by Karen Rose
“I’ll make some,” Caroline said. “Sit, Dana. You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” Dana returned wryly. “I love you, too. Have a seat, Max, and lay your fucked up cards on the table.”
Max sat and related the events of the morning, leaving nothing out. Caroline watched him as he spoke. She’d been right. He was nothing like Rob Winters. Max Hunter was a good man. A good man who unfortunately wore a chip on his shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar when it came to his handicap. By the time he’d finished, the coffee was brewed. She poured three cups and put them on the table.
Dana took hers and gulped, blinking. “God, this is strong.”
Caroline sat in the chair furthest from Max, knowing her turn in the witness box was quickly approaching. I should have held my temper, she thought. I shouldn’t have shown him my back that way. It wasn’t done to share a truth with the man I said I loved. It was done as revenge. Pure and simple. “You looked like you needed it that strong.” She shrugged. “I do anyway.”
Dana looked at her, disappointment in her brown eyes. Caroline looked away.
“You let all that go on and you still didn’t tell him?” Dana asked wearily.
Caroline shrugged again. “I was mad.”
“You were stalling,” Dana fired back, one hundred percent correct.
“Tell me what?” Max asked, his voice now wary.
“Tell him.” Dana put her cup down with a bang, moving her hand just in time to avoid the hot coffee that sloshed over the edges.
Caroline moved to get up and get a towel and Dana caught her by the edge of her sweater, holding her in her chair.
“Sit your ass in that chair and tell him the goddamn truth! I will not tell you again!”
“Tell me what?” Max demanded. “Caroline, what is going on here?”
Caroline covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know where to start, Max. I’m …” Her voice wobbled and she swallowed. “I’m very scared to tell you this.”
“Why?” His voice was gentle. “Why are you afraid of me still?”
She lowered her hands and looked straight into his eyes. He deserved that much. “I’m not afraid of you. I told you that and I meant it. I’m afraid of what you’ll say when I tell you why I said no this morning when you asked me to marry you.”
Max reached across the table and took her hand. “Tell me. Please.”
Caroline closed her eyes. “I’m not really a brunette.” Why was that the first thing that came to her mind? She would have kicked herself had she been able.
“I figured that out for myself,” Max returned dryly. “I may walk with a cane and suffer from terminal self-pity, but I’m not blind, even in the dark.”
Dana cleared her throat. “I didn’t need to hear that. Go on, Caro. Get to the good part before I fall asleep in this very uncomfortable chair.”
Max glanced over at Dana before bringing his eyes back to Caroline’s. “I wondered why you dyed your hair if what was on your head was the same pretty color as—” He checked himself when Dana choked on her coffee. “I figured you’d tell me when you got ready.” He looked down at the table. “I thought you trusted me that much.”
Caroline winced. “Direct hit.” She filled her lungs with air and let the breath out on a tremendous sigh. “Max, I’m not the person you think I am.”
“Caroline, that’s not true,” Dana inserted. “You’re exactly the person he thinks you are.”
She glanced over at Dana with a half-smile. “You’re splitting hairs, Dana.” Caroline turned back to Max whose eyes were narrowed and wary. “I told you I tried to run away from Rob once and he pushed me down the stairs.”
Max nodded. “The night you lost your baby.”
Dana’s surprised indrawn breath had them both turning to face her, then back to one another.
“I was listening, Caroline,” he said quietly. “Even if you thought I wasn’t.”
She remembered her words. Regretted them. “I’m sorry, Max. I shouldn’t have said that. I had a tantrum of my own, I guess. The next time he pushed me down the stairs was after I took out a restraining order. He put me in the hospital for three months. My back was broken and at first the doctors weren’t sure if I’d ever walk again.” She closed her eyes. “Rob told me if I told anyone he’d ‘finish the job.’” She opened her eyes to find his face shocked and pale. “I believed him. After my mother had called him, after I’d tried to run away before? Her car ran off the road a few months later. He didn’t want her telling anyone. So when he told me not to tell anyone, I didn’t tell anyone. But I listened. One of the nurses at the hospital kept telling me to just leave, to get help. Like it was that easy. But one day she gave me information I could really use. The name of Hanover House, a place that would help me change my name, get all the papers I’d need to live a new life.” Caro-line covered his hands with hers and watched his gray eyes flicker as his shrewd mind processed.
