The Marrying Kind

by Monique Miller

  The whole while, Darrin looked on as if the whole display was a nuisance and he had better things to do. Again, Travis got bad vibes about the guy. He looked at Beryl, who was starting to get into the front passenger seat of the car. She had barely said two words directly to him. He noticed also that she hadn’t made full eye contact with him, either.

  “Beryl, I’ll give you a call in a couple of days to talk about setting up another time for me to get the boys,” Travis said.

  Beryl looked at Darrin for a second first before turning her attention to Travis. “Okay,” was all she said. Then she closed her passenger side door.

  As they passed, Travis could see Beryl looking straight ahead with her arms crossed. Darrin seemed to be talking a mile a minute with an intense look on his face. Travis made eye contact with the guy and stared him down until Darrin finally looked away.

  Travis wondered for about the hundredth time what was going on. Was there trouble in paradise? He had no idea but prayed that the Lord would look after his ex-wife and the boys. For now it was all he could really do.

  Chapter 24

  Travis kept hitting his alarm clock but the insistent noise wouldn’t stop. Then he realized it wasn’t the alarm clock at all. It was his cell phone. He glanced over at the clock and saw that it was 2:43 in the morning. Trying to catch his bearings he realized it was the wee hours of Monday. He wondered who in the world could be calling him at such an early time in the morning.

  When he checked out the caller ID his heartbeat quickened. “Hello?”

  “Travis,” Beryl said.

  “Beryl, what’s up?” His voice sounded gruff.

  “Can you talk?” she whispered.

  “Yeah. What’s wrong?”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Beryl, are you still there?”

  “Yeah,” she continued to whisper.

  Again there was silence. Travis wondered what was going on, but he was slow to speak.

  “I never told you thank you for doing right by the boys. You’ve really changed.”

  “You don’t have to thank me. Those are my boys and it is my responsibility. I am just sorry it took me so long to do what I was supposed to do,” Travis said.

  Again there was a brief silence on the other end.

  “Beryl, is there something you want to tell me?”

  “No, no. I just wanted to tell you that. I am sorry for waking you. Go back to sleep. Good night,” Beryl said as she continued to whisper.

  Travis sat up. “Beryl, Beryl.” But instead of a reply, he heard a click on the other end of the line.

  Travis laid his head back down on the pillow hard, wondering what in the world had just happened. For the next hour he wondered what in the world was going on. He wondered if Beryl’s calling him was her way of reaching out to him, but for what?

  The next few mornings the same weird sequence of events happened. Travis’s cell phone would ring in the middle of the night with Beryl on the other end. Each night she talked a little more and a little longer with Travis. By the third night he’d come to expect that the phone might ring in the middle of the night.

  He wanted to get to the root of whatever problem was going on, but each time he started asking questions of Beryl, she would just clam up and she would get off of the phone. So he learned to listen and let her talk and ask questions at her own comfort level. Travis could almost picture Beryl somewhere in another room whispering to him on the phone. And he wondered where Darrin was when all of her late-night calls were going on. For some reason Beryl was trying to hide her reaching out to Travis from Darrin.

  On the third morning in a row that Beryl called, a Wednesday, Travis was geared and ready to listen and answer any questions she had in her normal whispering small talk pattern. Soon after Beryl’s exchange started Travis sensed something different in her tone, very different than it had been in previous nights.

  “Travis,” Beryl said.

  “Yeah,” Travis said.

  “I believe you now.”

  “What do you mean you believe me?”

  “Remember when you kept telling me that you were calling me and leaving me messages, and you accused me of not returning your calls?” Beryl said.

  “Yeah. What about it?” Travis asked.

  “I wasn’t lying. I called you when I got the messages.”

  “Beryl, what are you talking about?”

  “I changed my billing for my cell phone and asked the cell phone company to send me a detailed bill. It showed me a number of calls that lasted for more than a few seconds from you. You must have left quite a few long messages,” Beryl said.

  “I’m confused. What do you mean you never got the messages?”

  “I don’t know. At first I thought you were lying about calling me. You know your track record with telling the truth is not that great. And you know how you like to embellish things.” Beryl paused.

  “I’m listening,” Travis said. He sat up to give her his full attention.

  “Well a couple of weeks ago I know I distinctly heard my phone ring. I was in the bedroom about to take a shower. I looked at the caller ID and saw that it was you who had called and that you had left a message. I put the phone back down without checking the message. The shower was running so I decided to check it after I got out of the shower.

  “When I got out of the shower and got dressed, I thought about it and picked my phone back up to see what your message said and the message was gone.”

  “So maybe your phone is malfunctioning,” Travis said.

  “Not only was your message gone, but your name and the history of your call weren’t there, either.”

  “Did you hit the button to erase the message and my phone call from the phone by accident?” Travis asked.

  “No. I’ve had this phone for a while now and I’ve never erased anything by accident before,” Beryl said. This time her voice got louder and animated.

  “Okay, calm down. What are you thinking? What are you trying to say?”

