Maybe she was just getting together with some girlfriends who also were home for the holiday weekend. Then why didn’t she just say that, rather than make him think it was another man? Come on. She hadn’t said anything to indicate it was a man. Yeah, she’d just said someone.
What if it was one of those boys from high school she said only liked to talk about sports? Hell, she still didn’t like sports. What would she have in common with them now? He watched her make a turn about a block ahead and hurried to catch up.
Adam argued with himself that he should be encouraging her to pursue someone her own age. But the thought of her being with another man rotted his gut. Deep down, though, he knew Karla wasn’t off meeting a lover. Still, she was keeping something from him. Not that she owed him anything. They weren’t together anymore, not even in a Dom/sub relationship.
Maybe they never should have been together in the first place. But that horse had left the barn and there was no going back now.
He’d known having Karla in his life would never be easy. She always would be unpredictable. He had to admit he loved that about her most of all. He’d led a safe, predictable life since he’d retired from the Corps. She’d stirred him back to life. Maybe he couldn’t love her as perfectly as she ought to be loved, but he’d do his damnedest not to ever hurt her again.
A gust of wind buffeted the car, making it hard to keep it on Lake Shore Drive. He saw her slow down, then turn into the garage for a posh-looking high-rise apartment building. Damn. He’d never find her in there. What if there was a guard or doorman or something? He stepped on the accelerator and followed her into the garage. She parked and he continued up to the next level, then ran to the elevator to see which floor she stopped on.
Two. Hell, he could take the stairs and maybe even see which apartment she went into. Fuck, this was more recon than he’d done since his days in Kosovo. He took the stairs two at a time and opened the door to peek out. Karla stood waiting outside a door about halfway down the hall. The door opened, but he couldn’t see who greeted her. A kid maybe, judging by where her gaze focused. He grinned, a lot less worried.
After she’d gone inside, he crept down the hallway and checked the name on the door. Gallagher. The voices coming from within both sounded female. He recognized Karla’s, but the other sounded like an older woman. Did she have a relative who hadn’t come to dinner today? Or perhaps a former teacher? She was close to her music teacher, who had helped her get into Columbia.
He could play this guessing game all night, but, instead, he’d just stake himself out down the hallway at the opposite end from the stairs and elevator to wait for Karla to leave. He no longer needed to know who was in apartment 2F. But he did want to be sure Karla got home safely.
* * *
When the apartment door finally opened, Karla found herself staring into thin air, until she realized the woman of Adam’s nightmares was the thin and frail-looking woman seated in a scooter-type wheelchair in front of her. Her rheumy green eyes carried only a hint of the lively sparks in her son’s eyes, but she could see him in them.
“Please, come in, Miss Paxton.”
Karla walked into the spacious living room, decorated in the clean lines of Scandinavian furniture. The hardwood floors gleamed. No area rugs to warm the room, but she supposed they would have obstructed the woman’s limited mobility. The pieces of furniture that caught her eye, and didn’t seem to fit the room, were the antique secretary desk in a mahogany or other dark wood, and the upright grand piano that had to be from the turn of the last century.
“Have a seat, Ms. Paxton.” Karla took a seat on the beige bench-like sofa.
“Please call me Karla. And thanks for agreeing to see me on such short notice, Mrs. Gallagher.” Karla waited for Adam’s mother to roll herself into place a couple of yards in front of her.
“Can I get you something to drink? Tea or coffee? Pop? I’ve given my personal assistant the weekend off to be with her family, so I’m afraid you’ll have to suffer from my lack of skills in the kitchen.”
Karla almost smiled. Like mother, like son? “No, thank you. I can’t stay long and don’t want to bother you.”
“No bother at all. I can tell you care about my son.” She smiled.
Karla tried to give the woman the once-over without being too obvious. Her hair was soft-permed and silver-gray, a lighter shade than the grays on Adam’s head. She wore wire-rimmed glasses with a designer brand name. When she smiled, little crinkle lines appeared at the corners of her eyes, just like Adam’s. Her lips were a pinkish hue, matching her perfectly manicured fingernails. She wore a two-piece suit, conservative, stylish, but a little out of date.
“Are you Adam’s wife?”
“No.” Not yet. “We’re good friends.” With kinky benefits. “I work in a club he owns in Denver.”
“What has Adam told you about me?”
Karla’s gaze went back to the woman’s eyes. “Not much.” Only that you locked him in something when he was bad.
“My Adam didn’t have it easy growing up.”
No fuck. And he’s mine now. You lost the chance to claim him a long time ago. Okay, she needed to cut the woman some slack, until she got the whole story. “Tell me more. I want to understand.” Understand him—not the insanity you and your husband put him through that gives him nightmares to this day.
Mrs. Gallagher looked down at her hands, which she twisted in her lap. The knuckles were swollen with arthritis and she thought how painful that must be. Still, not as painful as what they’d done to Adam.
“His father was an alcoholic. Very abusive. He wasn’t like that before the war. Vietnam changed him.” A tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek and plopped onto her hand. She wiped it away as though pushing away a fly. Apparently, she wasn’t any more fond of showing emotions than her son was. “I tried to protect him.”
