"No," I lied again, not wanting to set him off.
"You won't even look at me," he observed.
"Yes, I will." I turned briefly and then looked away again.
"Look at me," he said, more pleading than ordering.
I shifted, ever so slightly in my seat, and raised my eyes to look at him.
"Why are you afraid of me?" he asked.
Really? After seven years of being terrorized, this man, my husband, was actually sitting in front of me asking me why I was scared of him. Was I on some kind of sick prank television show?
"I'm not afraid of you, Derek."
He wasn't convinced. He knew I was scared of him and he knew why.
I watched my husband lean forward to rest his head in his hands, and he took in two or three ragged breaths. Was he sick? Maybe he had more to drink than I realized. When he raised his head and looked back at me, what I saw in his eyes almost sent me into shock.
Tears.
He looked away, then, rubbing his eyes roughly, obviously ashamed of his outward display of feeling.
"Belle," he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "I'm a horrible person and a horrible husband. I’m mean to you," he continued. "I hurt you. You didn’t deserve it…any of it. And yet, you’re still here. Every day, every night. Why?"
He looked back at me, expecting an answer.
"You’re my husband, Derek." It was the truth and the only explanation I could offer him.
"I don't know why. I don't know why you married me. When we got together, I was nothing. Back in high school, I was really something. And then..." His voice broke off as another sob tore through him.
"Derek, it's okay."
"No!" He shook his head violently. "It's not okay. You don't understand. I killed people, Belle. I...killed...people! I never meant for them to die.” Tears streamed down his face, and he wiped them away as quickly as they came. I sat in shock over what was happening. I should have had some type of emotion as my husband bared his soul to me. Relief? Pity? Guilt? Anger? But I couldn’t move past shock and awe.
Derek had never once spoken of the accident to me, never admitted to being a disappointment as a husband and I didn’t know how to feel about it.
"Little girls...little girls died because of me," he cried out. "They had their whole lives ahead of them, and I took all that away. Because I was stupid and I was drunk. Why didn't I die that night? I wanted to die!
"When I woke up in the hospital room and they told me what I’d done, it didn't really sink in. It was like… I shut down inside and couldn't face it all. When they locked me up in that cage, I couldn't hide from myself anymore.
"I killed people. I’m a murderer. I ruined lives! And the sick thing was… I should have known better! And... I ruined your life too. I ruin everything!" Derek sobbed into his hands.
When his cries quieted, he still shook with emotion for several more minutes before he was able to draw a few deep breaths and calm himself down.
I wanted to comfort him. It was the right thing to do. I should have held him and told him that it was okay and that everything would be fine.
But it would have been a lie. For Derek, it probably would never be okay. He had guilt that he would live with for the rest of his life.
Then again… what he had been doing for the past twenty years wasn't living, not really. He had to find a way to forgive himself and move forward — to stop punishing himself so severely. It was something I couldn't do for him. He had to do this on his own.
He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, regained his composure, turned back to me, and said, "After everything happened and everyone else walked away from me... you came along. I don't know why you agreed to marry me and I definitely don't know why you stayed with me."
"I thought I could help you," I whispered. Tears filled my eyes now, threatening to spill over. I blinked them back. "I thought I could make it better for you."
Derek dropped to his knees in front of me. "You do help me, Belle. You do make things better. I know I'm a terrible husband. I know I drink too much. I want to get help. Will you help me? I don't want to lose you."
He wrapped his arms around my waist and leaned into my chest. I gingerly put my hands on his shoulders and let him sob against me while I stroked his hair, trying to give him some comfort — the only comfort I could give him.
When he had finally calmed down enough, he looked up at me. "I'm so sorry. Please don't leave me. Give me another chance. I promise to be a better husband."
I nodded. He was my husband after all. What other choice did I have?
"Can we go to bed?" he asked quietly.
"Sure." I reached down to get his dinner dishes and he grabbed my hand gently.
"Leave those. I’ll clean them up in the morning." He would clean them up?
I nodded and gave him a small smile.
That night when we went to bed together, Derek simply wanted to hold me, all night long. Every time I moved or rolled over, he was right there with me, arms and legs draped all around me.
Yet, as I closed my eyes, captive in the arms of my husband, the only face I saw was Landon's.
Chapter Nine
The next morning I woke up and in typical fashion, found the bed empty next to me.
Derek was already gone.
It was my day off and even though I had receipts to look over and a few other things to do at Turning Point today, I was in no hurry. I lay in bed for a few extra minutes, more relaxed than I’d been in years. Last night had not been a night of anger or violence; it had been a breakthrough and perhaps a new beginning.
I found my way to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. I ate a quick breakfast and washed my dishes as I looked out of the window over the sink into the back yard and remembered what had happened the night before — Derek's admissions and promises — and I allowed myself just a bit of hope.
He actually talked about the accident. He said he was sorry...to me!
I was left in a daze of disbelief mixed with the tiniest glimmer of optimism.
