Well, tonight she’d certainly gotten an inkling as to why he expected people to abandon him.
“He never came back from his walk. I hope he found some place to get inside where it’s warm or he’ll be a Popsicle by now.”
Relief flooded Karla’s body and she sagged against the wall. Not gone gone, just out.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on between you two?”
Not really. “Maybe later, Mom. Right now, I just need to lie down. I think I might be coming down with the flu.” She walked back down the hall, feeling her mother’s scrutiny on her, but just walked into her room and closed the door. Her stomach churned, but she wouldn’t give in to puking again. Feeling flushed, she went to the window and pressed her face against the cool glass.
Adam needs you.
The voice Karla now knew was Joni Montague’s spoke as clearly as if she were standing beside her. Karla opened her eyes and looked to her side. No one was there, of course. Then she turned to the window and noticed that Adam’s car was gone.
Maybe he hadn’t just taken a walk. Maybe…
Panic set in and she ran to the bathroom and opened the door to Ian’s room. When she saw his duffel bag open on the floor by the closet, she nearly cried tears of joy. Instead, she felt the now familiar churning in her stomach and ran to the bathroom in time to hurl into the toilet.
* * *
Adam waited a few minutes, then hurried down the hallway to follow her home. Standing at the end of the hallway for the past hour, he felt like a damned fool. Thank God no one had found him there, or they may have called the police on him.
One thing he realized was that, if he wanted a relationship with Karla, there was no room for jealousy. He’d seen how that could affect a relationship with his parents. His father was always accusing his mother of having other men she was seeing.
Not that there was much hope for him having a relationship with Karla anyway. His coming to Chicago had been a mistake. He might as well head back to the Paxtons, get a good night’s sleep, and head back to Denver first thing in the morning.
As he walked toward the stairway, he heard voices seconds before the stairway door opened and two young people came out, smiling. He made eye contact with the young man and felt as if he’d been gut-punched. It was like looking into the mirror—twenty years earlier.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the woman beside him stopped and stood stock still, her jaw dropping open. “Oh my God! Adam?”
How did she know his name? He turned toward her and saw his mother’s face, the way she’d looked when he was a little boy.
“Wait in here, Adam. I’ll let you out when he goes to sleep.”
“I’ll be good. Don’t lock me in there, Mommy!”
Sweat broke out on his upper lip as his heart began to pound against his chest. What was going on here? Who had Karla been visiting—and why?
The young woman looked like she wanted to run up and hug him, but restrained herself. Thank God. “Momma must have had a fit when she saw you.”
Adam’s hand rose to the nape of his neck and he rubbed the scar. He knew what was incoming and still couldn’t help but ask. “Momma?” What the fuck? Was she saying his mother was in apartment 2F? Karla had been digging into his past? Had she discovered what he’d done to his father?
Jesus fucking Christ.
The young man cocked his head and squared himself as if to prepare to do battle. “You didn’t even see her, did you? What the fuck’s your problem, man? She’s been waiting for you forever. The least you can do is let her know you’re alive before you disappear on her again.”
If these two people were his half-siblings—and who else could they be—then obviously their mutual mother hadn’t told them the story of that bloody night. Adam sure as hell didn’t plan to fill them in. But what about coming face-to-face with the woman who had told him to leave all those years ago?
The young woman extended her hand. “I’m Megan Gallagher. Excuse my brother. Patrick has just a little too much testosterone.” The comment drew a glare from her brother that she either ignored or didn’t see. “Please, come inside. Momma isn’t getting any younger. She needs to know you’re okay.”
“But don’t go in there if you have an ax to grind,” Patrick said. “She’s been through enough.”
Protective of his mother. Their mother. Good for him.
“I’ve ground all my axes already.” That may not be completely true, but he wasn’t going to take out his frustrations on an old woman. She had to be in her mid-seventies by now. But was he ready to face her after all this time?
Megan hooked her arm in his and had spun him back in the direction of their mother’s apartment before Adam even had a notion to run again. No, the time had come to stop running. If his mother turned him in for killing her husband, his father, then he’d stand trial for the crime and suffer the consequences. Maybe he’d get some leniency for not having killed anyone else since then. Well, except in war zones.
Thank God he hadn’t admitted to Karla that he loved her. She didn’t need to be saddled with a convict.
“God, you must work out more than Patrick does. You’re built like a tank.” Megan took her fist and playfully punched his bicep. She probably wasn’t much younger than Karla, but his sister sure seemed a lot more immature.
He halted just a few yards away from the door. If he was going to do this, he wouldn’t be dragged into it. Megan let him go and looked up at him, expectantly. The playfulness was gone. He thought he saw a glint of tears in her eyes.
“Please, Adam. She needs to see you, to explain what happened to your father. It’s been eating her alive all these years.”
What was there to explain? His flashbacks made it pretty clear what had happened.
Patrick walked around him and inserted a key into the lock, opening the door, then glared back at Adam. Waiting.
“You’re home early. You’ll never guess who visited me to…”
Momma. Her voice was softer, happier, than the last time he’d heard it. As if drawn by a magnet, he walked toward the doorway.
