by Mary McNear
He jerked awake then and stared at her with unseeing eyes.
“Reid, it’s me,” she said, trying to sound calm. “It’s Mila. You were having a nightmare. I was worried about you.”
Slowly, his eyes came into focus, but he was still breathing hard, and sweating harder. He looked around the room then, as if he’d never seen it before, and then looked back at her, and she could feel him mentally trying to place her.
“Mila,” she said softly, answering his unasked question. “I . . . I got here today. Remember?”
He pushed himself up so that he was leaning back on his elbows, and he looked around the room again, and she got the feeling that he was making a conscious effort to come back here from wherever it was he had been before. It seemed to work, too, because when he looked back at her, it was as if he were seeing her—really seeing her—for the first time since she woke him up. “I remember who you are,” he said, his voice sounding dry and sandpapery. “But I don’t know why you’re in my room.”
“I . . . I was worried about you,” she stammered. “I wanted to help you, I mean, I want to help you,” she said, correcting herself.
He stared at her for another moment, then shook his head, as if she’d said something he didn’t want to hear. “Did I tell you you could come into my room?” he asked, and his blue eyes were not only focused now but staring at her, in a cold, hard, flat way.
“What? No,” she said, taking a step back from his bed. “You didn’t tell me I could come in here. You were asleep. But you were . . . you were asking for help, Reid. In your dream.”
He made a motion with his hand, an impatient motion, as if he were brushing all her words away. “Look, if I need your help—which I don’t—I’ll ask for it. Otherwise, leave me alone.”
She hesitated, shocked by the hostility in his voice. How could a man who barely knew her dislike her as much as he already did?
“I’ll . . . I’ll try to leave you alone,” she said, willing herself to be calm. “But I have to do my job.”
There was a pause. Then he said quietly, so quietly that she had to lean in to hear him, “Then do your job. But stop trying to be helpful when you have no idea what you’re doing. And don’t ever come into this room again without being invited in. Is that clear? Or are we going to have to spell it out in your contract?”
“No . . . it’s, it’s clear,” she said, her eyes burning with tears that had come out of nowhere. She backed out of the room, turned off the light, and closed the door behind her. She didn’t remember walking back down the hallway, or closing her bedroom door behind her, or even collapsing onto the floor beside her bed. But she must have done all those things, because that’s where she found herself, a few minutes later, lying on the floor, curled up on her side, and crying, really crying, crying in the way she’d wanted to cry ever since she’d left home that morning. All the defenses she’d so carefully constructed had been torn down now, and all of the optimism she’d so diligently nurtured had been blown apart. She was alone, afraid, exhausted, overwhelmed, and almost indescribably lonely.
And the worst part was, she didn’t actually believe she could do this. Any of this. Didn’t believe she could start over again, didn’t believe she could put her past behind her, didn’t even believe she could do the job she’d been hired to do. After all, how could she take care of a patient when she couldn’t even take care of herself? We’re like the blind leading the blind, she thought of the two of them as the sobs racked her body. Because while her injuries might be hidden from view, she knew, in their own way, they’d left her as damaged and as broken as Reid’s injuries had left him.
CHAPTER 6
It felt like a lifetime ago, but, in fact, it had only been six days earlier that Mila had waited outside the offices of Caring Home Care, trying to catch her breath, and standing, awkwardly, because the heel on one of her shoes had broken. It was six o’clock on a humid Friday evening, and she was already a half an hour late for her appointment with Gloria Thompson, the agency’s owner. Everything that could go wrong on the way there had gone wrong. She’d missed her bus, flagged down a taxi instead, and then gotten stuck in traffic. She’d paid the driver, gotten out, and run the last three blocks to the office building, then ran up two flights of stairs when the elevator wasn’t waiting in the lobby. It was on the last flight that the heel on one of her pumps had broken off. She’d ignored it and limped down the hallway instead, half expecting to see that the office was already closed. But no. She could see now through the frosted glass door that the lights were on, and she could hear someone moving around inside.
