by Eve Gaddy
Jay reached out and squeezed her other hand. “Easy,” he said. “Did you do it?”
She shook her head and dropped her eyes, looking down at their joined hands. “I told him to do it himself.”
“Shit.” The single word Mark said conveyed a wealth of understanding.
She raised her eyes to meet his and nodded. “Yes, not a bright thing for me to do. He backhanded me across the mouth. I was…shocked by how quickly it happened.” And by how much it had hurt.
Mark looked ill, which only made her feel that much worse. “I didn’t think he’d hit you,” he said. “He’d hit me a few times, but his thing always seemed to be more mental than physical.”
“Usually it was. I think he enjoyed making us feel like nothing, less than nothing. He got off on the mind games. But that night was the first time he actually hit me. I don’t know—” She shrugged, remembering the helpless horror when she realized what she’d done. “My defiance made him crazy. It must have broken some control he’d been keeping. I was bleeding and crying, but he made me get down on my hands and knees and scrub up the mess and the blood. Then he locked me in my room and told me I’d be sorry I’d disrespected him like I had. He would make me pay for it.”
“So you ran away.”
Jay looked as sick as Mark did. “Yes, I was afraid he’d hurt me again. I’d never seen him quite like that. So angry, so…crazy.” She shook her head, battling the memories. “That wasn’t the end of it. Not yet. It gets worse. Much worse.”
“I should never have left you alone with him,” Mark said. “Damn it, I knew what he was like. I should have known—”
She reached out for him, then let her hand drop. He wasn’t ready to accept comfort from her. “It’s not your fault, Mark. You couldn’t have known. You were sixteen, you were a child. Just as I was.”
He shook his head, clasped his hands together, arms on his thighs and leaned forward. “Tell us the rest.”
“I went out the window. I’m sure he didn’t imagine I’d dare disobey him again. I didn’t know where else to go, so I went to Brad’s house. My boyfriend,” she added for Jay’s benefit. Brad Sanderson had been her first boyfriend. A lifetime ago.
“His parents were gone. He didn’t know what to do for me. I was…pretty hysterical. Not making much sense, I’m sure. Finally, he calmed me down, promised we’d get help. I wanted to believe him, desperately, even though I was afraid to. But he was so sweet, so comforting, and I think he really did care about me.” She fell silent, not anxious to finish the story. But she felt Mark’s gaze on her and forced herself to continue.
“If I’d stopped to think, I would never have gone to Brad. I’m sure it was the first place Father looked when he realized I’d gone. We’d left the front door unlocked. He kicked open the door of Brad’s bedroom and…found us together.”
Caught in the act. It had been the first time for both of them. Neither of them had meant for it to happen. But she’d been so upset, and Brad had been so sweet. And her father had turned what should have been a precious memory into something horrible. Something she couldn’t remember without feeling the pain of what came afterward.
“He didn’t kill him,” Mark said. “We’d have known if he had. He’d have gone to jail.”
“No,” she said, thankful she hadn’t had to spell out exactly what had happened for her brothers. “He said some awful things to Brad, but he saved the brunt of his anger for me. He dragged me out of there, promising me I’d be sorry. Brad was too scared to come after us. I couldn’t blame him.”
“It didn’t occur to him to call the cops?” Jay asked.
“Why would it? What would he have told the police? He was my father, I’m sure Brad thought there was nothing he could do.” Her tears had dried and she didn’t mean to start again. If she allowed herself to cry now, she’d never get through the remainder of the story.
“Go on,” Mark said harshly. “I want to know what the bastard did to you when he got you home.”
“I’m sure you’ve guessed. No one was home. He had all the time in the world to do whatever he wanted.” Her gaze met Mark’s and held. “He beat me.” And cursed her. She could still hear his voice, shouting at her. Whore, he’d called her. And worse.
