by Vicki Essex
Her change of mood didn’t escape Dom’s notice. “If the officials at the UFF saw this, they’d blow a gasket,” he said sardonically, indicating the sign. “I haven’t won anything yet.”
“You’ve won the hearts of Salmon River, apparently.”
Fiona plastered on a smile and moved away to serve some waiting customers.
AT THREE-THIRTY, Fiona was dressed in a pristine gi, running through one more practice round with Sean at Five Elements before the show. Seeing her side by side with her son in the mirror, performing the simple but graceful kata, warmed her heart, as did the determined, proud look on her boy’s face.
Others who’d be performing in the demonstration milled about, stretching, practicing, talking and laughing, excited by the day’s events and all the attention they were getting from out-of-town passersby looking in the window. A few entered and spoke briefly with Dom. He handed them flyers and business cards before they walked out again.
By ten to four, Denise and Rene still hadn’t arrived. Dom paced restlessly, more nervous than she’d ever seen him.
“We have to get to the stage,” he said finally. “If Denise and Rene arrive in time, we’ll put them on. Otherwise, it’ll just have to be you two.”
“Just us?” Fiona’s mouth turned to ash. The butterflies that had settled down in her stomach took flight again, whipping up her nerves, which made her arms tremble right to the tips of her fingers.
She wasn’t much for public performances. She’d thought that with Denise Kirkpatrick on stage with her, she might be able to disappear into the background. But now she’d be up there alone. Everyone would judge her. As if they needed another excuse.
“Hey.” Dom reached out and cupped her cheek, lifting her face so their eyes met. “It’ll be okay.” He squeezed her shoulder. His warmth and confidence bolstered her, and his touch sent the butterflies away, to be replaced with soothing liquid pleasure.
The mass exodus from the dojo of about thirty gi-clad students, their rainbow of karate belts flapping in the wind like standards, turned heads along Main Street. The group made its way to the main stage, with Dom somewhere in the center. Watching from the outskirts of the group, Fiona thought how much Dominic Payette looked like a champion, even if he wasn’t one yet.
They gathered backstage on the grass, where Dom lined everyone up and gave last-minute instructions, reminding them to bow before and after their performance. Each and every student paid rapt attention, like little soldiers before a five-star general. Fiona remained vigilant, doing her best to suppress the giddy nervousness threatening to break her concentration. The faint smell of something delicious tickled her nose, and she realized then she’d barely had time for a proper lunch break. Her hollow stomach growled loudly.
Onstage, someone was introducing them in a big, booming voice. “Salmon River is proud to present future UFF champion Dominic ‘The Dominator’ Payette and the Five Elements dojo!”
Polite applause greeted the MMA fighter as he disappeared up the stairs leading to the main stage. As instructed, the students filed onto the stage-left entrance and awaited Dom’s signal to come up and perform.
“Where do you think Rene and Mrs. Kirkpatrick are?” Sean asked as they waited for their turn.
Fiona’s empty stomach had totally distracted her from their cohorts’ absence. “Oh…well…who knows? Maybe Rene’s sick.”
Worry creased Sean’s brow. “We’ll do great, don’t you worry,” she assured him, smoothing his hair down. “You just concentrate on keeping your stance firm.”
“As if. You’re the one who needs to keep her knees bent deeper.”
“Do not.”
“Do so!”
They laughed together.
The line grew shorter as students of increasing skill and levels ascended the steps and disappeared to the front of the stage. Fiona hoped someone was taping the performance. Judging by the growing applause, it seemed the audience was becoming more and more impressed with each demo.
And then it was her and Sean’s turn. They walked onstage, and Fiona’s eyeballs almost fell out of their sockets.
The seats were full to capacity, and more people stood in the back and on the sides. The park was so full she couldn’t see any grass.
Fiona nearly tripped when she paused to bow at the edge of the stage. The mats they’d laid down squished beneath her bare feet.
