by Lisa Regan
She’d only been there ten minutes when Jim called. Rachel handed her the receiver. “What?” Leah snapped.
“Hunter is up,” Jim told her.
She wondered how her husband had managed to wake the boy so soon after she put him down, but she didn’t ask. If Jim had woken the baby, he should have to watch him. Leah said, “So?”
Jim made a noise of exasperation. “So, he’s awake from his nap.”
He said the word awake slowly and loudly as if she were hard of hearing and stupid to boot.
“Why are you calling me?”
A sigh. “’Cause I want you to come back over and take care of your kid.”
For a split second, her breathing stopped. Her rage was so complete that it seemed to instantly pause every physiological process in her body and then kick them back on all at once into overdrive. Her breathing and heart rate quickened. Her skin blazed so hot that sweat formed instantly in every crease of her body. It was like a white-hot sickness consuming her. Her voice went up an octave. “My kid?” she said. “Did you just say ‘my kid’?”
Another sigh. “Jesus Christ, Leah. Just come home and take care of him. He’s asking for you.”
She slammed the receiver down. Rachel didn’t ask questions. She put Leah’s coffee mug in the sink. “I’ll keep Peyton for a few hours,” she said.
Leah nodded and stalked off to her own house. Her rage diminished slightly when she walked in to find Hunter sitting on the couch, sippy cup in hand, watching Secret Agent Bear. He leapt up and ran across the room to her. “Mommy!” he said gleefully, wrapping his tiny arms around one of her legs.
She scooped him up, managing a smile for him. “Hi, baby.” She kissed his cheek and smoothed his sandy-brown locks back from his face. “Where’s Daddy?”
He pointed a chubby finger toward the kitchen. Leah set him back on the couch. “You stay here,” she told him.
Her husband was in the kitchen standing before an open fridge, studying its contents. Leah stood behind him, arms akimbo, her rage like a heartbeat pumping adrenaline through her entire body. “What is wrong with you?” she said.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, good, you’re here. He’s in the living room. He might be hungry.”
Her vision narrowed to Jim’s face, everything else around him a blur. She advanced on him and slammed the fridge door closed.
“Hey,” he said.
She poked his chest. “Hunter is your son too, or did you forget that? What is wrong with you? You can’t be alone with him for an hour? You can’t feed your own son?”
Jim rolled his eyes at her like she was acting crazy, like she was being so unreasonable. “Leah, he doesn’t want me. He wants you.”
“Because you never spend any time with him, Jim. Of course he prefers me. I take care of all his needs. But you’re his father. He needs a father.”
Jim put his hands to his chest. “He’s got a father. I’m here, aren’t I? He’s still a baby. He still wants his mommy. Wait till he gets older and I can really do stuff with him. When he gets older, I can take him fishing.”
For a split second, she softened, thinking of Jim and Hunter alone together, out on Jim’s beloved boat. But that wasn’t going to happen overnight. She needed his help with the kids now. “Jim,” she pleaded. “You can’t just start being a father when it’s enjoyable or convenient for you. These are really important years in a child’s life. The kids need to know that you’re here for them, that you care about them.”
Again, he rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, Leah, I am here. I’m here every fucking day. I work my ass off for you and the kids. You think I like working all week at a job I hate? I do it for you and the kids. Why are you all over my ass right now?”
Leah closed her eyes, tipped her head back, and sucked in a deep breath. She counted to three in her head, willing herself not to strangle this man she had pledged her life to. Opening her eyes, she looked at him again. “Because, Jim, I need help with the kids. I need you to help me with them—feed them, bathe them, pick them up from day care, help potty train Hunter. Watch him while I have coffee with a friend. I need a break, Jim.”
His face reddened. He threw his arms in the air. “Oh, you need a break? Well, I need a break too, Leah. You act like you’re the only one who works hard.”
She cut him off. “That’s not what I meant. You get breaks all the time. You go fishing, get away. You sleep in. You don’t have to pick up or drop off the kids. You get away from everything. When I’m not working, I’m with the kids nonstop. I can’t even go to the bathroom without the kids barging in—”
He was shaking his head as she spoke. He wasn’t listening to her. It was all about him, as usual. He said, “You know what? Fuck this. I’m going out.”
“Jim!”
But he had already turned away from her. She watched as he left the kitchen. Before she could fully process what had just happened, the front door slammed, and she heard his truck roar to life and tear out of the driveway.
Leah walked slowly, zombielike, to their front door and looked outside.
Hunter said, “Mommy, I’m hungry.”
As she stared at the empty space where Jim’s truck had been, she felt it for the first time: the lessening of her epic guilt over what had happened with D.J. Like the loosening of a belt. Just a notch. It made it a little easier to breathe, a little easier to function, easier to face Rachel, and easier not to walk out on her family and drive off the nearest cliff.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Wilson had three broken ribs and some abrasions, but he was stable. Dr. Corey wanted to keep him overnight. Claire didn’t care. He would survive—that was all she needed to know. Jim and Peyton Holloway stayed in the waiting room long enough to hear the good news, and then Claire insisted that she could get home on her own. As the door swung closed after them, she heard little Peyton cry, “You saved the doggie, Daddy!” She smiled, then returned to the exam room to sit with Wilson, one hand tangled in the fur on the back of his neck while he slept. Dr. Corey had given him something for pain. He seemed comfortable.