“He didn’t touch my face, not after that first time, earlier in the kitchen. He used his fists and when that didn’t satisfy him, he took a belt to me. He whipped me with that until I bled, until I wanted to die. I’d have done anything to stop it, but I couldn’t make him quit. The more I begged, the harder I cried, the more he whipped me.”
She couldn’t stop the shudder that coursed through her as the terrible memories swamped her. “I thought he was going to kill me. Then he kicked me and I passed out. I think he broke my rib. When I woke up, I was lying on the floor of my bedroom. I was afraid he had killed me. Except I hurt too much, so I knew I had to be alive.”
“God!” The word burst from Mark. He took her hand and said fiercely, “Why didn’t you come to me? I’d have killed the bastard.”
“I know you would have.” She’d been terrified he would, if he’d walked in. “That wasn’t all. He said if I told anyone what he’d done, he would—” She broke off, pulled her hand from Mark’s and curved her arm over her stomach, protecting what couldn’t be protected. “He said he’d take a belt to the boys and beat them black and blue. Like he had me but worse. He’d make me watch while he beat them, and it would be my fault.” Yet even knowing that, even knowing what she might be exposing her brothers to, she’d run.
“He’d have had to go through me first,” Mark said.
“He knew that. And he would have. No, don’t shake your head at me, Mark. He’d have done it. He said he’d take care of you first. You know he always hated you for sticking up for us, for me and the boys. He’d have killed you and been happy doing it.”
“He was a chickenshit, Miranda. He couldn’t have taken me on, not by the time I was sixteen.”
Her father’s words rang in her ears. Words of malice and hatred. Words of evil. I’ll do Mark first. That little bastard will pay for all the lip he’s given me.
“He never touched us,” Jay added. “Like Mark said, it was always the mental. Maybe after what he did to you he was afraid to.”
The relief she felt was monumental. At least he hadn’t hurt the boys—physically, anyway. The guilt of knowing their father might have beaten them anyway had been with her for years. But it hadn’t been enough to make her go back.
“I couldn’t be sure what he’d do. I only knew I couldn’t face another beating, because he’d have killed me the next time. So, I waited until he left the house and I took every dime I could find. I knew where Mother kept a stash. I’m sure it was charity money, but at that point I didn’t care. I took it, along with what jewelry she had that I could find, and I left.”
“How did you do it with the injuries you had?”
She shrugged, wearily. “I had no choice. I tore up a pillowcase and wrapped it around my ribs. It helped…some. Then I hitchhiked to the bus station and left town on the first bus headed out of state.”
“The police traced you that far,” Mark murmured. “To the bus station. You bought a ticket to Memphis. But then you vanished.”
She hadn’t made it to Memphis, she remembered. She’d got off the stop before that and bought another ticket, still headed east. Her money had finally run out close to the Florida-Alabama border. She’d been stranded in a small town she didn’t even know the name of with ten dollars in her pocket. She’d hitchhiked the rest of the way into Florida, to Pensacola. Some college kids had given her a lift. They were the last good thing she remembered until the Vincents had taken her in three months later.
“I remember him freaking out the next day, when we found out you were gone,” Jay said. “Brian and I hid. We didn’t know what he was going to do.”
“Mom called the cops,” Mark said. “He didn’t want her to, but for once she overrode him.”
“He re
ally never hit you? None of you?” Ava asked. Both Mark and Jay shook their heads. “I guess my leaving did something good then.”
“I can understand why you ran away,” Mark said. “I never questioned that you’d had a good reason for leaving. But you never tried to get in touch with us. Not once, in more than twenty years.”
“I—I was afraid.”
“After five years? Or ten years? Or fifteen? Were you still afraid then?”
More so than she could ever tell him. But not of her father. She was afraid they would turn from her once they heard the rest.
“Let me get you some water,” Jay said. “You look like you could use it, and I know I could.”
