I won’t have her cheating on me. Goddamn it, I won’t put
up with it.”
There must be more to it. Or maybe there wasn’t. Glenn had never liked to share, and Claire was his wife. “Does she want a divorce?”
He laughed harshly. “We didn’t get into that. She’s having an affair with Jonas Clark. That black bastard she works with.” His hands tightened again on the wheel, and he jerked it to the left. “Christ, I still can’t believe it.”
“Watch out!” Lawrence commanded sharply. Not that he blamed the boy. Cuckolded by a nigger. Shit. Jonas Clark. He made a mental note to call his assistant and light a fire under his sorry ass. Leon still hadn’t given Lawrence any useful information about the man. Threatening to fire him should do the trick.
In the meantime, his son needed his help. Damn, it was never ending.
“Do you want a divorce?”
“No! And I’m sure as hell not having my wife leave me for a black man. Good God, that would make the gossip columnists cream their pants. Not to mention, think of how it makes me look. A fool. A cuckold.”
“Don’t give her a divorce then. What’s the problem? Talk her out of it. Or if that doesn’t work, you’re a lawyer, you should be able to manipulate the system.”
“It’s not that easy. If she wants a divorce, she’ll get it. Eventually.”
“Why is she hot to divorce you? Just because of the nigger?” Glenn didn’t answer, but Lawrence knew his son. “What did you do?” No answer. “You didn’t kill the bitch, did you?”
Glenn shot him a furious glance. “Shit, Dad, of course not. Would I be calmly driving you around if I had?”
Calm was a matter of opinion. “Then what happened?”
“I . . . when I saw the picture of Claire with that bastard, I lost it. Him with his hands all over her. She was actually kissing the son of a bitch. I . . . didn’t react well. I was upset.”
Probably drunk too, if Lawrence knew his son. And he did. “Christ Almighty,” Lawrence said, disgusted. “You hit her. You know you have to be careful about that sort of thing.”
When he was younger, before he married, Glenn had gotten “upset” when his then-girlfriend dumped him. That episode had cost Lawrence a pretty penny to buy the girl off. But he’d thought he’d put the fear of God in his son after that. Maybe he was wrong. After all, Glenn could have bought off any number of women Lawrence didn’t know about in the years since.
“How bad is it? Did you break anything?”
“Break anything?” He snorted. “I barely touched her. I slapped her around a little, yeah. But she ran out of the house squawking like I was going to kill her. That won’t look good if it comes out.”
The boy had never been able to control his temper. He got that from his mother. “You’re sure that’s all you did? Nothing lasting?”
Glenn shrugged bad-temperedly. “She might have a bruise or two,” he conceded.
Lawrence knew he wouldn’t admit to anything more, regardless of what he’d actually done. “You said you had a picture of the two of them together. You had Claire followed? By a PI?”
Glenn nodded. “Yes. He was still on the job when she took off.”
“Where did she go?”
“Where do you think? She went to him. Her lover, Jonas Clark. He took her to some rinky-dink hospital. God, making a federal case out of nothing.” He slammed his hand down on the steering wheel. “She deserved worse than I gave her, the cheating whore.”
No doubt. Lawrence was silent, considering the options. “Did anyone see her between the time she left your apartment and when she got to Clark’s place? Besides the PI, I mean.”
“No. He said she drove around a while and then went to Clark’s.”
“And went from Clark’s straight to a hospital?”
“That’s what he said. Why?”
“The cops never came to you?” he persisted, ignoring Glenn’s question. “Did she press charges?”
He shrugged. “How should I know?”
“You’d know it if she pressed charges, for Christ’s sake.” Good God, did he have to think for the boy as well as everything else?
“Nobody came to the house,” Glenn said sulkily, “so I doubt she filed a complaint.”
“Good. We can use that. Where did she go after the hospital? Back to Clark’s? Did she stay there?”
“No. They switched cars and he took her to the Worthington. On my money, I’m sure. Bitch.”
“Here’s what you’re going to do. Deny everything.”
“What do you mean, deny everything? Claire sure as hell knows it was me who slapped her around.”
“Claire knows but no one else does,” Lawrence said. “It’s your word against hers. And the PI can back you up. If you pay him enough.”
