by C. J. Lyons
He squinted at his clipboard. “You’re right, it does look like Jenny in 5-F, not Jerry in 5-E. Thanks.”
“Happens all the time—packages are always getting mixed up between the two. Want me to take you up so you can surprise her?”
“No, better not. I don’t want any complaints about breaking security rules or nothing. You know how careful folks have to be these days, and my boss is real strict. Thanks, though.”
She smiled, glad to finally be able to help someone tonight. “No problem. I’m sure she’ll enjoy the flowers. Have a good night.”
She used her key to let herself through the security door and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. When she unlocked the apartment, she was surprised to find Jerry home, scarfing down a microwaved bowl of beef stew.
“Gina,” he said with a smile, abandoning the stew to embrace her. “God, what a day. How was yours? You’re home late, so I figured it must have been as bad as mine. Did you eat? What can I get you?”
Before she knew it, Jerry had her seated at the table and eating his stew while he fixed himself another bowl. Without asking, he poured her a Yuengling and himself a glass of milk—which told her he was heading back into work—and popped some of her favorite comfort foods, Pillsbury crescent rolls, into the oven. He served her the rolls hot before sitting down to his own meal once more.
“So, anything exciting today?” he asked.
Gina jammed an entire roll into her mouth to keep from answering. They always talked about her—her work, her friends, her family, her feelings.
In the silence, she realized she never asked about his cases. She’d used the excuse that he couldn’t talk about his work, it was confidential, but that didn’t really hold water, did it? Not when she shared all the intimate details of her patients and their care.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d commented on one of his photographs—his favorite hobby was nature photography—or encouraged him to go play with his cameras. And his family, she’d met them a few times, they were great, but she had to rely on Jerry to get their names straight. Jerry had even done all the Christmas shopping, signing both their names to the gift cards.
“What happened to that kid from yesterday? The one whose parents are friends with your folks?”
She swallowed, twice. The dough had formed a lump in her throat that she had to force down. “Turns out he wasn’t as sick as everyone thought,” she answered. “Fooled us all.”
Just like Gina. Playing the fool. Playing a role—one role for her parents, another for Jerry. Letting Jerry carry the weight of the relationship, taking care of her. Just like Ken Rosen had said. Damn the man for being right. Again.
She tugged at the chain holding Jerry’s ring. Was it fair to Jerry for her to continue the act? She could do better, ask about his work, pay attention to what he needed, try not to be so selfish. She could at least try.
No. If she failed, he’d be hurt. If she didn’t try, let things continue the way they were, someday they’d both regret it. She couldn’t stand it if she woke up one morning feeling about Jerry the way she felt about her father.
She slid the chain over her head and let it slide through her fingers onto the table between them. “Jerry. We need to talk.”
AMANDA HAD FALLEN INTO BED WITHOUT DOING anything except stripping out of her sweat-coated scrubs. She’d eat in the morning. Now she needed sleep.
But sleep wouldn’t come. Instead she startled awake at every noise: the furnace kicking in, the rattle of a window, the hum of her alarm clock, even the faint buzz of the refrigerator. They all jolted her from sleep as effectively as her beeper did when she was on call.
Each time she’d jump up, fumbling for her beeper and the phone, certain that she’d made a mistake and a patient was paying the price. Adrenaline would shoot through her, causing her to break out in a sweat.
As she lay back down, determined to calm her nerves and fall back asleep, she was haunted by Narolie. She’d missed something, failed the girl. Glimpses of Narolie’s clinic chart swirled through her mind, a kaleidoscope of cramped handwriting and medical terms. Something nagged at her, but it wasn’t from Narolie’s chart or lab results, it was something Mrs. Miller had said.
“Such a little thing, so innocent,” the voice in her head whispered. “Causing such devastation . . .”
Innocent, benign, like a container of poison disguised as a Coke bottle. Benign, something small, something hidden in plain sight . . .
Sleep overtook her before she could finish her thought.
LYDIA STARED AT THE TWO PICTURES RESTING ON her mantel, the only proof she had that Maria existed. Trey came up from behind, wrapping his arms around her. She leaned against him for a moment, inhaling his strength, but then released herself from his embrace.
“Sit down,” she told him. If she was going to tell him about Maria, she couldn’t be held in one place; she needed space to move, to breathe.
Trey sat on the couch, but he wasn’t relaxed; he perched on the edge, elbows on his knees, watching her warily. As he should. She placed one hand on the mantel and steadied herself. This felt like a big mistake, going against every instinct.
Maria had taught her to lie, to never tell the truth about who they were. Lessons to keep them alive.
She met his gaze. His hazel eyes were crinkled with concern, but he didn’t look away. Instead he waited for her. Trusting her.
If he only knew.
She couldn’t face him, so she turned back to the photos. She picked up one, of her and Maria working together in a lettuce field. Lydia was maybe six years old. She’d been playing at picking the lettuce. It hadn’t been until years later that she realized it wasn’t a game, not for the adults.