  “I think Darrin erased it.”

  Travis processed what Beryl was saying. “Why do you think Darrin erased it?” Travis wanted to be clear. Beryl wasn’t the type of woman to just jump to conclusions.

  “Because it isn’t the first time something like this has happened causing me to second-guess myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not the only one who has called to say they’ve left me a message and I have not gotten it. So like I said, I went ahead and asked the cell phone company to send me a detailed billing sheet for the past three months and it looks as if there were calls from you as well as a couple other people that I never received,” Beryl said.

  “Okay, but again, why do you think Darrin erased the calls and the messages?”

  At first Beryl didn’t say anything. Travis patiently waited for her to speak.

  “Darrin is a bit hands-on,” Beryl said.

  “Hands-on?” Travis sat forward in his bed. “He put his hands on you? Did he hurt you? Is that why you’ve been walking around cloaked in hot clothing when it is over eighty degrees outside?”

  “No, no, calm down, Travis. He has never laid a hand on me,” Beryl said. “You know me. I wouldn’t put up with that.”

  Travis relaxed a little, but only slightly.

  “What I mean is that Darrin wants to know what is going on at all times. He wants to know where I am, where the boys are, if someone comes to visit or if I go to visit them. With me not working it’s not like I have a job to go to anymore, so I am at home a lot. If and when I do go out and spend any money, he wants to know how much, where I got it, and why I got it. So it’s gotten to the point that a lot of times I do just stay home and sketch. It seems like my drawings are the only thing I have anymore,” Beryl said.

  Beryl loved to draw. It was one of the main things she did when Travis had been married to her. She had even had a few of her illustrations published in a children’s book. Travis felt bad abou
t not supporting her more with her artwork, but was glad that she was continuing to do it.

  “And he really doesn’t want me hanging around anyone but him. He has alienated my friends and even my family doesn’t like to come around when he is at home. They think he is too controlling.”

  Travis nodded his head in agreement. “What do you think, Beryl? Do you think he is too controlling?”

  “Well at first I didn’t, but now I just don’t know. I want to believe that he is just really attentive. I mean he knew my situation when I met him. We talked for hours and hours and he has been so supportive. Even when I lost my job a few weeks after he and I started dating, he immediately started helping me take care of all my bills. He made my car payments; I mean I don’t have to ask for a thing. Then he even asked me and the boys to move in with him.

  “He’d been wonderful and without a job and any prospects at home, I decided what the heck, and I moved here to Silvermont with him.”

  “Beryl, it sounds as if he is trying to control you completely. He doesn’t want a relationship; he just wants someone he can control,” Travis said.

  “I think you are right, but sometimes I think that maybe I am blowing it all out of proportion.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Travis asked. He didn’t want her to revert to clamming up on him if he started to ask too many questions.

  “Yes,” Beryl said. She seemed so much more forthcoming than she had been before.

  “That day I was talking to you on the phone and Darrin called you three times, does he do that often?”

  “He does it all the time. That is why I am calling you in the wee hours of the morning. He sleeps pretty hard and this is the only time of night that I can get some peace and quiet to myself. I always feel like he is watching my every move,” Beryl said.

  “And that day I saw you at the mall with the scarf and shades on, were you hiding from him?”

  “Yeah. I was trying to hide from him but somehow he still knew that I was at the mall. I hadn’t told him I was going to the mall,” Beryl confided.

  “So how did he know you were at the mall?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Something isn’t right. I knew there was something about that guy I didn’t like,” Travis said.

  “Travis, you wouldn’t like anybody I dated,” Beryl said.

  “True, but this goes beyond that. I get bad vibes when I am around him.” Travis paused for a moment as he tried to gather his thoughts.

  “What is his whole name?” Travis asked.

  “Darrin Hobbs,” Beryl said.

  “Does he have a middle name?”

  “Yes, it’s Michael.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s thirty-three,” Beryl said.

  “Oh, so I see you got yourself a young man,” Travis said, trying to make a joke. “Got tired of little old me and traded me in.”

  “Not funny, Travis. He is only a year younger than me and you’re not that old. You’re thirty-six not fifty-six.” Beryl paused and let out a small breath of frustration. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “You aren’t going to do anything crazy, are you?” Beryl asked.

  “Beryl, honey, I may be a lot of things, but crazy is not one of them.”

  “Sorry,” Beryl said.

  “Where—” Travis was cut off by Beryl.

  “Oh, my goodness, I hear something. I think he’s up. I’ve got to go.” Her whisper was so low that Travis had to strain his ears to hear her.

  He spoke quickly, “If you feel at all threatened, then you get my boys and get out of there.”

  “Okay, I will,” Beryl whispered back.

  “You call me if you need me. I am here for you,” Travis said.

  “I will,” Beryl said; then she hung up her phone.

  Travis hopped out of the bed and started pacing back and forth. What could he do? Beryl sounded scared even though she was trying her best to hide just how scared she was. That guy meant Beryl no good. It sounded like he was on the fast track to making it so Beryl would be completely dependent on him, and then what?