Glenn thought about that, then started to grin. “My word against hers. I like that.”
“Is this the first time you hit her?”
“I told you, it was barely a tap.”
“Answer me.”
“It was the first time.”
“Thank God for small favors.” Lawrence went on to explain Glenn’s course of action. Once Glenn shut up and listened instead of interrupting, he agreed it was the way to go.
In the meantime, Lawrence needed to know if Jonas Clark was any relation to Calvin Davis. Clark was a dead ringer for the bastard. Older, of course, but still the image of what Davis would’ve looked like.
If he’d lived past the age of eighteen.
Jonas Clark might find out he too had made a big mistake, going after a white woman. Especially one connected to Lawrence Westbrook.
Calvin Davis had sure as shit learned not to cross him.
Chapter Eleven
JONAS’S CELL PHONE woke him. Ordinarily, he’d have let it go to voice mail, especially after the short night, but it was his mother’s ringtone, and he knew she’d continue to call and leave messages until she reached him. He cracked open an eye to look at the clock. What the hell was she doing calling him at 6:30 a.m. on his day off?
“What’s wrong?” All he needed was for his mother to be having a crisis, too.
“Is that any way to answer your phone? What if I’d been someone from the hospital?” his mother asked.
“I know your ringtone. Besides, it’s my day off. If it had been the hospital I would have told them to go—”
“Jonas Clark, don’t you dare!”
Resigned, he sighed. “What do you need, Mom?”
“Can’t I call my son without needing something?”
“You could but you usually don’t. And why so early?” Normally when she called she had a specific reason. Naomi wasn’t one to talk on the phone just to be talking.
“I wanted to catch you before you got busy doing something else. I need you to come over here as soon as you can. My dishwasher is broken. The darn thing is spurting water all over my kitchen floor.”
Jonas groaned. God, not the dishwasher again. “Turn it off.”
“Don’t you get smart with me, Jonas Clark. You may be a grown-up man but you’re still my son. Of course I turned it off, but it’s plate day. My arthritis in my thumbs is acting up and I can’t do it by hand. Well, I suppose I could, but I don’t want to.”
For reasons beyond him, once every month or so, his mother washed all her dishes, whether she used them or not. Hence “plate day,” the day she washed every stinking one of her plates. It was a new habit, one she’d only begun since she retired. Forced retirement that began when she started losing her sight. “Mom, I’m not a repairman. I’ve told you I don’t know much about fixing dishwashers.”
“It’s a simple request. My son, the doctor, is too good to help his mother with her broken dishwasher?”
“Your son is a neurosurgeon, not an appliance repairman.”
“My son, the doctor, should be able to do hi
s mother a simple favor. I just want you to look at it.”
“It won’t do any good for me to look at it. You need a real repairman.” Or better yet, a new dishwasher.
“I live on a fixed income, you know. Or at least, I do now. I won’t be going back to work any time soon and those repairs are expensive.”
She wasn’t ever going back to work, Jonas thought. At least not in the same capacity. And that was the problem.
“But if my son, the doctor, can’t trouble himself to help out his widowed mother—” Naomi continued.
Jonas squeezed the bridge of his nose. Obviously, there was more going on than a broken dishwasher. Buried in that speech was her real concern—that she might go blind. Naomi had worked for the same lawyer for as long as Jonas could remember. Roger Dennis had opened his practice as soon as he finished law school and took the bar exam. Naomi had been a teenager at the time. She’d started as his assistant and later, with her boss’s help, had eventually gone back to school to become a paralegal.
It had nearly broken Naomi to admit she couldn’t read the legal briefs anymore. In fact, her visual difficulties at work had led to her diagnosis of wet macular degeneration, an aggressive and often fast-moving form of the disease. Her vision had quickly declined, and Naomi had taken forced early retirement. As she put it, “A blind paralegal was about as much use as tits on a boar hog.”
No words of encouragement, nothing Jonas said, or Roger Dennis either, for that matter, made a difference. Naomi had been floundering ever since she’d quit work. Jonas wondered if part of the problem was that she missed her boss. Roger was a widower now, and Jonas had thought something might develop between them since the man’s wife had died. But before it could, Naomi had quit. And from what he’d been able to glean, she had distanced herself from Roger Dennis when she did it.