“The first thing I ever remember is running,” she said, the flames crackling in time with her words. “Maria was chasing me through a field, we were laughing and giggling, and when she caught me, she tickled me so hard we were both crying. Later, she’d always talk about those days working the fields as the good days. When I was small enough that it was easy to move on, when we could blend in with the migrant workers, spend our days out in the sunshine and our nights sheltered, out of sight.”
“You make it sound romantic.”
“She made it sound romantic,” Lydia said, the scorn in her voice surprising her. “It wasn’t. It was a hard life—backbreaking work, twelve-, fourteen-hour days, little money. I don’t even want to think about the things Maria probably had to do, a young girl alone with a baby.” She shook herself free of the realities; they weren’t memories, but she was an adult now, and she knew the kinds of things that happened when you had too many vulnerable people crowded into a place where a few men controlled their fate. Her hand trembled as she returned the photo with its smiling faces back to the mantel. “She always made it sound like a fairy tale, our lives. It wasn’t. Not really.”
“Lydia, you don’t—”
She turned around, faced him once more. “Yes. I do. Just let me tell it, my way.”
He nodded. Slowly. Ginger Cat appeared from nowhere and jumped up onto the couch arm, watching both of them with his eerie yellow-green eyes. Like Trey, he was at full alert, ready to pounce if danger presented itself.
“She was only seventeen when she had me,” Lydia continued. “She told me she’d lived in San Francisco, said she’d used drugs but had gotten clean when she found out she was pregnant. Said I was the reason she’d run away, the reason we kept on running. Said it was the only way to keep me safe.”
“Safe from what?”
Lydia swallowed. She didn’t even know the man’s name, knew nothing about him, but he was the bogeyman who had terrorized her ever since she could remember.
“My father.” Wind rattled the windows in the silence that followed her words. “He’s the reason why we couldn’t stop running, could never have a real home, use our real names.” She paused. This was harder than she’d imagined. “I don’t even know if Lydia Fiore is my real name; I do
n’t know if anything she told me about who she was, who I am, is real. The only thing I know is that when I was twelve years old, we ran out of room to run.”
“Your father found you?”
“I don’t know if it was him.” Her voice tightened and climbed an octave as her mouth went dry. “It could have been someone he hired. Who knows? All I know is that a man came, a man wearing a badge and a gun and carrying a nightstick. He chased Maria into a church, and he used that stick to beat her to death.” She stared at the fire, held her hands out to it even though she was too numbed by memory to feel the heat.
“He beat her because she wouldn’t tell him where I was. And he kept hitting and hitting and hitting—”
Trey was behind her again, his hands on her shoulders, gripping hard, trying to pull her from the past. He turned her around to face him, wrapping her into an embrace as tears blinded her.
“He wouldn’t stop hitting her,” she said, her voice muffled as she pressed her face against his chest. “But she wouldn’t tell, she never told. And I saw it all.” She gagged and had to force herself to swallow. “I saw it, I could have stopped it, I should have stopped it, I should have saved her . . . but I didn’t. I just hid and watched. And then I ran.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Friday, 9:13 P.M.
“WOW.” SETH BREATHED THE WORD OUT AS IF IT were a prayer.
Nora curled her fingers in his chest hair, loving the feel of his sweat, the familiar scent of him. She’d been a fool to leave him. Even more foolish not to trust him long ago, to release herself to his passion, to hers. What they’d had before—not lovemaking, barely sex—seemed dull and mechanical compared to the feelings she had now.
“Wow,” he repeated. “Nora, that was—I mean, we never . . . you never . . .”
She raised her head, balancing on an elbow. His eyes were half closed, his features totally relaxed as his fingers idly traced circles on her back.
“You were faking,” she accused him.
“What? No, that was wonderful. Honest,” he protested, eyes now open wide.
“Not now, before. All the times before.” She squinted at him, not sure whether she felt angry, betrayed, or maybe even a tiny bit amused. “How many times have we made love, and you seemed pleased, satisfied, but you were faking.”
He shook his head. “Nora, I’m a guy. We can’t fake—that. Not like women.”
She crawled on top of him, caging him, her arms pinning his wrists, her knees on either side of his chest. “Don’t lie to me, Seth. I never satisfied you. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Wait a minute here. If anyone was faking all those times, it was you. Be honest, Nora.”
She hung her head, her hair whisking over his face and chest. To her surprise, laughter bubbled up through her, shaking them both.
“You’re right,” she said when she finally caught her breath. “I didn’t want you to think I was—cold, frigid. I just wanted to feel normal. Told myself it was normal, that being with you was the best I’d ever feel and that it was better than what most women had.”
He wormed one hand free of her grasp, stroked her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear, and left his hand there, his palm cupping her cheek. “I wish you had told me sooner.”
“It was after I told you that you stopped touching me,” she reminded him. She pulled away from his touch and sat back on her heels, still straddling his belly. “Was that when you decided to marry me? Out of pity?”
He was shaking his head so hard that it bounced off the floor. He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away, wrapping it across her breasts as she looked away. “It’s okay. You can tell me the truth. After I told you, you couldn’t bear to touch me. But you really never were going to ask me to marry you, were you?”
“Nora. Stop.”
She blinked away tears and looked at him. Really at him. His face was dark with anger and regret.