When Claire had rescued him as a puppy, she’d done so because she had always wanted a dog. From the time she was a little girl, she had asked for one, but her father was allergic so they could never have one. When she returned from captivity and moved in with Brianna, she’d gone looking for one. Her post-abduction life was all about doing the things she wanted to do because she could. She was free. She was in control. It had taken less than a minute for her and Wilson—then more fur than anything else—to bond.
She’d never considered that a dog would make an excellent bodyguard until Wilson got a little older and became protective of her. Even then, he wasn’t exactly intimidating. His temperament was better suited to serving as a therapy dog. But today his instincts had taken over. He had sensed D.J.’s evil and gone after him with a ferocity Claire hadn’t even thought him capable of—all for her. To protect her, to keep her safe. She was so grateful, she still couldn’t stop crying, even after Dr. Corey assured her that he would be just fine.
She continued to weep quietly at Wilson’s side when her cell phone rang. Connor’s face lit the screen. Her heart leapt into her throat as she pressed “Answer.”
“Where are you?” he asked without preamble.
She brought him up to speed, assuring him that she and Wilson were both fine. “Did you get D.J.?” she asked.
She could hear the frustration in his voice. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. Not yet, but we’ve got everyone looking.”
“Connor, I need to talk to you about what Peyton Holloway told me.”
Fifteen minutes later, they hung up.
As the morning wore on and Claire sat alone with her injured dog, she picked up her phone three times without even thinking, ready to dial Brianna so she could tell her about the crazy shit that happened at Leah Holloway’s house before remembering that Brianna was in a coma at Sutter General.
She wished everyth
ing would just stop. She wanted to go back to this morning, when she was snug in Connor’s arms, and start the day over. She wouldn’t tell him to answer the phone. She would convince him to stay in bed with her. Convince him to never leave. The thought, impossible though it was, brought her some comfort. She looked at her watch. It felt like an entire day had gone by, but it wasn’t even noon. She was ready for a hot bath and bed, and the day hadn’t even started yet. She was going to have to leave her injured dog and find a way back to her vehicle so she could return to the hospital and relieve her brother.
Next to Wilson, her cell phone rang again. This time Tom’s face lit up the screen. She had called him twenty minutes earlier to let him know what had happened. Butterflies took flight inside her stomach as she pressed the phone to her ear.
“Tom?”
“She’s awake.” His voice was thick with tears but high-pitched with joy. “She’s awake,” he repeated. “She’s talking and everything.”
The butterflies gave way to a rush of relief. “Thank God. How is she? Does she remember anything?”
Laughter filtered through the phone. “She’s pissed. She doesn’t remember anything after leaving Sammy’s. She remembers having breakfast with you and that’s it. She has no idea what happened to her. She’s in a lot of pain. She’s asking for some of her own clothes, and also, they need her insurance card and some form of photo ID. I don’t see her purse here.”
“It’s evidence. They found it in the dumpster. I’ll call Connor, but I’m not sure he’ll have time to track it down today. She might have another card. I think she keeps another one at home with her passport. I think Dr. Corey’s son is coming by here in a little bit. I’ll ask him to take me to get my car at Connor’s, and then I’ll go home and get some of her things.”
She hung up, buried her face in Wilson’s fur, and sobbed, the tension leaving her body with each shuddered breath. Brianna was okay. Claire knew she was okay because pissed was her natural state. When she called Connor to let him know, his joy quickly gave way to seriousness. “Get Derrick to follow you home,” he said. “Keep me posted. I’ll feel better once I know you’re at the hospital. Tell Brianna I said hi.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
EIGHTEEN MONTHS EARLIER
Their next fight was over Peyton’s fingernails.
“Jesus, Leah,” Jim had said. “Peyton’s nails are really long. You need to cut them.”
It was one of the rare times they’d all sat down to dinner together. A Sunday night. Leah was surprised by the instant rage that overcame her. She threw down her fork. It clattered onto the table, drawing stares from her children. They didn’t like it when Leah got angry. For a moment, she felt guilty—she knew she was dangerously close to flying off the handle right in front of them.
She always strove to stay calm even when she was enraged, to stay present even when she felt like fleeing. That she constantly had to check her anger only fueled it further. Jim never tried to curb his temper. He routinely walked out during their fights. She didn’t have those options. She was a mother. She couldn’t walk out on her kids just because she was angry with Jim. She couldn’t bear to think of them frightened and upset, wondering where she had gone and if she would come back. She knew they would blame themselves even though it was really their father’s fault. Plus, they were two and four. Someone physically had to be there for them, and Jim wasn’t doing it. So, she stayed, she stuck with them, and she curbed her temper.