She held up her hand to knock on the door, but before she could, it swung open. “Ms. Jones?” the woman standing there said. She was petite, with brilliant white hair worn in a sleek chignon, and striking blue eyes that stood out against her olive complexion. She was at least seventy. Maybe older. But she radiated an energy and a vitality that was rare in a woman half her age.
Mila, too winded to speak, could only nod in answer to her question. Standing there, she tried to tuck in her blouse, which had come untucked from her skirt, and to push some of her perspiration-damp hair off her face, but then she gave up. She wondered how she looked to Ms. Thompson. Like a wreck, she decided. Like a person who couldn’t even be trusted to care for a goldfish, let alone an actual human being.
Finally, between breaths, Mila said. “I’m sorry . . . I’m late . . . I know . . . You told me you have to leave by—”
But Ms. Thompson moved aside and gestured for Mila to come into her small but comfortable office. “Why don’t you have a seat,” she said, indicating one of the chairs facing the desk. And then, as Mila sank down gratefully into it she observed, “I see you broke your heel.” Mila nodded, still trying to breathe normally. “I hate heels,” Ms. Thompson remarked as she filled a glass of water from a pitcher. Mila hated them too, but she’d been trying to look at least semiprofessional when she’d gotten dressed to come here today.
Ms. Thompson handed her the glass of water and then sat down on the edge of the desk, facing her. And Mila murmured “Thank you” and sipped the water, and when she trusted herself to speak again, said, “I know you need to leave now. You said there was somewhere you needed to be this evening. I’m sorry if I’ve made you late for it.” She stood up then. The interview, she assumed, was over before it had even begun.
But Ms. Thompson gestured for Mila to sit down again, and, fixing her with her penetrating eyes, she asked, “Ms. Jones, why was it so important to you that you see me now?”
Mila, disarmed by her directness, stumbled a little. “I, I’ve . . . I’ve always wanted to be a nurse,” she said. “Since I was in the third grade. Since before that, really. I’ve always wanted to take care of people. And working as a home health aide would let me do that while I prepare for—”
But Ms. Thompson cut her off with an impatient gesture. “That’s all very noble, Ms. Jones,” she said. “But this is what I would have expected you to say if we’d met on Monday morning, as I suggested. But when you told me you needed to come in this evening, I assumed it literally could not wait.”
“It couldn’t,” Mila said honestly. She knew there was no point in even trying to lie when she was on the receiving end of Ms. Thompson’s laserlike focus.
“Good,” Ms. Thompson nodded approvingly. “So why don’t you forget the formalities. And forget, too, the speech about wanting to be a nurse. Which, by the way, I believe. After we spoke on the phone an hour ago, I called Mary Meyer for a reference. She said she’s been teaching your certification class, in one form or another, for thirty-five years, and that you were one of the best students she’s ever had, ever, and that you would make an excellent hire for this agency, not to mention an excellent nurse one day. So, as I said, it’s not that I don’t believe you when you say you want to be a nurse. It’s just that I don’t believe it’s the reason you had to come see me right now, late on Friday just before closing, instead of on Monday morning, like
I suggested over the phone. Am I right?”
Mila nodded, and then, without warning, her eyes glazed over with tears, and the view of Ms. Thompson, sitting on the edge of her desk, swam away, as if she were suddenly looking at her under water. Mila wiped impatiently at her tears, wondering why she’d chosen this moment, of all possible moments, to cry. She needed a job, damn it. Behaving like some blithering idiot wasn’t going to get her one.
When her vision cleared again, though, Ms. Thompson wasn’t sitting on her desk anymore. She was sitting on one of the office chairs next to Mila, holding out a box of tissues. Mila took one and blotted her tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be sorry,” Ms. Thompson said calmly. “Just tell me why you’re here.”
