by Ami Le Coeur
He tossed me the shoes and was back in a flash with the brush, his mouth still set in a firm line. Every muscle in his body screamed hurry hurry, but even in his urgency, he was still too kind to make me feel as if I was a burden or slow.
He fiddled with his phone, tapping buttons. He stared at it, then grimaced and shoved it back into his pocket.
“Let’s go,” I said quietly, brush and shoes in hand. They could wait until I was in the car. I could feel the tension building in him again. It was close to bursting. “I’m ready.”
He lifted me and carried me to the living room, settling me into my chair.
“It’s okay, isn’t it? That I come along?”
His eyes grew soft. “It’s probably for the best. I know you love Emily, and….” His eyes became hard, steely, so cold a felt a little chill. “If I was by myself, I might be tempted…”
I tried to keep the startled look off my face, but he must have noticed, because he didn’t go on. I wondered again what this poor man had been through. How it had come to this, where he could switch so quickly from gentle giant to a powder keg. And for god’s sake, what was the hold that horrible woman had over him?
###
“What is it, Thom? Do you want to talk?” We were on our way to Rachel’s, and with every moment, he seemed to retreat a little more.
“I’m just worried. Worried about what might have happened. Worried that Emily is okay. That she’ll be okay and we’ll find her soon.”
I reached over and put my hand on his leg, trying to give him some bit of comfort. “Has anything like this happened before?”
“No. But lately, everything seems to be more intense with Rachel. For the past year or so we’ve had an uneasy truce. Before that, it was pretty rough between us. I don’t think either one of us has gotten over that. But now, lately, well… something’s going on.”
I let a moment pass, wanting to be considerate of his feelings, but at the same time, wanting to soothe whatever it was that made him scowl so intently. He mattered to me and I wanted to be there for him as he always was for me.
“What happened… before? How was it rough?”
He looked over at me, his face a mixture of pain and uncertainty. His eyes held a trace of… something I hadn’t seen there before. Something that looked like… fear?
Still concerned, but somewhat startled by the look on his face, I stammered. “Oh, I’m sorry, um, I just want to help. I mean, it’s okay. Really. You don’t have to—”
“No, it’s okay.” He rubbed his forehead with the fingers of his right hand, then took a deep breath and set his jaw. Both hands gripped the steering wheel again.
“We hardly knew each other when we got married—we’d only been out a few times. She liked to party and have a good time, and that was fine with me. Remember I told you I was raised with the Fosters…”
I squeezed his leg. “Yes.”
“Well, let’s just say after leaving them and their strict structure, I had some oats to sow. Seems like I sowed them with a little less caution than I should have, ‘cuz Rachel showed up at my house one day, pregnant. I was days away from shipping out, so I did what I thought was the honorable and necessary thing. I married her.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Remember, I was young, but I was also excited about having something to fight for. A reason to come home.” He scoffed and his hands tightened on the steering wheel again. “Call me idealistic, but the idea of having my own family. Well, I was pretty stoked.”
I nodded to myself. After what he’d shared about being a foster for so long, I could understand.
“So you were gone and she was here, home, raising Emily.”
“Yeah, pretty much. We wrote to each other, talked over the internet when we could. I’d get leave and come home, get to see them. I thought I was building something for us. Even thought I might be career military. Stationed somewhere stateside after my overseas tours. Then…”
“Then what?”
He blew out a breath. “Then, a couple years after Emily’s accident, she started complaining. Telling me how hard it was to take care of everything on her own. How I had it easy and couldn’t possibly understand.”
I sat quiet. Thom was finally opening up and I didn’t want him to stop.
“So, I started thinking about coming home. Emily was nearly six years old, and Rachel deserved a break. Plus, I was wanting more time with my family. I had this fantasy of what our lives would be like. Maybe even have another baby, one I’d be there to see grow.”
Then he was quiet for so long, I finally spoke up. “And?”
He looked over at me, like he was checking to make sure I was still there, still interested.
“It wasn’t anything like I’d hoped for. I guess the trauma of what I’d been through just fucked me up too much.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know how I expected a civilian to understand.”
“Tell me.” I said. Simply. Quietly.
He looked over at me again and one hand dropped from the steering wheel to cover my hand still lying on his thigh. He squeezed it for a moment and blew out a breath. He braked hard for a red light and I could tell he was tempted to run it. His thumb beat a staccato on the wheel.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m pretty tense. I saw this night playing out much different.”
I turned my hand and laced my fingers through his. “I did too. But we’re here now. We’re going to find your daughter and then…” I wiggled my eyebrows.
It got the response I was looking for. He laughed.
“Why are you so understanding?” he asked, lifting my hand to his lips.
“Why are you so protective of other people? It’s my nature.”
He laughed again, this time with genuine amusement. “That’s what you think? I’m protective of others?”
I snorted. “Well, yeah. It’s obvious. Maybe to everyone except you.”
He shook his head and frowned again. “Not everyone thinks so.”
“Then they’re wrong.”