Jay left the room and she looked at Mark. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you said that.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I know you were young, and scared. But I don’t understand how you could go all that time letting us think you were dead. I thought you were dead,” he repeated. “Because I couldn’t imagine you were alive and had never tried to find us in all those years.”
It broke her heart to hear him talk that way. But there was nothing she could say.
“Mark.” Jay had come back in and handed her a glass of water. He gave one to Mark and kept the other for himself. “Let her finish. It’s obviously not easy for her.”
“It’s not easy for any of us. Not for you either, even though you’re acting like it is.”
Jay put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Mark. She’s here now. That’s the important thing.”
Mark didn’t look too sure of that but he said nothing else. Ava sipped the water then began again. “I headed east. I’m not sure how long it took me. Days. A week. Longer. Anyway, I wound up in Pensacola, Florida. By then I had no money, no idea what I was going to do. Someone had stolen my backpack and all I had was what was in my pockets.” She spread her hands. “Which was damn little at that point.”
“What did you do?” Jay asked. “I have to tell you that as the father of young girls I don’t like to think about what that must have been like for you.”
“You have children?”
He smiled for the first time since she’d begun her story. “Three. Roxy and Mel, who are twelve and ten. And a son, Jason, who’s a little over a year old.”
“Twelve and ten? You must have been—” She broke off, realizing she’d been about to put her foot in her mouth.
Jay laughed. “Relax, I didn’t start that young. The girls are my stepdaughters.” He glanced at his brother, who sat silent. “Mark has two kids with another on the way. Max is five. Miranda’s two years old.”
Ava stared at Mark. “You named your daughter after me?” she finally managed to whisper.
Mark’s eyes, blue and tortured, met hers. “Yeah. We named her after my sister. The one we thought was dead.”
There had been times when she’d wanted to die. Wished she could. Had even thought about ending it, but she hadn’t. “Would you rather I were dead?” He made an impatient gesture, which she took to be negative. “We don’t have to do this. I can leave and not come back. If we see each other, we can pretend we don’t even know each other. Is that what you want?”
“No.” He said it quietly, but she heard the suppressed emotion behind the word. “I don’t know what I want. But I know I deserve an explanation.”
“Please try to understand.” But he wouldn’t. Because she couldn’t tell him the real reason she’d dropped out of their lives so completely.
“For a little more than three months I lived…on the streets.” Technically not the truth, but close enough. “I’m not going to talk about it. Once I got out I swore I wouldn’t talk about it or think about it. Ever. It’s the only way I was able to go on. So if that bothers you, if you think you have to know, then you’ll just have to either get over it or forget about me.”
“How did you get off the streets? Did social services find you?” Jay asked.
“No, thank God, or they’d have sent me back home. A wonderful couple took me in. Jim and Jeri Vincent. He was a doctor. If it hadn’t been for them I’d have died.”
“They adopted you? How?” Mark asked.
“Not legally. Informally. I never told them my name. I was too afraid of having to go back. To him. So I became Ava Vincent.”
“Didn’t they ever try to find out who you really were?”
“Yes, several times. After a while they quit. They realized I would never go back to my parents. That I’d rather die than go back. So they left me alone, loved me, and gave me a chance at another life.”
They had stopped asking about her parents when she’d threatened to go back on the streets. To go back to the life she’d been living before Jim took care of her in the E.R. and saved her life. They’d freed her from that life, the one she’d accepted as the only way to survive. Her life as a teenage prostitute with nowhere to go but down.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“YOU LOOK EXHAUSTED,” Jay said. “We don’t have to talk about everything tonight. Maybe you should go home, get some sleep. We can talk again later. Tomorrow, or this weekend even.”
She was beyond exhausted, she was an emotional wreck. Even so, there was one more thing she needed to know. “All right. But before I go could you tell me more about Brian? How he is and what he’s doing? Mark said he works for an international company.”
Jay smiled. “Yeah, he’s a computer geek. We’re not sure exactly what he does with them. It involves industrial espionage, I think.” He checked his watch. “I can try to call him. It’s morning in China.”