She knew it wasn’t healthy. All that anger would get pushed down into her My Feelings Come Last compartment, only to spring back out at a later time as depression, dark and harpy-like. The depression used to threaten to consume her, like an inky blackness overtaking every corner and compartment of her brain. But at some point it became like background noise or a wall hanging. A great tapestry. It was just there. She learned to live her life in spite of it, even though she never forgot it was there. She had been spinning her anger into depression since childhood. A counselor she’d been forced to see in her sophomore year of college had told her she was what they called a high-functioning depressed person. The scariest kind, the woman had said, because high-functioning depressed people rarely gave an indication of the true depth of their sadness or pain. Meaning Leah could fantasize about suicide on a daily basis, but still carry out all the tasks necessary to maintain her daily life.
It was usually after fights like these that Leah lay in bed, indulging in her fantasies of suicide the way other people fantasized about going on vacation. It wasn’t the act that she thought about. As a teenager, she had imagined every scenario she could think of and none had held any appeal. She didn’t actually want to hurt herself. She just didn’t want to deal with life any longer. She didn’t want to be. She didn’t want to wake up to an endless litany of demands that she somehow never fulfilled, no matter how hard she tried. She felt like the guy in that Greek myth who rolled a boulder up a hill each day only to have it roll back down, causing him to start over the next day. Sisyphus.
She loved her children. Indeed, they provided the only joy in her life. She even loved Jim, in his way. But she did not love living. It was difficult, messy, and largely joyless. Watching the news for even a few minutes left her wondering: What was the point? There was so much evil in the world, and there was no escaping it. Sooner or later, it found you. It had found her early in life. Sure, she was long past it—the evil visited on her was now a distant memory—but she didn’t feel any better or happier.
Why bother? Her mind often repeated this question in her quietest, most private moments. Why was she—or any of them—even bothering to scratch out a life? What was the point? She longed for a sweet release from the absurdity of living. But she kept living anyway. These, she told herself, were the silly, idle thoughts of an exhausted mother. She would never actually do anything like kill herself. Her own mother had committed suicide. Leah had no intention of following in her footsteps. Unlike her utterly self-centered mother, Leah would never do such a thing to her children. At least, that’s what she told herself.
Which meant that she usually had to talk herself into somehow accepting what life threw at her. Rationalization was her biggest ally. Sitting across from her husband as he shoveled food into his mouth, Leah struggled to rationalize airing just a small amount of her overwhelming rage. Then something came to her. Rachel had read on a parenting blog that sometimes it was okay to fight in front of your kids. It helped them learn conflict resolution and showed them that people could fight but still love one another. Not every fight signaled the end of a relationship. Fights were a normal part of a relationship.
With that in mind, she glared at her husband. “You know where the nail clippers are too. If they bother you that much, you can clip them yourself. You are her father.”
Jim said, “That’s your job.”
Rationalization was crushed instantly beneath the spiked boot of her rage. The fight went nuclear in seconds, leaving both children crying as Jim stormed out of the house. For a moment, while Leah soothed her weeping children, assuring them that their father still loved them and would come home eventually, she was so angry at Jim that a little, tiny part of her felt glad she had betrayed him.
It was sick, she knew it. A base impulse. She tried to stow it in her mental drawer of Thoughts That Should Never See the Light of Day, but it kept popping back out. Mainly because each time she and Jim fought or disagreed, the ugly knowledge that she had somehow settled the score—albeit secretly—gave her some relief from her all-consuming rage. She could bear her marriage if she had some relief. She had been able to bear her horrendous childhood because she knew one day it would end. One day she would get to leave, strike out on her own, call the shots in her own life.
Maybe she should leave Jim. She had often considered it. But what would she say to Jim? What would she tell other people when they asked why she was leaving? That he irritated her? That he didn’t do as much around the house or with the kids as she would like? Did
people leave their spouses over such trivial things? Leah’s mother had endured unspeakable abuse from her father and she hadn’t left—unless you counted her suicide as leaving permanently. Leah had always thought that in spite of her issues with Jim, they had a good marriage. He wasn’t abusive. He never hit her. He wasn’t an alcoholic. He had a job and he went to it faithfully. Leah had always considered herself lucky. She’d seen a truly bad marriage. Her parents were a glowing example of the worst marriage ever. Leah’s marriage was not even close to that nightmare.
Most of the women she knew had similar issues with their husbands. Many had more serious problems—husbands with gambling addictions, husbands who traveled 90 percent of the time and were never around. Husbands who didn’t work at all and refused to contribute at home. Those women stayed, just as Leah did. She remembered one woman she was friendly with at work used to say, “Sometimes I wish he would hit me. Then I’d have a reason to leave.”
Leah had never felt that way, but she understood the sentiment. What would she tell the kids if she left her husband? She’d ruined their lives and disrupted their home because Jim got on her nerves? She couldn’t do it. She had chosen Jim, chosen to bring her children into the world. She’d committed to giving them a good life, a happy life. She was determined to keep her family intact for their sake.