by Mia Ford
I watched him disappear behind the truck, just a little curious as to who was calling. Bobby rarely took a side when answering his phone, and I began to toy with the idea that maybe he had found a new love interest or something. He definitely deserved it, especially after the crap he had gone through with his parents’ death. Sometimes I worried about him, and I knew that living alone in that house was getting to him. There were times I’d catch him taking on extra night shifts, and I knew it was because of the company and not the job. I couldn’t remember the last time I called him and found him at home.
It’s not like you’re any better.
Which was true. I had learned to stay the hell away from any home a long time ago, back when my father was a drunken ass who could still piss standing up, and my mother was the mousey housewife who always forgave him. I used to listen to him hitting her from my room upstairs, balling my eyes out and hiding under the bed. When I was old enough to take a proper beating, but still too young to fight back, he came for me, too. It was junior high when I finally stood up to him.
I remembered the day clearly. I had been in my room, and my old man was going about his usual late-night beatings downstairs. I had tried to shut out my mom’s cries, had tried to ignore the gamut of insults he was throwing at her, but in the end, it had been too much. I guess it was anger, maybe fear, but definitely a loathing towards how much power the man had over me and my mom. I remembered screaming at him from upstairs to stop. I remembered the anger on his face when he came up after me. I remembered the rage that had given his fists an extra bit of strength as he slammed them into me.
And I remembered being so pissed off and scared that I had fought back and pushed him down the stairs.
My old man died in a wheelchair from a heart attack. My mother disowned me, which I thought was a fucking hoot. When she died, I didn’t even attend the funeral. All things considered, I didn’t have a family. The people who called themselves my parents were only two idiots who brought me into this world, probably by mistake, and had left me with nothing when they left. The station was my home; the men and women who served in it my family. I had made my peace with that a long time ago.
I turned around just as Bobby made his way back around the truck, a look of concern mixed with what I could only assume was anger on his face. It was a foreign look to me, and immediately put me on edge.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s Andrea,” Bobby said.
I stood up quickly. I had hardly known Bobby’s little sister, but I had heard enough to make me take the look on his face a lot more seriously. Bobby had told me about her marriage, the abuse she was taking, and how, like my mother, she didn’t seem to want to do anything about it. I knew Dennis Canfield. We went to school together, and despite the good looks and charm, he was a Class A asshole.
“Is she alright?” I asked. My mind immediately went to hospital rooms and broken bones. I had warned Bobby about this several times, but I knew that if Andrea didn’t ask for help, didn’t want it, then there was very little he could do.
“She’s calling from the road,” Bobby said, still glaring at his phone as if he were watching her through it. “Says she’s coming home. That she’s leaving Dennis.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Good going, Andrea.”
Bobby pocketed his phone and looked past me, his eyes moving rapidly right and left while he contemplated the situation. “Yeah,” he said.
“Hey, man, that’s a good thing,” I said. “You want her out of that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Bobby said, shaking the stupor out of him. “I just didn’t expect it. She seemed so strung up on that asshole, I figured the only time she’d call me was to tell me she was in the hospital.”
“I get it,” I said. “But she isn’t.”
“No, she isn’t,” Bobby nodded.
“You’re supposed to be happy about this.”
Bobby looked at me, through me even, lost in his thoughts. “No, I am, really,” he assured me. “It’s just very much out of the blue. And in the middle of the night. I think she just packed her things and left.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, until he follows her.”
I smiled. “When he does, we’ll be here waiting,” I said. “I’ve put one wife beater into a wheelchair. I have no problems doing it again.”
Chapter 5: Andrea
He’s going to kill me. He’s going to find some way to catch up to me and kill me.
The thought wouldn’t leave my head. Even with my foot pushing down on the gas, knowing that Dennis would be too drunk to follow me tonight at least, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just a few cars behind me. I tried to calm myself down, sticking to the speed limit as best as I could. I didn’t need to be pulled over; not now, not while I was running.
My only wish was that I reach Mansfield before I ran out of courage. A few miles back, a part of me had wanted to turn around and go home. Deal with a drunkard and his beatings, go to sleep with bruises I could hopefully hide, and then head to work the next morning as if nothing had happened. It would be easier dealing with Dennis’s wrath now than later. If he put two and two together, if he came looking for me in Mansfield, he’d be in the mood for more than just a beating.
Bobby will protect me. I can count on Bobby.
Only, my brother didn’t really sound so convinced himself. I had stopped for gas when I called him, and his voice had sounded a little too anxious for my liking. I would have thought he’d be ecstatic about my leaving Dennis. Maybe even throw me a welcome home party or something. Instead, I got the stuttered reply of someone who wasn’t too sure if I was doing the right thing or not. Which worried me. A lot.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter and tried to fight the urge to look in the rearview mirror every five seconds. The voice inside my head was telling me that there was no way Dennis could catch up to me now. That I was too far gone for that to happen, and besides, it would take him hours before he could think straight. But he wasn’t stupid. He’d know the first place I’d go to would be Mansfield. It would only be a matter of time before he came looking for me.