“For three months I laid in that hospital bed and listened and planned my escape. I woke up every morning and saw my statue, my St. Rita statue, and knew I wasn’t an impossible case, that one day I’d get away and take Robbie with me.”
“Robbie?” Max asked, his voice hoarse. He lifted his eyes to Dana and Caroline felt her heart sink. He couldn’t look at her. Maybe it was better that way.
Dana nodded. “Robbie is the little boy I met at the Greyhound station that night, clutching his mother’s hand. Tom is the boy that walked out of Hanover House. He’s the boy you know today.” She looked at Caroline. “Finish, honey. Just get it over with.”
Caroline dragged her eyes from Max’s haggard face to Dana’s concerned one. “I couldn’t walk then, when I first got home. I couldn’t run away then. I knew he’d find me, knew the walker would make me stick out like a sore thumb.” She dropped her eyes to the tabletop. “He wouldn’t let me go back to rehab. I knew he wouldn’t, so I listened so carefully to the doctors when I was still in the hospital. I took notes and when I got home, I did all the things they said to do.”
“You did your own rehab,” Dana commented quietly. “You never told me this part either.”
“I couldn’t relive it. I never wanted to remember it again.” But she closed her eyes, made herself remember. “I worked out with his weights when he wasn’t home, got stronger every day. But I never let him see it. I walked with the walker, held my hurt arm against my body like I had every day in the hospital. Dropped bowls and pretended to stumble. But every day I got stronger. Towards the end I walked around the house with a backpack on my back filled with rocks whenever he wasn’t home.” Caroline felt her lips twist, the memories still humiliating. “He wasn’t home a lot. He stayed with the neighbor next door. She was prettier than me. More of a woman than me. I was a gimp.” She swallowed hard. “He didn’t touch me as often once he had her. It was the one good thing to come out of all of it. But he did touch me. Enough.” She felt the familiar terror wash over her and pushed it back. “Don’t worry, Max. I had myself tested once I’d been here a year. Somehow I managed to get away uninfected.” She shot a look at Dana. “The nurse at the clinic told me I should thank God. It was a year before I could find any thankfulness in me.”
“I think God understood,” Dana murmured. “I think He still does.”
Caroline shrugged. “Perhaps. Anyway, when I finally could carry the backpack filled with rocks for eight hours at a time, I knew I was strong enough. I sewed all the money I’d saved inside my shirt and picked Robbie up from school one day at the end of May. It had been two years since I woke up in the hospital.”
“Two years?” Max ground out.
Caroline shrugged again. “I told you once that rehab for poor people sucks. It takes a lot longer when managed by an amateur.” She sighed. “I had my route mapped out. I knew Rob wouldn’t be home till morning, that he’d spend the night at Holly’s house. That gave me enough time to drive to Tennessee and lose my car.”
“Where did you lose it?” Dana asked.
; A satisfied smile bent Caroline’s lips. “At the bottom of a deep lake where nobody would ever find it. St. Rita made a handy accelerator weight.” She paused, one particular memory sweet. “I remember watching the car launch and sink. It had been just as I’d dreamed it every time I thought about my escape. And so was the look of shock on Robbie’s face when I picked up the backpack and started to walk.”
“He didn’t know?” Max asked.
“No. I didn’t want to burden him with yet another secret his father would suspect. We hiked into Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It’s all tourists, so nobody even noticed us. Three bus transfers later we were in Chicago.”
“With a stopover in St. Louis,” Dana said.
“Why?” Max asked, his head now in his hands.
“To borrow a birth certificate. It’s so easy, it’s scary. You go to a cemetery, find the name of a child that died as an infant with the right birthdate, go to the county seat and request a copy of the birth certificate. I wandered around the cemetery for hours, searching for the right name, the right birthdate before I settled on Caroline.”
“What was your name before?” His voice was muffled.