Mila hesitated, rehearsing another lie. But then she looked at Ms. Thompson’s expression, which was firm but not unkind, tough but not judgmental, and she made a split-second decision. A decision she would be glad she’d made for the rest of her life. She decided to tell Ms. Thompson the truth. “I’m in an abusive marriage,” she said simply. “And when I tried to leave my husband once before he found me. Now, he says he’ll never let me leave him again.”
Incredibly, Ms. Thompson didn’t look surprised by this. She just nodded and said evenly, “Tell me about it.”
“I . . . I don’t really know how to,” Mila confessed. “I’ve never told anyone about it before.”
“No, I don’t think you have.” Ms. Thompson sighed. “But if you want me to help you, you’re going to need to tell me about it. So start . . . start from the time you met your husband. And go from there.”
So that was what Mila did. She started from the time she’d met her husband, Brandon, two years ago. She spoke slowly at first, haltingly. Since she’d gotten married she’d become a master of deception, first at hiding the truth from herself, and then, finally, hiding it from others. But Ms. Thompson knew how to ask the right questions. And she knew how to wait for the answers. And when those answers came, she was ready with more questions. And she didn’t seem shocked by the answers either. In fact, she listened to them all unflinchingly.
By the time Mila was done telling her story, she’d gone through half a box of tissues, and the evening outside the office windows had turned to night. “I’m sorry I kept you so long,” she told Ms. Thompson. “You’ve missed your other commitment, haven’t you?”
“Oh, definitely,” Ms. Thompson said, with a faintly amused smile. “But don’t worry about it. It was my book club meeting, and since I have a terrible track record when it comes to actually having read the books we choose, my presence there tonight probably won’t be missed.”
Mila smiled tentatively. Now she had a question for her. “Ms. Thompson?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you want to know all of that? About my marriage, I mean. You’ve never even met me before.”
“No, I haven’t,” Ms. Thompson said gently. “But I feel like I have.”
Mila looked at her questioningly.
“When I spoke to you on the phone this afternoon,” Ms. Thompson explained, “it was a little bit like . . . like speaking to myself. A younger version of myself. And then, when I saw you outside the office door, and I saw . . . well, I saw that you’d gotten a black eye, not too long ago, I knew why you seemed so familiar.”
“It shows?” Mila said, skipping over the rest of what Ms. Thompson had said. Her fingers traveled, almost unconsciously, to her still tender eye. “I thought I covered it up pretty well,” she said, her face burning with shame.
“Oh, I don’t think it’s visible to the untrained eye,” Ms. Thompson said quickly. “But it was visible to me. Probably because I’ve had so many of them myself.”
“Black eyes?” Mila repeated, not understanding.
“Black eyes, split lips, you name it, Mila. I’ve had them. All of them. Because I was in an abusive marriage too.”
“But . . .” Mila started, and then she stopped. She didn’t believe it. This woman, sitting in front of her, was nobody’s victim.
“No, it’s true,” Ms. Thompson said. “And it went on for many years. Of course, this was a long time ago. A lifetime ago, I like to think.”
“But . . . can I ask . . . I mean, how did it happen? I mean, you seem . . . you seem so strong,” Mila said.
Ms. Thompson smiled, a little sadly. “Well, I had to be strong.”
“But how did you . . . ?”
“How did I get away from him? With great difficulty.” Ms. Thompson sighed. “I spent years trying to end the marriage. But my husband said if I tried to leave him, or divorce him . . .” She shrugged, leaving Mila to fill in the blank. “Mind you, Mila, I’m almost eighty,” she continued, “so this was over fifty years ago. It was a different world back then. If you called the police over an incidence of domestic violence, they’d tell you it was a ‘family matter,’ and that they didn’t want to get involved. And there were no battered women’s shelters then, either, or at least none that I knew of. So as miserable as I was, I’d basically resigned myself to staying in the marriage . . . and then, then one day my husband met another woman, and she fell very much in love with him.”
Mila’s eyes widened with surprise. She fell in love with him? she almost said, but then she caught herself. She’d fallen in love with Brandon, hadn’t she? Or at least at the time she’d thought so. She’d been so swept up in his passionate pursuit of her that she’d been sure it must be love.