He thinks you’re on bad terms with your family. He might not think to follow you home.
Oh, who the fuck was I kidding?
I only started to relax when I drove past the large billboard welcoming me to Mansfield, home of the University of Connecticut, population almost 27,000. It was only then that I noticed my heart had been beating on overdrive, and now that I felt I was safe and had begun to calm down, it was starting to slow its pace and announce its anger with shooting pain in my chest. I fought to keep my hands steady and the car on the road, the adrenaline coursing through me diminishing to a point where my body was starting to slowly shut down. I didn’t stop, though. I knew that if I did, I’d break down in tears and probably never make the last few miles home.
Mansfield hadn’t changed much from the last time I had been here. It was the middle of the spring semester, and students were everywhere, even this late at night. I had to admit, it kept the town pretty lively, although I missed the old days when I could recognize every face I passed by in the street.
The closer I got to home, the calmer I felt. I drove down Storrs Road at a leisurely pace, no longer constantly checking the rear-view mirror for signs of Dennis following me. I even began to smile a little as I turned down Spring Hills Road, my eyes welling up with tears, my hands now shaking uncontrollably. By the time I reached the house, I was crying freely. I parked in the driveway behind Bobby’s truck, turned off the ignition, and rested my head against the steering wheel. I wrapped my arms around my shoulders and let the waterworks flow.
For the first time in forever, I felt good.
I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but when I finally looked up, Bobby was making his way to me, and thankfully with a wide smile on his face. I opened the door, climbed out and broke into tears again when he wrapped his arms around me. I cried like I had never
cried before, and suddenly felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The fear that I was making a mistake, the dread of Dennis looking for me and eventually finding me, all that slipped away like a bad dream.
“Hey, easy,” Bobby whispered, pressing me tighter into his embrace. “You’re okay. You’re home.”
That only made me cry harder.
***
“So, what happened?”
We were sitting in the kitchen, a hot mug of coffee nestled between my hands, and the gentle sound of Sinatra on the radio. It took me back to when I was ten or eleven, when my father would be attempting to cook me breakfast before I had to race off to school. Looking at Bobby now, resting against the kitchen counter with his arms folded across his chest, the similarity was uncanny. He had grown into the one man I had let down the most in my life.
But there was something else there. There was something in Bobby’s eyes I had never seen in my father’s since the day I told him I was marrying Dennis. Love. Support. Care. Everything I had hoped to find and had been worried I’d not.
This was the first time to set foot in my childhood home since the day my father kicked me out. Even after my mother’s funeral, I had decided to skip on the wake and just go home. I couldn’t bring myself to walk in here without my parents welcoming me back. Besides, Bobby didn’t do much to stop me from leaving. A part of me had hoped he’d at least offer that I stay for the night, an offer I knew I would refuse. But, in the end, he had let me go.
Which made this all very bittersweet.
“Andrea?”
I blinked rapidly and shook myself out of my daydreams, looking up at Bobby with a weak smile. “Sorry,” I whispered. “Just, lost myself a little, I guess.”
Bobby nodded. “Strange being home?”
“Yeah, and that,” I admitted, sipping from my coffee. “Never thought I’d be back, you know?”
Bobby sighed, pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table opposite me. He looked around the kitchen and pursed his lips. “They never stopped worrying about you, you know that?” He looked at me. “Mom and dad. They never stopped thinking about you, praying for you, telling their friends that their daughter was doing alright even when they knew you weren’t. Shame how things ended between you.”
“It was my fault,” I admitted, going again for the weak smile although tears threatened to explode from my eyes. “I pushed them away. I was stupid, didn’t see what was right in front of me, and was dumb enough not to let them help me.” I closed my eyes and shook my head, frustrated at how things had turned out to be. “I guess I deserve what Dennis does to me.”
Bobby leaned over and grabbed my hand, squeezing tight. “No one deserves a life like that, Andrea,” he said. “Whatever mistakes you made, you definitely don’t deserve to be punished for them. Not like this.”
A tear raced down one cheek, and I fought back a sob. “I just can’t do it anymore, you know?” My eyes burned, and I knew it would be only a matter of time before I broke down crying again. “I can’t take the verbal abuse, the late nights wondering where he was and silently praying he was dead, the beatings that made me want to slit my wrists just to be done with it all. I can’t, Bobby. Not anymore.”
“I know,” he said, gently squeezing my hand again. “You don’t have to. You’re home, Andrea, and I’m here with you. That son of a bitch won’t ever lay a hand on you again, you hear me?”
“I’m scared,” I admitted, biting my lip. “I’m scared of what he’ll do to me when he finds me. He used to beat me just because I forgot to remind him about the game or got him the wrong brand of beer. What do you think he’ll do when he comes home and doesn’t find me?”
Bobby’s grip tightened, and I could see the anger in his eyes. “He’ll look for you,” he said. “That’s what Dennis will probably do. Look for you. And you know what? I hope he does. I hope he finds you. Because when he does, when he comes to get you, I’ll be waiting for him. I’ll make sure he can’t move, let alone beat his own dick.”