Dom continued with his running narrative. “Martial arts and karate-do involve more than just physical conditioning and learning certain moves,” he said. “They’re also about achieving harmony and balance, whether emotional or spiritual, in the home or in the community. Fiona and Sean Mac Avery have been practicing karate for the past three months. This mother and son team can teach the world much about harmony.”
He met her unblinking gaze, nodding at them to go ahead.
And then she blanked. Fiona stared at him. All thought had fled, replaced by sheer terror at the expectant eyes upon her. She stood paralyzed. Distantly, she thought she heard Sean urging her on, but her silent scream was too loud in her head to make out his prompting.
This was going to be a disaster. She was going to faint right there on stage and humiliate herself and her son forever. Everyone in Salmon River would laugh at her, in addition to pitying her or outright hating her.
This was worse than spiders.
And then Dom was there. He positioned himself between mother and son, just a little ahead of them. “Position one,” he murmured.
Automatically, Fiona’s feet shifted into place. She took the stance her sensei had drilled into her, and her hands drifted into position.
“Ready?”
And she was. The movement came fluidly, almost without her needing to think about it. The simple kata was transformed into a beautiful synchronized dance of man, woman and child. Once, she glanced at Dom, saw how strong and purposeful the broad sweep of his arms and legs were, so different from her willowy, flowing movements and Sean’s sharp, snapping ones. And yet no one style was more powerful or more dynamic than the others. They simply moved together in harmony.
As though they were one.
The kata ended before she even realized it. They bowed together, to the crowd’s raucous approval.
Dom turned to his two students and bowed before them, his face glowing with pride. “You both did great.”
Fiona bowed back, awe and gratitude and astonishment clouding her mind as she and Sean ambled off stage and rejoined the others. Their classmates clapped and welcomed them back into the fold, lauding their performance and giving Sean high fives.
“That was so awesome, Mom! You were amazing! And wasn’t it great when Dom joined us, too?”
“It was.” Too much so. He’d fit right in there between her and Sean, as though they were puzzle pieces.
As though they belonged together.
“YOU WERE INCREDIBLE,” Josie said as they strolled around the food vendors in Fielder’s Park on their dinner break. “I mean, what I could see of you past all the tall people, anyhow.”
“Thanks.” Fiona was still cruising on her performance high. At Dom’s signing, a few towns-people had been greeting her and congratulating her and Sean on their show—people she’d never talked to before. Even Teresa Madden had graced her with a short nod.
“You looked tough up there,” the old woman had said to Sean, before she shuffled on. He had simply stared after her, confused.
“Too bad Denise and Rene couldn’t have been up there, too,” Josie said. “I bet it would have looked even more impressive with a whole bunch of you doing those moves at the same time.”
“It is too bad,” Fiona replied. She was so euphoric she was even willing to share this morsel of happiness with the woman who, ironically, had made it possible. After all, Denise had been the one to suggest she join the women’s self-defense class. And she’d been the one to talk Dom into setting up the demonstration.
Fiona wondered where the arts fair’s coordinator was t
his day. No one she’d spoken to had seen her, though everyone seemed to be getting along fine, since Selma Van Nussen was handling things. Fiona had spotted the woman darting in and out like a blond hummingbird among the tents, speaking into her walkie-talkie and checking to see that everyone had everything they needed.
“Mom, can I go get a hot dog?” Sean asked at her side.
“Make it two.” She handed him some money. “I’ll go find us a place to sit, okay?” Her feet were sore after a day of standing at the sale table.
“While you do that, I’ll see if they’ve still got ribs over at the Rib Rack.” Josie pointed to a tent nearby, and the three split up.
Fiona wandered away from the crowd, seeking some quiet after the hectic day, though the cacophonous jazz band currently on stage was making that difficult. But people were enjoying the music, so she didn’t really mind.