Like hell you did. Karla’s breaths came in short, shallow bursts as the blood finally boiled to the surface. “By locking him up?” Okay, so much for tact, Kitty.
Adam’s mother lifted her head and scrutinized Karla. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered.
“Locking him up was the only option? Come on. He has nightmares about it to this day.”
Mrs. Gallagher winced.
Karla took a deep breath. She was letting her rage get out of control. If she wanted to get the info she needed, she couldn’t afford to piss the woman off.
Then woman drew herself up straighter and sighed. “He was safe in the closet. His father couldn’t beat him there.”
Wait a minute. She’d locked him up to protect him? “I don’t understand. Maybe you’d better start at the beginning.”
What unfolded was a tale of abuse at the hands of a monster who had some serious psychological problems. When she described the injuries both she and Adam had suffered at the man’s hands, Karla wanted nothing more than to beat the ever-loving shit out of the asshole. If he weren’t already dead, Karla would have tracked him down and done just that.
For Adam. For the little boy who had been so horribly abused and tortured. Then abandoned.
“Tell me what happened the night Adam ran away.”
Mrs. Gallagher rested her head in her hand, her elbow resting on the arm of the wheelchair. “The worst night of my life. I lost my husband and my son. The last because of my own stupidity.”
“This was during the home invasion? I thought Adam wasn’t there.”
Adam’s mother raised her gaze to meet Karla’s. She studied Karla’s face a moment, before her features softened and her frail hand went to the back of her neck to knead her nape, much like Adam did every so often. Seeing her do it sent a chill up her spine. Did Adam even know that was where he had picked up that nervous tic from?
“There was no home invasion. That was the night Adam’s father was killed. The night I became paralyzed. The night I told Adam to run as far and as fast as he could and to not look back.”
Karla didn’t realize
she’d stopped breathing until her chest began to burn. “What are you saying? Did Adam kill his…?”
The woman’s watery eyes opened wider. “Good Lord, no! Not Adam. Me! I killed my husband.” Tears streamed down the woman’s face, unheeded now. Her hands shook uncontrollably and she clasped them together, then lowered her voice to a whisper, “I couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped.”
Karla didn’t know what to say. The woman had just admitted to murdering her husband. What was Karla supposed to do with that? Nothing. She might have done the same if she were in that situation. That wasn’t what she’d come here to find out. She needed to know what Adam saw. What Adam knew.
“Where was Adam?”
“He was too big to lock into a closet anymore. I’d told him to stay in his room. It was Thanksgiving night.”
Oh, God. No wonder he didn’t enjoy the holiday. It didn’t have to do with missing Joni. He’d lived through hell one Thanksgiving.
Mrs. Gallagher looked at the nearby coffee table where a fresh-flower arrangement including golden and burgundy mums and cream-colored alstroemeria was displayed. “He and his father had fought at the dinner table that day. He’d stood up to his father. They’d struggled, fell to the floor. He’d told his father to get the…to get off of him.”
“Get the fuck off me, you son of a bitch!”
Karla remembered the time Adam had screamed those words and thrown her off his chest where she’d fallen asleep after her accident.
“Adam left the house to cool off, but this was much later. I guess he heard the intensity of the argument and my screams when his father took a baseball bat and struck me in the middle of the back. I crumpled to the floor and knew my spine had been damaged. I just didn’t know how badly.”
Karla’s gaze went to the chair. A crocheted pink and maroon lap robe covered her thin legs.
“I dragged myself over to the nightstand and pulled out a pistol I kept there for protection. When he came at me again with the bat, ready to bash my head in, I guess, I just pulled the trigger.”
Dear Lord. “What did Adam see?” Her voice came out in a whisper.
“He came into the room after I shot his father. He was already dead. I was lying in the pool of his blood on the floor, unable to get up. At first, I went on automatic and asked Adam to help me clean up the blood, as he’d done so many times before. Only before, it had always been Adam’s or my blood. But then I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I went to prison for life. I could never be in a worse prison than I’d been in the past eighteen years. But I didn’t want Adam to be taken down with me. He’d…made threats at the table that my family had overheard. He might have been accused of killing his father. So I told him to take the money we had in the house and to run.”
Adam had seen his dead father lying in a pool of blood. He’d probably seen his mother battered and stitched up a million times, too, but to see her lying wounded and helpless... Karla glanced at the wheelchair again. Adam had run that night. He’d been running away from the horrific scene his whole adult life.
Oh, Adam. Tears spilled down Karla’s cheeks. She needed to get back to him. To hold him. To take all the hurt away from the lost little boy inside him.
“I used to watch over him when he slept.”
Karla’s attention returned to the woman in front of her. “What?”
“I’d go into his room and just find a corner and sit and watch him sleep. So innocent. So brave. I wish his childhood could have been as normal and nurturing as my other two children's.”
His mother had watched over him, much like Adam had watched over Karla. Another trait from his mother that he probably didn’t even associate with her. Did those actions provide him with comfort when things were out of control? Remind him of his mother?
“He was such a beautiful boy. I had such hopes for him. He wanted to be a Marine.”