“Will he want to talk to me?” Brian had been even younger than Jay when she’d left. He probably didn’t remember her at all. In fact, she wasn’t sure Jay really remembered her, even though he acted as if he did.
“I’ll call him,” Mark said, and left the room abruptly.
She looked after him wistfully before turning to Jay. “He hates me, doesn’t he?”
“Of course he doesn’t hate you. But—” He rubbed a hand over his brow. “He’s hurt. You have to remember, Mark knew you better than either Brian or I did. I think he’s always felt responsible that you left and that he couldn’t find you. Mark’s a very responsible guy. He’s had to be. You wouldn’t know this, but he raised Brian and me on his own from the time we were twelve and eleven.”
Unwillingly, she asked, “Why? What happened to Mother? You said she’s alive.”
“Yes. She’s fine now, but back then she was sick. She spent two years in a hospital, being treated for depression. She didn’t tell us, though, she just left us with Mark. He was all of twenty-one. Mom didn’t contact us for years after that because she thought we’d hate her for dumping us on Mark like she did.”
It didn’t sit well that she had deserting her family in common with her mother. Ava didn’t want to have anything in common with the woman who’d given birth to her. “Did you hate her? Do you hate her?”
He shook his head. “No. Brian and I never did. Especially not once we found out why she’d left us. We reconciled several years ago. Mark had a harder time with forgiving her than Brian and I did. So she and Mark took a little longer to work things out. But they did.” He paused and added, “Mom looked for you, too, Miranda. She had a private detective looking for you almost from the day you disappeared.”
“Too little too late,” Ava said. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
Jay hesitated. “We have to tell her you’re alive.”
“No.”
“I’m telling her. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I’m not keeping the fact that you’re alive from our mother.”
He looked implacable and she suspected he was. “I can’t stop you from telling her, but I won’t see her.”
“That’s your decision, but I hope you’ll reconsider.”
When pigs flew. Maybe she was wrong to blame her mother for so much, but the bottom line remained. Her mother had put up with her husband’s abuse and left her children to deal w
ith it as well. If she’d only left the son of a bitch…Ava might never have been forced to run away. And if she hadn’t run away she would never have become a prostitute. If she’d never been a prostitute, she’d never have gotten pregnant. She wouldn’t have a past so shameful she couldn’t share it with anyone.
Her past had ruined her marriage for a number of reasons, not the least of which was she’d never been able to be honest with her husband. She’d told him very little about her past. Oh, she’d told him she couldn’t have children, but she’d lied about the reason why. And she’d lied about why she refused to adopt. She couldn’t tell him or anyone why she didn’t deserve to adopt a child.
If she shared the truth with her brothers, it would kill any hope of knowing them again, of becoming a part of their lives. She couldn’t share her past with them; she couldn’t share it with anyone.
But Jay was talking about the present. And their mother. “I’m sorry, I won’t see her. I can’t.”
Jay didn’t say anything but she didn’t believe that was the end of the subject. At least for now he was dropping it.
“Can I ask you something?” she said after a moment.
“Sure.”
“Do you remember me? You were so young…”
“Not so young that I could forget you. You used to read to me and Brian. I remember we’d get on either side of you on the couch and you’d read for hours. We loved it.” He stopped and smiled at her, that easy smile that caused a pang for all the years she’d missed. “We loved you. We still love you, Miranda. Mark does too, he’s just having a hard time understanding.”
“What about you?”
He rubbed his chin, looking at her thoughtfully. “To be honest, I don’t understand either. But I can wait until you feel like talking.”
“What if I never do?”
“I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Maybe…maybe it doesn’t matter why you found us again. Only that you have.”
Mark came back into the room. “I tried all his numbers and couldn’t reach him. I left a message for him to call me. I told him it was urgent but not to worry. Why don’t you leave me your phone numbers and I’ll give them to him when he calls.”