“Mary Grace. Mary Grace Winters.” She paused. “Do you understand now, Max?”
He nodded, his head still down. “Yes, I do. You ran away. Disappeared. And never divorced the sonofabitch that terrorized you every day of your life.” He lifted his head, his gray eyes now fierce and alive. “And you feel like you have to honor the legal tie that binds you to a monster you should have shot with his own gun while he slept.”
“He’s quick, Caro,” Dana commented. “He came to exactly the same opinion I did.”
“Dana, please.” Caroline squeezed his hands. “I can’t marry you, Max.” She felt her eyes sting and clenched her teeth. She would not cry. She would not. She’d cried too much for one day already. “I want to marry you more than I want to breathe. But I can’t.”
“Caroline—” Max started, but she cut him off.
“Don’t try to convince me otherwise. I love you, and I’m prepared to do just about anything except that. It’s wrong.”
“Keeping your vows to a monster is wrong, Caroline,” Max insisted. “Denying us a chance to be happy is wrong. Don’t tell me you haven’t dreamed about spending the rest of your life with me.” He took her hands and put one on each side of his face. “Don’t tell me you haven’t dreamed of waking up with me. Don’t tell me you haven’t dreamed of the babies we’d make together.” He dropped her hands and stood, walking around the table, holding the table edge as he made his way to her. When he reached her, he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to her feet, compelling her to meet his eyes, steely gray with determination. “A family, Caroline. A real family. Denying us a chance to have a normal family is wrong.”
Caroline closed her eyes, unable to meet his piercing stare. Unwilling to see the hurt she was about to put in his eyes. “I’ve dreamed of all of those things,” she said, her voice unsteady. “You know I have. Max, please try to understand. Don’t ask me to do something I believe is wrong.”
Max released her shoulders and stepped away.
“So you’ll choose your integrity over me?”
“No, I never said that.”
“Then what are you saying?” he gritted from behind clenched teeth.
“She’s saying she’ll live with you in sin, but won’t marry you in a church before God and everybody,” Dana said flatly.
Caroline glared at her, eyes narrowed. “Shut up, Dana.”
Max shook his head. “No, Caroline. Is she right? Is that what you’re saying?”
Caroline looked from Max to Dana and back to Max again. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Max’s face paled. “Then I guess we’ve finished talking.”
A new voice intruded. David’s voice. “Max, wait.”
As a group they looked to the archway connecting the kitchen to the foyer. Caroline rolled her eyes. “Oh for God’s sake, David. Do you make lurking in the foyer listening to me spill my guts a habit?”
David shrugged. “Max called me. He said he needed my help. I came.”
“How long have you been standing there?” Max asked woodenly.
“Long enough. Max, don’t be so quick to decide this, please.”
Max shrugged and lowered himself into one of the kitchen chairs. “You’re the one telling me I should be more spontaneous.”
“Max—”
Max raised his hand, his eyes closed. “Enough, David. I’ve heard enough. Caroline truly believes her convictions. So do I. I want a wife, a family. I want it to be legal, in front of God and everybody. I have my integrity, too.”
“You want to be normal,” David murmured. “Max, please—”
“There’s nothing more to be said.” Max opened his eyes and Caroline felt her heart die. She’d hurt him. More than she’d thought possible. “I won’t live your way and you say you won’t live mine. We’re at … an impasse.”
Caroline swallowed back the sob that lodged in her throat. “So this is it?”
Max nodded, his jaw set grimly. “Your rules, Caroline.”
#8220;I’m sorry, Max,” she whispered. She leaned forward to kiss him goodbye and he jerked his face to the side, out of her reach.
“Just go, Caroline.”
Chapter Twenty
Chicago
Sunday, March 18
11:30 P.M.
Dana brought her car to a squealing stop, breaking the silence that had reigned since they’d pulled out of Max’s driveway. “I swear you are the biggest idiot God ever had the misfortune to place on this planet,” she snapped, fastening her gaze straight ahead out her windshield.
Caroline yanked at the door handle and launched herself from the car, then turned and leaned in. Her wet face stung in the cold wind, but she was long past trying to stem her tears. “And that would be your professional opinion?” she asked sarcastically, her voice altered by her very stuffed-up nose.