I chuckled, and Bobby smiled.
“You’re an idiot,” I said, smacking his hand away. For a second, I felt like I was back in high school, laughing at one of his outrageous jokes while my mother glared at him from across the table. What I would do to go back to that.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I don’t want you to worry about Dennis anymore, okay? Tomorrow I’ll find you a divorce lawyer, someone good. I don’t care the cost. We’ll also call Jeremy and get you a restraining order.”
“Jeremy Kimbel? He’s with the police now?”
“Go figure, right?” Bobby chuckled. “Who would have thought shy little Jeremy would be a cop. But he’s one of the best in Mansfield. Respected as hell, too. Helped me out whenever I needed it, so I trust him.”
“Don’t you need to go to court for a restraining order? I don’t think Jeremy could just pull one out of his drawer.”
Bobby winked. “Let me worry about that, okay? All I need you to do is settle in, get comfortable, and stop worrying. Besides, you’re home. This is the one town I know you won’t have to worry about Dennis in.”
“I worry about Dennis wherever I go.”
“You don’t need to anymore, I promise you that,” he said. “Does he know where you are?”
I shook my head. “But he’ll guess it, sooner or later. Hopefully later.”
“I’ll call him tomorrow,” Bobby said.
I panicked, almost spilled my coffee and stared at him in shock. “You’ll do what?”
Bobby held up a hand to stop me. “Relax, will you? I’ll tell him you called me, you sounded worried, and now you won’t pick up your phone. I’ll even throw in a few insults just to make it sound authentic. That will buy us a couple of days.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Bobby shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll buy it.”
“He’s not an idiot, Bobby.”
“You give him too much credit.”
“And you underestimate what he’s capable of,” I said. “Trust me, the minute you call, he’ll see through it. He’ll know I’m here.”
Bobby pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the table. “So, what do you want to do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing. He knows we hardly talk. He’ll probably think Mansfield was the last place I’d run off to.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous,” Bobby frowned. “You said he wasn’t stupid. This would be the first place I’d look if I were in his shoes.”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Just don’t call him. He’ll know.”
Bobby looked at me for a few seconds, then sighed and ran a hand across his face. “Fine, we’ll do it your way.”
“Thank you.”
“I still think my plan is kinda awesome,” he smiled.
“Your plan sucks.”
Bobby laughed and shook his head at me. “It’s good to have you back, little sis.”
I smiled at him, took a sip from my coffee and closed my eyes.
It was good to be back.
***
My room looked exactly the same. My bed was made, the purple sheets I loved embracing the mattress with a perfection that only my father could have achieved. My posters hung on the walls, faded and yellow, but still a stark reminder of the boyband lover that had once inhabited the room. My books were lined perfectly on the shelf above my desk, and the picture of me at ten playing baseball with my father still stood on the nightstand by the bed.
I would have cried if I hadn’t been all out of tears.
I rolled my suitcase into a corner and opened the closet, grazing my hand over the few clothes that had been left hanging there for God knows how long. Bobby was right. My parents really hadn’t given up on me. My room was a perfect symbol of their expecting me to come back at any time. I wondered how long they waited for me to knock on the front door before finally deciding that I was gone for good. That they wouldn’t s
ee me again.
It made my heart ache.
I opened the suitcase, found something to sleep in, and quickly undressed. I slid under the covers, letting the cool sheets tingle my skin, and stared up at the stars I had stuck on the ceiling when I was only seven. I had never taken them down, even though I clearly remembered how stupid I thought they were back when I was in high school. But I couldn’t bring myself to remove them.
It was funny how much of this I had taken for granted for so long. I thought back to the house I shared with Dennis, the chill that inhabited it like a third wheel, the blandness of it all. As if it had been furnished for a doctor’s office, and not a home. There was no warmth there, no life, nothing that reflected even a glimmer of happiness.
Unlike here. There was no chill here. No emptiness. Just a lot of warmth, and love, as if the walls themselves had been infused with it. I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten how good it felt to be here. I couldn’t believe that I had stayed away for so long.
I closed my eyes, and for the first time in a very long time, I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
Chapter 6: Andy
I learned a lot from my time as a fire fighter.
For starters, I learned never to underestimate my surroundings. Running into a burning building was a lot like hitting two hundred miles an hour on a motorcycle without a helmet in the middle of a crowded residential area. You never knew what was going to hit you. No matter how well you were prepared, there was always that one mistake that you could make, that one doorknob you forgot to check for heat, that one roof you didn’t probe before walking below it. One mistake. Just one, and everything came tumbling down on top of you.
A lot like my life, if you thought about it. The problem was, I was too busy being careful on the job, that I basically regarded the rest of my life as a free for all. I didn’t care about safety that much, which probably explained my toxic relationship with Hannah. I rarely used a condom on the drunk college kids I brought home, which meant that if one of them came up to me a year after our night together with a baby, claiming it was mine, I wouldn’t be surprised. I usually forgot to put on my seatbelt, which, as a fire fighter, was as ridiculous as they came.