His mother glanced over at a series of old portraits on the upright grand piano showing five men in military uniforms, three of them recognizable as Marine uniforms. Adam said there had been Montagues in the Marines as far back as the Civil War. He must have been inspired by those photos while growing up.
“He’d have made a fine Marine. He was always trying to protect me. Adam had a penchant for doing the right thing, even when it wasn’t the easy thing to do.”
Karla wasn’t sure if she wanted Adam to meet this woman again, but knew she needed to tell him about her and let him make that decision. But, if he chose not to see her, she should at least let her know how he’d turned out.
“Adam took the name Montague after he ran away.”
“Oh, my goodness! No wonder we could never find him.”
She’d looked for him? How sad they hadn’t been able to reconnect sooner. Maybe things would have been different for both of them.
“Mrs. Gallagher, Adam is a Marine. He served almost twenty-five years and reached the rank of master sergeant. You can be very proud of him. He carried on the family tradition and served with great honor and distinction.”
Fresh tears glistened in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Do you think he’d ever want to see me again?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell him about you, but we’ll have to let him decide.”
The woman nodded, looking much older than she’d looked when Karla had entered her apartment less than an hour ago. Karla felt sorry for her, but still harbored some anger that no one had tried to do more to protect Adam while he was growing up. They hadn’t lived in the dark ages. There were programs to help battered women and children. Locking him in a closet was not the way he should have been protected, because it only made him think he was the one who had the problem. The little boy in Adam hadn’t understood. He thought he was being punished. Karla blinked the tears away that burned her eyelids.
“Thank you, Mrs. Gallagher.”
Karla made to stand up and Adam’s mother raised her hand to stop her. “Even if he won’t meet me, I’d like him to get to know his siblings. He has a younger brother and sister from my second marriage.”
“If you can give me their contact info, I’d be happy to share it.” Karla wondered that neither of her children were with her this Thanksgiving night. Were they estranged, or just busy with their own lives? They didn’t live nearby, according to Grant.
“I’m sorry you missed them, but when they get to Chicago to see me, they like to hang out with their old friends.”
Well, she must have raised her second family well enough that they hadn’t abandoned her. Karla waited while the woman went to the secretary desk along the wall near the opening to the dining room and pulled out a pad of paper and an address book. As she wrote with a shaky, but careful hand, Karla wandered over to the grand piano, a Yamaha, and glanced at the framed photos. The one that most captured her eye was the oldest. The dashing young man in his Civil War-era uniform was the spitting image of Johnny Depp. My God, it was as if Depp had posed for the photo or worn the uniform in a movie or something.
“That’s Johnny Montague, my great-grandfather. Quite handsome, wasn’t he?”
“Um, yes.” Not as handsome as Karla’s Montague, of course.
His mother grinned. “Yes, I know who he looks like. Maybe we’re related somewhere back in history.”
Karla grinned back. Wouldn’t that be a kick—Adam and Johnny Depp as long-lost cousins? But the lightheartedness of the moment disappeared when his mother handed her the piece of paper that would introduce Adam to the two newest members of his family, only these were blood relatives.
“Would you prepare them first, Mrs. Gallagher, so that, if Adam calls, it won’t be out of the blue?”
“Of course. But they know they have a big brother. They know the whole story.”
Karla looked down at the paper and saw that Adam’s siblings were named Patrick and Megan. Fine Irish names. Well, time to get back to her house and figure out how she was going to share all of this with Adam.
She reached out and offered he
r hand. “Thank you again for letting me visit, Mrs. Gallagher.”
The woman shook her hand, then her upper lip began to tremble. “Please tell him I never meant to hurt him. That I…I love him. I could never tell him that, I guess because everything I’d ever loved, I lost. But I lost him anyway.”
Feeling sorry for the woman, Karla bent down and brushed her lips against her cold cheek.
“I promise, I will.”
She let herself out of the apartment and walked to the elevator then decided to just take the stairs. Driving back to the house, she tried to formulate her thoughts about how she planned to tell Adam. “Oh, guess what? I just met your long-lost mother and she wants you to know she loves you.”
Oh, Adam. I hope you’ll meet her. Maybe she can put some of your dragons to rest.
As she turned onto her tree-lined street, her heart began hammering the blood through her veins, making her aware of the tension in her temples. What was she going to tell him? How was he going to take it? Oh, God, she hoped she’d done the right thing digging into his past.
She parked the car and ran up the steps, then had to grab onto the porch post to steady herself when another dizzy spell hit her. Maybe she’d better ask mom if she had anything for the flu, other than bed rest, which she didn’t have time for.
Inside the house, she went straight to the stairway, knowing Adam wouldn’t be downstairs with her parents. She knocked on his bedroom door. No answer. She spoke softly through the crack in the door. “Adam? Are you still up?” Silence.
“He’s gone, Karla.”
Karla’s heart pounded against her chest like a bass drum as she looked back down the hallway to find her mother standing at the top of the stairs.
“What?” Gone? Karla reached for the doorjamb to steady herself. He’d left her? Why? Obviously because he thought she was seeing someone else. Oh, Adam. Why do you have to expect the worst of people all the time?
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