  He felt helpless as to what he could do. If Beryl had needed him right then, he would not have been able to do a thing. He had no idea where they lived. If he did he would drive over to their house and sit outside just in case Beryl did call him in need. He could just kick himself for not knowing where his little boys lived.

  Feeling the need to vent out his frustrations, he went to the bonus room and started lifting weights. As he lifted them he thought about what he might be able to do the next day. First he would go to the library and do a search for the name Darrin Michael Hobbs to see how much information he could pull up on the guy.

  Beryl was such an unassuming person that she probably hadn’t done any background checks on the guy. Especially since it seemed like he was a knight in shining armor coming to rescue her from her circumstances. He also presented himself as a prince there to lull her into modern-day servitude.

  She basically believed that all people were good until they proved themselves to be otherwise. It seemed as though Beryl was starting to see that Darrin was starting to show himself to be otherwise. From the phone calls he’d received, especially the one that night, it sounded as if Beryl was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

  There was no way she would be able to do any checking on Darrin with him calling her every two minutes and continually looking over her shoulder. At least she had been savvy enough to realize that she could make phone calls in the middle of the night.

  When Travis realized there was nothing else he could do for Beryl in the middle of the night, he took another shower and got back into the bed. And though he tried and tried he could not get back to sleep. He realized that although there was nothing that he could physically do right then to help his family, there was something he could do spiritually. He prayed for them.

  Chapter 25

  That Wednesday morning Travis called in sick to work. Luckily he was in between training classes so there wouldn’t be a burden placed on Kevin or any of the other trainers to have to take up any of his slack.

  He was standing in front of the doors to the library when the librarian opened the doors. He was the first one to get a pass to get on the computers. He had armed himself with a bottle of water, a sandwich that he packed in his book bag to eat later, and some money to make copies of any information he might need to print, should the need arise.

  The first thing he did was to pull up a search engine on the computer and he typed in the name Darrin Michael Hobbs. This search yielded numerous people in numerous states with the same name. There were links for various pieces of information, like social networking site links, YouTube links, and links to people-search Web sites.

  So to narrow down the search, he clicked on to one of the people-search sites and typed in Darrin’s name and the state of North Carolina. This search yielded a list of people named Darrin Hobbs with various ages. He saw one Darrin Hobbs who was age fifty-five and next to his name was a list of relatives, one of which was another Darrin Hobbs. Travis wondered if this was the father of the Darrin he was looking for.

  He reentered his search. This time he put Darrin’s full name and his age along with the state of North Carolina. Immediately Darrin’s full name pulled up along with his age of thirty-three, the previous cities he’d lived in, and a list of his relatives, which included his father Darrin Hobbs, and other various people with the last name Hobbs. Travis assumed the other people were his mother, maybe, and also siblings.

  The site showed that there was other data available for Darrin M. Hobbs. So to see the full report for Darrin, Travis clicked the icon for a full report. When he did another window opened up, stating that for a small fee of just $49.95, Travis could get information about any property Darrin owned as well as information about judgments, aliases, if he’d been married before, or was currently married, any bankruptci
es he might have had, and if he had a criminal record.

  For just $2.97 he could pull up basic information like Darrin’s address and phone number. Travis opted for the second option. If it came down to it, later he would pay for the full report. Travis knew that there was more than one way to get information and if he did the legwork he could find out about much of what the full report would give him instantly. He had all day.

  Periodically he found himself checking his phone to make sure he didn’t have any missed phone calls from Beryl. He had to inwardly chuckle to himself because just a few short months ago he was dreading a call from his ex-wife, and now he waited in anticipation to hear from her.

  Travis looked on the North Carolina Department of Correction offender Web site and did a public information search. There he was prompted to put in a first and last name as well as the middle initial, the person’s gender, race, and age. After inputting all of the requested information he clicked the search button.

  Only one name was pulled up, and from the looks of things it was Mr. Darrin Michael Hobbs himself, with the correct age, gender, and race. He clicked on the document number corresponding to Darrin’s name and Travis’s eyes bugged out when he saw a record for the guy.

  The record showed that Darrin had been arrested for assault on a female. For the assault, he didn’t spend any time in prison, but he was put on probation. The assault had happened twelve years prior. If Travis was doing his math right, it looked as if the incident had probably happened when Darrin was in college.

  So on the surface it looked as if Darrin might be a woman beater, but there was only one record for him. He wished there were more specifics as to what had happened in that case. Did Darrin have the potential to be someone who would eventually end up trying to beat Beryl, or had he just had a misunderstanding with a girl in college who decided to file charges on him? Travis didn’t know. He printed out the information so he would have a hard copy of it.

  Next Travis did a basic search for Darrin Hobbs in Silvermont, North Carolina. He was surprised to see a list of links related to Darrin Hobbs. It looked as if Darrin was a very popular man in Silvermont who had several accolades and various civic-club, social affiliations as well as affiliations with the Carson State University Alumni Association.