Dana cocked her jaw to one side. “No, that’s my opinion as your best friend. I have no idea why you are so hung up on that stupid bigamy thing anyway.”
Caroline narrowed her swollen eyes. “Shut up, Dana.”
“Shut up yourself, Caroline, and listen to yourself. You don’t really believe in this whole bigamy thing, you know that? So you break the law by marrying Max Hunter? It wouldn’t be the first law you’ve broken and it’s unlikely to be the last. Every time you sign your name you’re a fraud. Every time you call your son ‘Tom’ you’re propagating fraud. Technically illegal. But you do it, because the fear of being caught by your husband was way more powerful than the fear of going to jail.” She drew a breath and shook her head. “Shouldn’t love for Max and the desire to make him happy be stronger than any petty regard for the law that conveniently happens to pop up now?”
“You’re out of line, Dana.”
“No, I’m not. Because this whole bigamy thing is too convenient. It’s a way to keep yourself from getting hurt. It’s the way to leave yourself an escape hatch. Don’t shake your head and tell me no, Caroline. I’m right and you know it. If you don’t tie a legal knot with Max and if things don’t work out you can run away, just like you ran from Rob and Mary Grace. Just like you’ve run from any serious relationship since the day I met you.”
Caroline felt her body tremble as Dana’s words sliced deep. As her betrayal sliced even deeper. Dana had been her rock, her support. The only one to believe in her. And now … And now … She was numb, her mind unable, unwilling to process another thought. Her eyes hurt, her face stung. Her heart … She couldn’t even feel it anymore.
“Go away, Dana,” she said wearily. “Just shut up and go away.”
Dana smacked the steering wheel. “Fine, Caroline. I’ll shut up and go away. That way I won’t have to sit back and watch you throw away a perfectly legitimate chance for happiness.” Dana blew out an angry, frustrated sigh. “Close the door, Caroline. Go on up to your apartment and
hide from your fear all alone. Be morally superior all alone. Enjoy it while it lasts. And you’d better damn well pray Max still wants you back when you come to your senses.”
Stunned, Caroline stared. “I am not morally superior.”
Dana’s brows lifted in sarcastic amazement. “Oh, yes you are. You judge and condemn every woman at Hanover House who goes back to her husband.”
Caroline’s eyes narrowed through her seemingly endless tears. “They’re weak.”
Dana shook her head. “They’re human. They’re afraid. They’re not you. You judged Max for not wanting to go back to a basketball game because it hurt him.”
Caroline shook her head, unable to understand the accusations coming from the woman she’d trusted above all others. “He was blaming everybody else for his problems, making everyone around him suffer because of something he couldn’t control. He was living in the past.”
Dana seemed to settle, even though she didn’t move a muscle. “And you’re not?”
Blessed anger erupted. “No!”
Dana sighed and put her car in drive. “Fine, then. See you later, Mary Grace. Close my door please.” She looked over pointedly. “Mary Grace.”
“Don’t call me that,” Caroline gritted through clenched teeth, looking around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear.
Dana sighed again, a great dramatic exhalation of wind. “Why? Because the big bad husband might be lurking in the bushes? Give it up. He’s not coming for you. You can go back to calling yourself Mary Grace Winters, victim extra-ordinaire.” She bit her lip and it was then Caroline saw the tears welling in Dana’s eyes. “Because you’re sure as hell not the woman I thought I knew. She wouldn’t have hurt someone she loved like you just hurt Max Hunter. You’re not Caroline.” She blinked, sending tears down her face. “So close the door, Mary Grace. I need to go home.”
Seething, Caroline slammed the car door and watched Dana drive away.
“I am not morally superior,” she muttered to the empty street. “I’m not.”
Seething and crying, she climbed the stairs to her apartment and opened the door. Her coat landed on the sofa, her purse on the chair. Her keys jangled when she threw them across the kitchen, landing in a noisy heap in the corner behind the cookie jar. She opened the refrigerator, then closed it again when the mere sight of food made her stomach churn.