“Momma, there’s someone else here to see you.”
Adam reached the opening of the door, his heartbeat thudding in his ears, then walked inside, bracing himself for…a wheelchair? A much older version of his mother was sitting frail and tiny in a wheelchair?
Adam remembered how Karla’s gaze had lowered when someone had answered the door earlier. It wasn’t a child who had answered, but his mother in a wheelchair. What had happened to her? Stroke maybe?
“Adam? Is it really you?” Her whispered words were spoken with such emotion, he couldn’t help but think she was sincere. If the woman hadn’t been in the chair, she surely would have hit the floor. Patrick and Adam both reached out at the same time to steady her upper body. Well, Patrick also held himself ready to deck Adam if he tried anything. Good kid.
Adam knelt on one knee and took the woman’s shaking hand in his. With her free hand, she reached up and placed it against his cheek. Cold. Her hand was like ice and he took it between his hands, hoping to infuse some warmth into her. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Yeah, it’s me…Mom.” He couldn’t really call her Momma again. Too old. Too much time passed.
She pulled her hand free of his and held both arms out to him. He went into her embrace and felt the backs of his eyes burn as she wrapped her shaking arms around his shoulders.
Her voice wavered as she spoke. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to hold you again, sweetheart.”
He put his arms around her, but was afraid he’d crush the frail woman so he used great restraint. He felt a brace on her back and wondered if she’d been in some kind of accident. She laid her head against his shoulder and began to sob.
Adam didn’t know how much time had passed when she loosened her hold and he was able to release her and put some space between them again.
“Your young lady friend told me you’re a Marine, son. I�
�m so proud of you for reaching your goal, despite all that happened.”
Adam wasn’t sure what to say, but nodded to acknowledge her words. Now he needed to come clean. “I’m sorry, Mom. About Dad.”
“What do you have to be sorry about?”
“What I did that night. I don’t remember much, but…”
“Oh, Adam! You didn’t do anything wrong. You never gave me any trouble at all. Always were such a good boy.”
Joni’s words came back to him. “Adam, listen to me. You were a good boy. And you’re a good man.” No, wait. That wasn’t Joni. That was Karla’s voice. What had made him think it was Joni? His thoughts were such a jumble right now. He wished Karla were here with him now, for some reason. Probably because she was so much stronger than he was at dealing with emotional stuff like this.
“Sit down. We need to talk. All of us.” She motioned for the three of them to sit. He sat on the sofa, Megan taking the place beside Adam, and Patrick sitting in a chair nearby, not taking his vigilant gaze off Adam for a second.
Adam guessed his half-brother was about twenty-six or twenty-seven. Megan probably twenty-four or twenty-five. His mother must have remarried soon after he kil…his father was killed.
“Patrick and Megan know the story already, but I may need them for moral support.”
Megan reached out to squeeze her mother’s hand. “Momma, you didn’t do anything wrong. You were put in a horrific situation where you did what you had to just to survive.”
“Well, the grand jury did rule self-defense and didn’t choose to take it to trial.”
Adam wasn’t sure what was going on, but was pretty sure they were talking about that night that had sent him running. But what they were saying didn’t mesh with the flashbacks he’d had. “Mom, are you saying that you took a baseball bat to Dad that night?”
She crinkled her forehead. “Bat? No, he used the bat on me. That’s what put me in a chair.”
Something wasn’t right. “But I remember standing over him with a bloody baseball bat in my hand. He was lying in a pool of blood. His head was bashed in.”
“No, Adam. After he paralyzed me, I shot him. That’s where all the blood came from, the head wound. You just picked up the bat that had been lying in his blood when you came into the room. Dear Lord, surely you haven’t thought all this time that you’d…”
Adam shook his head. “Actually, I’d blocked it out until recently.” But the images he’d seen had made him so sure that he’d done it. How could he have gotten it so wrong in his head?
“Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry you thought that, even for a second. You never could have hurt a fly. You always tried to protect me, but you don’t have a malicious bone in your body. No matter what he would do, you usually just tried to put distance between the two of you, rather than fight back. Even earlier that day, when he started a fight at the Thanksgiving table, you just left the house to cool off.”
Emotional avoidance. Somewhere along the line, Adam realized he’d never stopped avoiding emotional confrontations, hell, emotions period. Until Karla. But he’d still tried to avoid admitting he loved her, or anyone else he cared about. Avoidance and lack of commitment made it easier when the time came to run. No sticky attachments.
Shit. He needed to get back to Karla, to tell her he loved her, to ask her to forgive him for hurting her. But he couldn’t run from dealing with his mother and her needs at the moment either. At least she had two good kids to look after her.
“Tell me about your life, Adam. Not a day went by that I didn’t wonder what you were doing, where you were, if you were okay.”
He heard the catch in her voice and wished he’d tried harder to find her. Hell, if not for Karla, he might never have found her until it was too late.
Adam described his first year on the run, eventually being taken in by some people who ran a shelter and helped him with GED classes. If not for them, he might never have been accepted into the Marine Corps.
“I came back to Minneapolis to check on you once, soon after I finished boot camp at Parris Island. Some other family lived in our house. You’d moved on.”