As she sought a place to rest her feet near the edge of the park, her thoughts returned to Dominic, to how he’d inveigled himself into her tiny family of two. It was ridiculous—and dangerous—to entertain domestic fantasies. Of her and Sean and Dom sharing Christmases together, vacationing on a white-sand beach somewhere; her and Dom dancing in the starlight on the deck of a cruise ship… But with the sweet, early-evening air and the contentment suffusing her, she didn’t mind just letting her imagination run wild….
“You little punk. What, am I not good enough for you?”
Fiona paused near a grove of trees surrounded by bushes. She caught her breath as she heard that truculent voice.
“What’s your mother been saying, huh? Tell me!”
Fiona peered into the foliage, but couldn’t see anything. She looked around her, but no one else seemed to have heard the conversation over the strains of the trumpet and drums.
“That bitch…mother is a no-good whore…who’d ruin you and any man that goes near her!”
“She is not!” Fiona heard a raspy voice protest.
“What did you say? Are you talking back to me, boy?”
The silence that followed was scarier than the threat. Fiona’s heart seemed to throb in her gut, nauseating her. Her mind was starting to play tricks with her hearing: the longer she stood there, the more the man’s voice sounded like Mitch’s.
“Look at me when you answer!” That voice was rough and gravelly, and suddenly Fiona recognized it. Her feet carried her forward. She pushed through the leaves and branches, her throat tight with fear.
She saw them before they heard her. The rude, broad man with the expensive loafers had Rene Kirkpatrick by the neck of his T-shirt. He was cuffing him mercilessly, batting him about the ears with an open palm.
The sound that came out of Fiona’s mouth was something between a howl and a roar. She burst into the clearing and shoved the man so hard he went stumbling through the bushes, arms pin-wheeling. He reeled back, tripped over some low brambles and hurtled out of the copse of trees, landing on his butt somewhere beyond.
Fiona’s heart pumped hard. She was panting, emotions sawing through her lungs in hot gasps. But as a mother who’d faced crises before, who’d subconsciously prepared for a situation just like this, she knew what she had to do.
She gathered Rene off the ground without a word and led him out of the bushes. He wouldn’t look at her.
“Fiona…?” Josie’s plate of ribs nearly tumbled to the ground when she saw her friend half carrying Rene Kirkpatrick across the park. Sean, who was at Josie’s side, stared at them.
“C’mon. We have to go. Now.”
“Mom?” Sean looked from her to Rene.
“We need to find Denise. And we need to get this boy somewhere safe.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW they managed it, but they walked all the way to Five Elements dojo—the only place Fiona felt she and her son and the others could be truly safe—without being stopped or followed. Dom was there with his three trainers. They were in the middle of a sparring exercise when the four trooped in.
“What’s wrong?” Dom immediately saw their harried, fearful looks, saw Rene Kirkpatrick hunched beneath the loop of Fiona’s arm. “What happened?”
“Th-there was a m-man,” she began, and then her limbs started to shake. She tried to pull herself together, but the harder she worked to rein in her swelling emotions, the more they slipped from her grasp. “He was hurting Rene.”
Hector, Kyle and Brett strode to the front door. “Where is he?” Brett growled, eyes darting around the street.
“I don’t think he followed us.” Fiona leaned against the mirrored wall, willing herself not to shake. Rene was still in her arms, face buried in her hip.
And, strangely, she didn’t mind him being there. Rene’s stalwart bulk was probably the only thing keeping her from slumping to her knees.
“I’m going to call Denise’s house. We need to find her.”
“Call the police first,” Dom instructed.
“No!” Rene leaped off Fiona as if he’d been thrown by an electrical jolt. “I’m fine! Look, there aren’t any bruises!”
But there were. Fiona had never taken a good look at the boy who’d tormented her son for so long, but now she could see it. His ears, for one, were cauliflower ears. Like a boxer’s, swollen and misshapen. One of the MMA books had described the condition and showcased some of the more famous fighters’ ears. They were considered mangled badges of honor.