The light turned green and I was thrown back in my seat as he accelerated quickly, took a quick left and floored the gas pedal again. “You really want to hear this?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, then. When I came home I was pretty much a mess. Three months before, we’d been ambushed during a recon—the enemy had set us up, and it was only luck that got us out. I managed to save several in my team, but we lost a few men. A few really good men. Maybe that’s part of what got me thinking about coming home. Then I lost my best buddy, Rob.”
I squeezed his hand, remembering him telling me about this after that first terrible flashback just a couple nights ago.
“That was the final straw for me. I wondered what anything was worth, and honestly, the only thing I had to hold on to was seeing my daughter, holding my daughter. And the promise of creating a family, a sanctuary that I had some bit of control over.”
The pain in his voice was bringing tears to my eyes, but I kept my silence, looking straight ahead. I wanted to reach out, to stroke his face, to tell him it was okay. That everything was okay. But at that moment, he needed to talk. And more than anything, he needed someone to just listen.
“At first it was pretty nice, even with the adjustment of moving into a ready-made family. Of me intruding into their tiny circle. Rachel seemed genuinely happy that I was there. And Emily, she was shy at first, not being so sure of me. But we hit it off pretty well, and it wasn’t long before she was calling me Daddy. I was lucky my therapist specialized in PTSD, and the time spent with the wounded warriors helped put my head back straight.”
“Were you in therapy long?” I couldn’t help but ask, remembering what my own adjustment had been like.
“About a year, all together. But by then, Rachel and I had already split up. It was a big mistake not insisting that she go with me to therapy. I didn’t think a lot about it at first. I mean, it was my issue, and I was the one who nee
ded help.
“But in those first six months, she went from loving wife to angry bitch. When I first met her, she was pretty much a party girl. Well, when I got back, she wanted that life again. To go out, have a good time. She said she’d spent enough time cooped up, being both mother and father to Emily, and she didn’t want to lose her youth. So, we’d get babysitters and go out.”
“That sounds like fun.”
It was his turn to snort. “When I’d first met her, it was fun. But, after…” his voice trailed off and I waited. “After being away, it was too much. Too loud. Too meaningless. Too everything. I tried, at first. She didn’t like that I hated crowds and closed in spaces. I would have anxiety attacks. And even if I held it together enough to get outside before they hit, they’d come back in my dreams.”
“Your flashbacks,” I said, acknowledging what I had experienced with Thom when he was under extreme stress.
“Yes. They’ve become less and less over time, but they were pretty bad for a while.”
I squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He shot a quick glance at me, then cursed as another light turned red.
“Well, it got worse. She started whining that I wasn’t taking care of her. That I was being selfish. When the flashbacks got worse, she started accusing me of purposely trying to scare her as a way to get what I wanted. Then she…”
“She what?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the response. Electricity almost crackled off him, he was wound so tight.
“She threw me out. She said I was dangerous—a threat to her and ‘the baby’. Emily was hardly a baby at that point, even though she treated her like one. Long story short, she filed for divorce and went after custody. She was in a better position than I was, so I didn’t fight her. But maybe…” he sighed. “Maybe I should have.”
His face was hard, his jaw tight. I stroked a thumb over his hand, but he didn’t respond. I could see the tension in the forearm as his hand gripped the wheel. He untangled our fingers and reached into his pocket just as the light turned green. He fished out his phone and handed it to me.
“Do me a favor. Tap the ‘find my phone’ app. See if anything shows up.”
I took his phone and found the app, familiar with it and its settings. Angela had left her phone in a restaurant once and we’d spent hours retracing her steps. After that, we’d installed the app so we wouldn’t have to go through that again.
I watched the app open and tapped ‘Em’s iPad’, holding my breath. Nothing. Her device must be turned off. I looked up at Thom and shook my head.
I sighed and leaned my head back. Somehow I knew this was going to be a long night.
Chapter 5 – Thom
Was I cursed to catch every damn red light in this city?
Every. Single. Damn. One.
The minutes on the clock ticked by, taunting me. I knew the importance of time when it came to missing children and each second that passed, I imagined that something horrifying was happening to my little girl.
Fuck!
Maria’s thumb stroked the skin on my hand, offering me a bit of comfort. Damn, I was glad she was here. She was keeping me sane. Even ‘talking’ was helping me stay in control. And I needed control now more than ever.
Why couldn’t we find Emily’s iPad?
Some part of me wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. Had Emily left without her iPad or was it simply turned off? Or was it at the bottom of some river with her lifeless body?
No!!
I couldn’t think that way. Emily had to be fine. She simply had to be. But why had she run away in the first place? What had she been thinking and what led her to take such a desperate action?
Maria must have felt me go into that dark space, because she asked me another question. “Why was she in a better position? For custody? Because of the PTSD?”
I stomped on the gas and we surged forward. Almost there. Almost to Rachel’s place. Then I’d get the answers I needed. In the meantime, I’d try to give Maria the answers she was seeking.
“Yes, because I was fucked up and Rachel had videotaped my fucked-up-ness.”