“As it turned out,” Ms. Thompson said, “that woman’s loss was my gain. My husband let me go, and . . . well, I don’t know what happened to him. Or to her.” She gave a little shudder. “They moved away, and that was it. I never saw either of them again. I’ve often felt guilty, over the years, that I didn’t try to warn her, somehow, about my ex-husband. But at the time . . .” She shrugged, a little helplessly. “At the time, she was my only way out.”
Mila nodded slowly. What an awful choice, she thought. But then again, if someone had tried to warn her about Brandon in the beginning, would she have listened to them? Would she have believed them? She didn’t think so.
“In any case,” Ms. Thompson said, moving on, “I got a divorce, and I went to nursing school, and then, after I’d worked as a nurse for several years, I went back to school and got a business degree, and I started this agency. I’ve liked the work, tremendously. And it’s left me enough time to do something else, too, something close to my heart.”
“What’s that?” Mila asked, her curiosity overcoming her shyness.
“I volunteer at a battered women’s shelter. And I like to think I’ve helped some of the women I’ve met there start over again, too. That’s what you want to do, isn’t it, Mila? Start over?”
She nodded solemnly.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Ms. Thomson warned.
“I know that.”
“And, once you do start over, you can’t go back. First, you’ll need to get as far away from your husband as you possibly can. And then, you can never, ever, get back in touch with him again. You understand that, don’t you? No matter how much you miss him? Because, crazy as it may sound, you might find yourself missing him one day, especially if you get lonely enough.”
“No,” Mila said vehemently. “I’ll never miss him. Ever. But right now, it’s a moot point. I don’t know how to get away from him. I have a little money saved. Enough to get myself somewhere. But once I get there, I’m going to need to have a way to support myself.”
“Well, Mila Jones, you just might be in luck,” Ms. Thompson said. She stood up, walked over to a file cabinet, slid one of the drawers open, and selected a file out of it. Then she came back and sat down beside Mila, flipped open the file, and scanned it quickly.
“I just got a fax today,” she said, looking up at her. “It’s from a home health care agency in Ely; I’ve done some work with them before. They’ve been having trouble finding a live-in aide for one of their clients.”
“Ely? That
’s way up north, isn’t it?” Mila frowned. “They couldn’t . . . find someone who already lives up there?”
“It’s a special case, I guess,” Ms. Thompson said, still scanning the file. “A problem client. They’ve already had two unsuccessful placements with him.”
“Him?” Mila echoed.
Ms. Thompson nodded, not looking up. “I think they thought I might know someone who could handle him.”
Handle him? Mila’s stomach contracted. She didn’t like the sound of that.
“Oh no,” Ms. Thompson said, looking up from the file and reading the expression on Mila’s face. “I don’t mean he’s abusive. Well, not physically abusive, anyway. There’s no indication of that. From what I can tell, he’s just a jerk. A garden-variety jerk. Not pleasant to be around, maybe. But not dangerous, either.”
Mila nodded, a little uncertainly, but she reminded herself that not every man was like Brandon. Most of them, in fact, were not. There’d been a time when she’d known that, too. She’d just forgotten it.
“I like this placement,” Ms. Thompson murmured, more to herself than Mila, as she studied the file again. “It would solve a lot of your problems. This patient lives in Butternut, Minnesota. That’s over five and a half hours north of here. And not only that, but he lives outside of the town, too, on a lake. Butternut Lake. I gather it’s fairly remote. But not a bad place to hide out for a while,” she added, looking up at Mila again.
“No,” Mila echoed, again uncertainly. She was thinking about living alone with a man in the middle of nowhere.
“When can you start?” Ms. Thompson asked her suddenly. Decisively.
“Start? You mean, start working there?”
Ms. Thomson nodded. “How long would it take you to tie up your loose ends here?”
“Not long,” Mila said honestly. Thanks to Brandon, she had no life anymore. And consequently, no loose ends to tie up either.