Rene had been beaten around the head like this before. Often. Then she noticed other things: a fine scar above his eye that left a faint white stripe beneath the eyebrow; a lumpiness around his nose, probably from an early breakage. Anyone could have mistaken these injuries as tokens of boyhood. But the churning suspicions in Fiona’s stomach told her they were something else, and the puzzle pieces started snapping together, forming an ugly picture.
“Rene, you’re not fine. We need to catch the guy who did this to you,” Dom said.
“Don’t call the police!” the boy pleaded, and his green eyes filled with tears. “Please. He just had too much to drink.”
“You know who that man is, don’t you?” Fiona asked him gently. She wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Don’t tell anyone what he did,” he sobbed. “Or else I won’t ever get to see him again.”
“See who?” Dom looked confused.
Rene remained tight-lipped. They waited, but he wouldn’t answer.
It was Sean who spoke for him.
“His dad.”
The adults turned to look at Sean, who regarded the other boy with bleak sympathy. If Rene felt betrayed, he was too busy wiping the river of tears and snot away to show it.
“Sean.” Dom knelt beside Sean. “Tell me everything you know.”
DESPITE THE CHILLING FACTS Sean had laid out for them, they didn’t call the police right away. They went in search of Denise first.
They interrogated Selma, who reluctantly informed them Denise was at home sick. But the guilt in her eyes said something else.
Fiona’s anger boiled as Dom drove her and Rene to the Kirkpatrick home in the ritzy part of Salmon River. Sean had wanted to come along, but they made him stay at the dojo. The two-lane boulevard they lived on was lined with magnificent oak trees. Fiona had never seen this part of town before. She’d had no reason to visit the neighborhood.
They pulled up to a redbrick three-story Victorian with a perfectly manicured lawn and a flower bed so immaculate it could appear on the cover of a gardening magazine. Denise’s electric-blue roadster was parked on the cobblestone driveway.
“I’ll go ring the doorbell,” Dom said, and got out of the car.
“No…let me do it.”
He looked skeptical. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“From one mother to another…yes, I do.”
And it wasn’t righteous anger or even some morbidly vindictive sense of justice fueling her. All the way there, Fiona had gone over everything she knew about the Kirkpatricks, and the more she put together
, the bigger the picture grew. She had to know if everything she’d believed about the woman was wrong.
Resolute, she marched up the stairs. Rene hung back by the car, looking torn between diving into the backseat and full-out running away.
Fiona pressed the brass-plated buzzer and waited. It was nearly a full minute before the door cracked open and half of Denise’s face appeared in the two-inch gap. “Fiona.” Her voice was scratchy, her eye red, skin blotchy. Maybe she was sick.
“Denise, we need to talk.”
“Today’s not the day. I…I’m really quite ill….”
“It’s about Rene.” She gestured to the boy behind her. “I caught his father beating him up.”
“What?” The door flew open, and Fiona barely stifled her gasp.
A huge purple bruise covered the left side of Denise’s face. Her eye was swollen half-shut. She dropped a melted ice pack to the ground as she called to her son. Rene reluctantly ascended the porch stairs.
“Sweetie…are you all right?” She searched the boy until he shook her hands off, muttered, “I’m fine,” and disappeared into the house without another word. Fiona heard him pound up the stairs and slam a door.
“Denise…” She swallowed hard, unable to stop from staring.
“It was an accident,” Rene’s mother explained, her tone somewhere between tetchy and bored. “Me versus a doorknob.” Fiona continued to stare, and Denise relented. “It had my ex’s name on it.”
“Your ex-husband hit you?”
“I just didn’t dodge fast enough.” The shine of tears in her eyes belied Denise’s pithy reply. But just as quickly, they were gone, replaced by grim defiance.
“We have to call the police.”
The woman’s one good eye blazed. “Don’t you dare. This is my business, Fiona. Don’t you dare tell anyone about this!”
She was taken aback by the woman’s heated defense. Why on earth wouldn’t she report an assault like this? “Sean told me… He said Rene told him his father hits him a lot,” she said carefully.