Maria gasped and I unlinked our hands, grabbing the steering wheel again so I could squeeze the shit out of it. After a moment, she said, “She’s horrible.”
I barked out a surprised laugh. That was hardly what I’d been expecting. I’d been expecting more questions about what had been videotaped. But here Maria was, defending me again, even when she still didn’t know that my actions had been undefendable.
“So you haven’t fought for custody because she’s essentially blackmailed you into doing whatever she wants?” Maria’s voice held an edge of anger that could have sliced through a rock.
“Yes. I know that sounds pathetic—”
“Stop it,” she snapped, interrupting me. “Stop talking about yourself like that. Stop taking the blame for everyone else. I realize I’m only hearing your side of this story, but I honestly can’t believe she’d do that to you. What reasons could she possibly have to—”
“Money. It all comes down to money with her, Maria. If I get more time with Em, she gets less money. I have her set up in a pretty nice lifestyle because of her threats.”
She turned to me, reaching over to grip my thigh again. “Threats?”
Damn it to hell. I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to see the horror on Maria’s face when I confessed this dark part of my life.
“Threats,” I said as I turned the last left to Rachel’s house, mentally preparing myself for what I was about to step into. This was it. I was done with all this. I’d let Rachel control my life for way too long. I wasn’t doing it anymore.
I opened my mouth to say the words I’d been dreading when my phone rang in Maria’s hands. She yelped, the sound startling us both. Maria blew out a breath and I hit the ‘answer’ button on my steering wheel. The caller ID on my dash told me it was Rachel.
“Have you heard anything?” I said in way of a greeting.
“Where the hell are you? I’m living a nightmare and you, of course, are nowhere—”
“I’m around the corner,” I said, interrupting her and heard Maria mumble something under her breath. Rachel was coming over the Suburban’s speakers and she could hear every word being said.
“Well, it’s about fucking time—”
“Rachel, have you or have you not heard from Emily?”
“Don’t you take that tone—”
I growled under my breath. “Be there in thirty seconds.” I pushed the button to end the call and the cab of the vehicle was mercifully silent again.
I whipped around the last corner and through the gate into the neighborhood. After pulling up in front of the curb, I turned to Maria. “I’ll be right back.” She started to hand me my phone, but I shook my head. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Anything,” she said with that sweet smile of hers.
“Keep monitoring the ‘find my phone’ app. Honk the horn if anything pops up?”
“Absolutely.”
I opened the middle console and pulled out a flashlight, then leaned further and gave Maria’s forehead a quick kiss. “Thank you. Be right back. Lock the doors behind me.” I left the SUV running, so that Maria could control the temperature inside.
Blowing out a breath, I stepped onto the sidewalk, closed the door and heard the click of the locks sliding into place. “Good girl,” I said under my breath. One less thing I had to worry about.
Rachel must have heard the door slam because the condo door opened less than a second later. Then she was on the porch and down the steps, phone in hand, her blonde hair a tangled mess on her head.
I braced myself for the hell storm stomping its way across the brief expanse of lawn.
“It’s about damn time you got here.”
“Only Superman could have gotten here faster, Rachel,” I said, meeting her half way across the yard.
She scoffed and looked me up and down. “You are certainly no Sup
erman, so that explains it.”
I took a deep breath, refusing to bite at her bait. “Do you have any idea how Emily got out of the house, or when she left?”
She curled her upper lip and snarled, “Of course I know. She climbed out of her window. Your fault, as usual. If I didn’t have to live on your pittance, I could afford a place with alarms on them. But no, you only—”
I walked away from her nastiness and around to the side of the house where Emily’s bedroom was. Rachel continued her yammering at me, but I tuned out her voice. Instead, I carefully explored the ground under the window for footprints or imprints from her crutches. Anything to show me which way my daughter would have gone.
Rachel was still mid-tirade when I finally turned to her and asked, “When will the police be here?”
That shut her up. Her face grew hard and she crossed her arms over her chest. She raised her chin and said, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t called them.”
The edges of my vision turned gray as anger crawled from every cell and raced to the very center of my brain. I couldn’t even speak. It took me a full minute to ask, “Why the hell not?”
“This is a family issue. Not a police issue. I plan to keep it that way.”
I looked at her more closely, trying to read her face in the dim glow cast by my flashlight. Was she serious? A family issue? She seemed to shrink a little, to hug herself a little more tightly. Was it my imagination, or did she appear worried? Maybe even scared.
Scared of what?
Of someone discovering she wasn’t the perfect mother she wanted everyone to believe? Or worse?
That was the last straw. I was absolutely calling my attorney tomorrow. I didn’t care about the cost, emotionally or financially. I was getting to the bottom of this, and if things really were as bad as what I was beginning to fear, I’d move heaven and earth to get my child out of this fucked up environment. I didn’t care what it took. Hell, I’d get one of the PTSD dogs to help with the night terrors and flashbacks, if necessary. I’d chain myself to the bed if I had to. My little girl would not live in fear another minute.