Today could be a new start for Derek and me. If he would get help, both for his drinking and his anger, then there was a real chance that things could get better for both of us.
He asked me to help him.
Me!
It was difficult to imagine a life with Derek that didn't involve drinking and yelling, but I was willing to entertain the idea of one.
When Derek and I were first married, my dreams for our future were grand. It was never about marrying the football star from high school, as several of my former classmates accused me of doing. I married Derek because I genuinely believed we could be happy together. I saw us settling down into a quiet life in Cannon Beach, working, and raising a family. We didn’t necessarily have to be in love, to have a good marriage.
I’d always wanted children. I imagined the two of us raising a little boy with Derek's good looks and athletic ability, or maybe we would have a daughter. It would be amazing to have a daughter. Perhaps I would have named her after my mother.
Or...maybe we could have had a boy and a girl. Two children.
But, the babies never came.
I presented the question to my doctor after Derek and I had been married for about three years. I had not been on any birth control since our wedding day and yet, I’d never gotten pregnant in all that time.
She put me through all the tests and it turned out I was perfectly healthy. I knew my husband well enough to know that questioning his virility by suggesting he undergo testing too was not an option. Therefore, my doctor was never able to determine the reason I hadn't gotten pregnant. She’d told me that without answers not to get my hopes up that I would ever have a baby.
I knew, in the end, it was a blessing that we didn't have children. Even if Derek wasn’t physically abusive towards them, they certainly wouldn't have been able to avoid seeing what he did to me. I wouldn’t want them to grow up believing that we had a normal relationship.
If we did
have a son, the idea that he would one day become like his father...or that my daughter, because of my example, would allow herself to be abused were both heartbreaking scenarios for me.
Putting the abuse aside, Derek was so mean to everyone. I imagined what he would do the first time his son or daughter came running to him with a scraped up knee or hurt feelings. He would probably laugh at them and send them away more upset than when they came to him. Derek was incapable of being a caring father, not possessing all of the qualities that required.
Even though I never knew him, I knew that Derek would never compare to my father.
Although it wasn’t easy, I made my peace with the reality that I would never be a mother.
This morning, though, everything was different. Now, maybe there was a way for us to have a family.
My head swam. I needed to talk to someone about all of this. I sent my sister a quick text message, asking if she wanted to have lunch today.
After I had sent it, I noticed a new message in my inbox. It was from Landon.
Landon.
I’d been so wrapped up in my own feelings this morning that I’d not thought about him since last night.
Thx 4 the email. Sry I missed wrk. Will B there tmr. Miss you.
I deleted the message without responding. I couldn't let my feelings for Landon, or his for me, cloud my judgment anymore. Derek was my husband and he had asked me for a second chance. I had to do everything in my power to give it to him. I owed my marriage that much, regardless of how I felt about Landon.
For just a split second, I imagined what it would be like to tell Landon that I was giving Derek another chance. It was going to be heartbreaking, mostly for me. Landon would be fine. He’d move on and find love with someone more appropriate for him. My path was already set in stone. There was no way to change things now.
I pushed the thoughts of Landon from my mind, took the last sip from my coffee mug, and headed out of the kitchen. As I passed by the living room, I saw out of the corner of my eye Derek's dishes sitting exactly where he left them last night.
"I'll clean them up in the morning," he’d said. I contemplated leaving them on the coffee table...for only a moment. Then the conditioning of seven years of abuse kicked in and I hurried into the room, to retrieve the plate and cup.
As I washed them, I comforted myself by thinking, "Derek was probably just running late this morning. He really meant what he said last night, and he was going to clean them up. Really."
Then I remembered the last time when I used the excuse of being late to work as my reason for not cleaning, how he’d beaten me with a full coffee mug.
I willed myself to look only to the future. I dried the dishes, put them away, and headed into the bathroom. When I got out of the shower and was ready to head out the door to the store, Hannah had gotten back to me:
lunch sounds great
I messaged her back:
meet at your place at one o'clock
Before heading for lunch at Hannah's, I found myself on the familiar stretch of highway between Cannon Beach and Seaside. As had become my weekly ritual, the flowers I purchased at Theresa’s were lying next to me on the passenger's seat of my car.
“Mornin’, Belle,” she said to me as I walked in. Every Monday morning, she always had the flowers waiting up front and ready for me, complete with a sympathetic look.
“Hi, Theresa.” I placed a few dollar bills down on the counter, but she waved me off. “Thanks.”
“I noticed a bunch of trash bags piled up by your back door when I drove by this morning.”
“Yeah?”
She shrugged. “A woman has to know how to take care of her house and her man…”
I’d already heard this conversation hundreds of times over the years. I didn’t want to hear it again. I turned away and waved a goodbye without another word.
As I let my foot off the gas, getting closer to my destination, I looked over at the flowers that sat next to me in the car: each bouquet was purple, and the lone red rose. At the funeral, I remembered the entire chapel was adorned with purple flowers. It seemed appropriate.