“I made the first payment on the ring back in December. It took me until June to pay it off, but then you told me about—” He stumbled, sweat breaking out over his forehead.
“That I was raped. It’s only a word, Seth.” She couldn’t believe she was talking like this—but as soon as she said the words, she felt empowered, realized they were true.
He sat up so fast, she almost tumbled off him. He caught her and pulled her close to him, his arms around her like steel bands. “Don’t talk like that. It’s more than a word. I always knew something was wrong, something had happened. After you told me—I couldn’t ask you, you would have thought . . . anyway, I talked with Tommy Z, asked him for advice.”
“Oh my God. You went for counseling?” This from the man who thought any and all of the world’s problems could be solved with a scalpel, a cold beer, or a marathon of Sports Night?
He nodded. “We talked. A lot. He made me realize that every time we made love, I was the one starting things. Said maybe I should give you time and space, let you set the pace—”
“That’s why you stopped touching me?” She slapped her palm against his chest, laughing once more, feeling the giddy freedom of being able to show her feelings without censure. “Those were the worst three weeks—I was going crazy! Do you have any idea how many times I almost jumped you in the middle of work?”
His normal boyish grin recaptured his features, banishing his look of regret. “Really? Guess Tommy Z had the right idea, then.”
“Yeah, until I walked in on you and Karen.”
“Hey. I explained that.” He pulled her close once more, kissing her fears away.
Nora relented, allowing herself to relax into his embrace. When they separated, she slanted a glance at him. “So if I never satisfied you—”
“I never said never,” he protested.
“Then why did you want to marry me, anyway?”
His sigh resonated through both of them. He angled his lips to kiss her forehead. “Nora, don’t you get it? I fell in love with you. The sex didn’t matter.”
She squinted at him, not believing. Sex was the center of the male universe.
Except—he could have had any woman he wanted, but he had stayed with her. He was terrified of marriage, yet he had bought the ring months ago, slowly worked up his courage.
And even after she’d told him that she was damaged goods—even now that he knew the whole story, her lies and deceptions, all her secrets—even now, he was here. With her.
“The sex didn’t matter?” she echoed, wanting desperately to believe.
He made his comic face, ready to cut loose with a joke. Her shoulders tensed, her throat tightened. If he started laughing, she’d slap him silly, she swore she would.
He didn’t laugh. Instead he drew in a deep breath, framed her face with his palms, and stared directly into her eyes. “Nothing matters except you.”
Warmth spread through her chest, her face, down her arms and legs, out to her fingers and toes, until her entire body felt like it was floating, free of the guilt that had anchored her for so long. All the time she’d thought she’d fooled him, convinced herself that he didn’t realize anything was wrong, but she’d been fooling herself. He had known—and hadn’t cared.
“You mean it. You really mean it.”
Now he laughed, and she joined in. “Yes, Nora. I really, really mean it.”
LYDIA WASN’T SURE HOW LONG SHE STOOD THERE, clinging to Trey. Usually when she remembered Maria’s death, she was frozen with panic, unable to even cry, but somehow telling him had changed that. There was no panic, only grief—and the guilt of a twelve-year-old who had rescued her mother so many times that she couldn’t accept that she hadn’t been able to save her one last time.
Irrational, yes. But that didn’t make it any less real. That secret guilt had steered her entire life.
“You never found your father? Found out who Maria really was?” Trey asked.
She shook her head. “Boyle asked a friend of his in L.A. to look at the case files. This guy, Epson, told Boyle that
the case went cold once Maria became a Jane Doe and they couldn’t trace her.”
Trey tensed. “Jerry Boyle knows?”
“Well, yeah—” Too late, Lydia realized her inadvertent betrayal. She hadn’t meant to keep secrets from Trey—hadn’t ever meant to tell Boyle; it had just come out when the detective had found her in the midst of a panic attack that had made her flash back to that awful day in the church.
“You trusted Jerry, but you didn’t trust me.” He still held her, but it wasn’t like before.
Lydia pulled away and turned to face him. “Don’t be an idiot. Of course I trust you. You’re about the only person I can trust.”
“But you told Jerry, not me.” His voice reflected his pain.
“I didn’t want to tell Boyle,” she floundered, trying to explain. “He just kind of found out.” Trey’s eyes narrowed; he wasn’t buying it. “Damn it, Trey, don’t you understand how hard this is for me? You’re the only person I’ve told everything to—the only person I’d ever let see me like this.” She ran her hand over her eyes, gathering leftover tears. “Weak, vulnerable.”
“Why?” he persisted. “Jerry can help you find your mother’s killer. But why tell me? Why now after all these months? Why tell me at all if it’s so painful?”
God, she never dreamed it would be so hard. Stubborn male pride—no, that wasn’t fair; it was her own pride and stubbornness and distrusting nature that had led them here. Sometimes she wondered why he stuck around at all.
She wasn’t sure of her words, so she answered his fears the best way she could. Framing his face between her palms, she kissed him hard, communicating her feelings in the most honest way possible.
He resisted at first, then returned the kiss, his arms wrapping around her. Finally, they parted, just far enough for her to wipe away fresh tears.
“I told you because that’s what families do,” she whispered. “Isn’t it?”