“I had to get away. Too many nightmares. Moved to Chicago. That’s where I met Ryan, my second husband. He rescued me.”
“I met my wife during that visit.”
“I didn’t realize you were married. I thought Karla…”
“No, we aren’t. My wife Joni died nine years ago this month.”
“Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry.” She reached toward him.
“We had twenty years together, including all my deployments.”
“Tell me about Karla. She seemed like someone you’d want to have on your side rather than against you.”
Adam grinned. Truer words had not been spoken. “Well, ma’am, I met her right after Joni died. She’d run away from home and I helped get her back home to her parents. She sort of latched onto me and we struck up a correspondence afterward that lasted until this past summer when she showed up at my cl…my house in Denver.” He didn’t need to go into what he did for a living now. Better to stick to the more “vanilla” version of his last thirty-four years.
“I could tell she cares a lot about you.” There was a twinkle in his mother’s eyes.
“Yes, she does. I care about her, too.”
His mother smiled, but didn’t say anything more. Then his newfound siblings shared a bit about their lives. Sounded like his mother had been well-loved and cherished by Ryan Gallagher, her second husband, which made Adam feel better about not being around to take care of her.
His mother stifled a yawn and he glanced at his watch to see that it was nearly midnight. “Look, I think I’d better shove off, but I’d like to come back again, talk some more, if that’s okay.”
“Of course, Adam. Anytime. Consider this your home, too.”
A home. He’d had a home with Joni, albeit in base housing. With Karla, he’d like to have a place they could call their own, without worrying about Marc, Damián, or anyone else stopping by unexpectedly all the time. He loved them like family, but he had plans for Karla that didn’t need an audience. A home without a sex club on the lower level. Maybe just a private playroom or dungeon tucked away in some out of the way room for their private enjoyment.
Don’t be thinking about dungeons in front of your mother, jarhead.
Ignoring the Joni voice, he stood and closed the gap to his mother and reached down to hug her.
“I love you, Adam. I never stopped. Not for a single moment.”
Adam closed his eyes and held on tighter, morphing back to the little boy who’d never quite been able to protect his mother as well as he should have. “Love you, too…Momma.”
After his mother loosened her hold on him, he stood and hugged Megan, then shook Patrick’s hand, his brother having relaxed his guard a little bit. As he turned toward the door, Adam’s gaze fell on the portraits on the piano and he was drawn to them like steel to a magnet. He remembered how the five men in their Marine uniforms had enthralled him as a boy. Four generations of Montagues—plus his father. He’d wanted nothing more than to be one of them.
The first photo was of his father, Staff Sergeant Virgil Griffin. Odd that his mother kept the photo here. Maybe it was a reminder of some sort. After serving in the Corps himself, Adam had come to understand the man better, although he’d never forgiven him. He’d been a casualty of Vietnam, raging at life and everyone around him. Not an excuse, but Adam remembered how Damián had been during those first months after he’d come to live with him.
Right after he’d lost his foot, Damián tended to turn his rage inward, wanting nothing more than to end his nightmare, his torment, his life. Between the therapists at the VA center in Denver and Adam’s forcing him to deal with it by talking about it, they’d managed to get to where Damián had regained some control over his life again.
Sado-masochistic scenes at the club seemed to push him to gaining better and better control. He’d never harmed a masochist,
never scened when he was angry or in the belly of the beast. But Damián sure had given Adam a scare in San Diego when he’d come very close to killing Julio in cold blood, not that the dickwad didn’t deserve killing.
Adam hadn’t wanted Damián’s war trauma to lead to drinking or uncontrolled violence, a fate like his father’s. While PTSD would always be there for the man he called his son, he was managing and coping with it as best he could. Maybe that’s all Adam could hope for.
He glanced back at the proud young Marine in his father’s portrait. Sure beat the alternative. Adam realized how different this boy was from the man Adam had come to hate. He wished he could replace those images with this one and wondered how things might have been different if there had been better treatments for his father’s PTSD.
Adam’s gaze continued down the line of photos until he reached the one of Captain Johnny Montague, a Marine who had spent the later Civil War years enforcing the blockade of the South. Adam had been riveted by the stories of how, long after the war, he’d rescued Adam’s great-great-grandmother, an innocent immigrant from Ireland, from some horrible fate his mother only hinted at. Adam thought it must have had something to do with sex, given the face his mother had made when she told the story. Intriguing now, but he hadn’t wanted to know more when he was a kid or a teen.
Adam turned to her. “Do you still own the Montague cabin?”
She smiled up at him. “Yes. Patrick’s been refurbishing it, but trying to keep its old-fashioned charm.”
“One of my best memories ever was the summer you, Dad, and I spent there.”
“Dear Lord, Adam, I don’t guess I remember it as fondly. Your dad had lost another job. We couldn’t pay the rent and that remote cabin near Deadwood was the only thing between us and homelessness.”
“All I remember was fishing and hunting with Dad, cooking out…”
“There wasn’t any electricity in the cabin. Cooking out was the only option if we wanted to eat. You all provided the main courses for our table, while I tended a small garden.” She shook her head. “It was so hard living there.”
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