I knew the accident was Derek’s fault, but as his wife, I felt a certain responsibility to the victims. I supposed leaving flowers must have been the one thing that I did right in Theresa’s eyes because, as far as I knew, she never told anyone else about them. The entire town talked about Derek, why wouldn’t they be interested in this? I didn’t care what she thought, what anyone thought. The reason I came here, week after week, was because I never wanted anyone to forget what happened. Even though I acknowledged that I shouldn’t feel guilty for what he did, I still shouldered some of his responsibility and that fact drew me to this spot each and every week for the past several years.
I pulled off on the side of the highway and looked across the roadway at the four crosses, planted there as a reminder to the tragedy that had occurred. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of cars had passed by this stretch of road in the last twenty years. I hoped some took a moment to consider the lives the crosses represented.
I hopped out, flowers in hand, looked both ways, and darted across the highway to the other side. I knelt at the white crosses. As I did, I noticed that someone else had been here recently — very recently — and left flowers as well. In all my years of weekly visits to this place, there were only a handful of times there had been other flowers.
Perhaps it was Joseph. It might have even been Derek.
I carefully placed my purple bouquets against each of the three Peterson crosses. At the fourth cross, I placed the single red rose, remembering how Derek used to bring Jenny a rose every Friday.
Everyone always talked about how the deaths of the mother and two daughters had been such a horrible loss but I didn't want, for a moment, to forget that Jenny’s life ended in the tragic accident, as well.
I stood, in a moment of silence, staring down at the memorial. It was time to make things right. It was time for Derek to find a path back to forgiveness and life.
"Your lives mattered," I said to the crosses. "I will never forget you. He will never forget you. But my life matters...and Derek's life matters. Please try to understand."
With that said, I turned back to my car and soon was on the way to my sister's.
Hannah's house, or cottage rather, sat right on the edge of town and overlooked the ocean. It had the typical cedar shake siding predominant in the town and was painted sky blue with traditional white shutters on the two front windows.
The shutters, however, were the limit of my sister's nod to tradition. Chimes and windsocks covered the entire front porch, hanging from every surface that would hold a hook. There were so many, that the view of the house was almost obscured. The windows twinkled with crystals that spun and twirled in the sunlight. The front lawn wasn't really a lawn; it had grass that surrounded a small labyrinth made of pebbles and crushed seashells, created for her by a traveling group of naturopaths-slash-hippies about five years ago.
The front door had a large yin-yang painted on the white wood. Above her doorbell, which rang like a gong instead of a typical doorbell, there was a plaque with one word written on it: Namaste.
Hannah's cottage reminded me of the houses I saw in movies. The scene where the main characters would go, albeit skeptically, to get a reading from the crazy psychic lady. In the end, the psychic’s foresight would lead them to the killer or the buried treasure or whatever.
Perhaps my personal crazy psychic lady would have insight for me today.
I wandered around to the rear of the house and found Hannah, sitting on the back porch, face turned up to the sun, legs crossed, humming to herself in a deep meditation.
I shook the deli bag to get her attention. "Lunch is here."
She opened her eyes and smiled up at me. "I was just sending you some good energy. Did you feel it?"
"Oh, of course," I lied.
"I was also telepathically telling you what I wa
nted for lunch. Let's see if you heard me."
I laughed as she opened the bag and squealed. "It worked! I knew it would. I tried this new method of focusing on your face in my mind, and I visualized telling you specifically what I wanted for lunch. And this is exactly what I told you to bring." She hugged me enthusiastically.
I didn't have the heart to burst her bubble. Hannah was habitual about what she ordered from the deli and I’d been bringing the same thing to her for years.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of this lunch?" Hannah asked as she lowered herself into a chair and curled her legs under her, settling in before she took a big bite of her vegetarian sandwich.
"Well…" I sat down at the table on the back porch, laid out my meal, and told my sister everything that had happened the night before.
She listened intently while I related to her Derek's confession and his desire to stop drinking and get help. I told her about how he said he was sorry for being such a terrible husband.
"He said he didn't understand why I stayed with him all of these years."
"Well, we’ve all been wondering that one."
"Can you stay positive?" I asked her, irritated.
"Yes." Hannah held up her hands in surrender. "I'm sorry. By all means, please go on."
"Hannah, he even talked about the accident," I added.
"Really?" She looked as stunned as I had been. "Wow. That's big."
"It gets bigger. He cried Han. Derek actually cried."
"As in tears? Real tears? Are you sure it wasn’t beer leaking out?"
"I was there! I wouldn't have believed it either unless I saw it with my own eyes."
"That is something," she replied in disbelief.
Her reaction validated my own. She was as stunned as I was and it made me realize that this truly was a big deal. I hadn't blown it out of proportion. I hadn't made it a more significant than it really was.
"This could mean a lot of things for us, Hannah. We might even be able to start a family."
"Sweetie." She put down her sandwich, leaned towards me, and took my hand in her own. "I am happy for you."
I could feel the word coming. "But?"
Turning Point Page 14