Swallowing his beer and staring at a flickering Bud Light sign in the tavern window, Ray saw it clear as day, a series of little steps like a baby going from pulling up on the couch to running into the street. Beth had been working on leaving him from the day she enrolled for that first class at the community college. His role had been sugar daddy. He could hold her up, pay the bills, until she could do it herself.
Even then, he had really believed she would come running back once the going got tough or the kids cried about missing their daddy. Or she missed him. Once he’d been her whole world, or so she claimed.
Now he knew. She’d decided she needed a man, all right, but she’d found a new one.
“Maybe his gun gets her excited.” Hearing his own voice surprised him. What was he doing, sitting here in the dark talking to himself?
“If I was any kind of man, I wouldn’t take this sitting down,” Ray mumbled. That was what he was doing. Sitting there on his ass while his wife let the county sheriff fondle her.
He’d had enough beers to feel alive and seriously pissed, but not enough to make him drunk. Not him! Why, this was a good time to let her know the world was a dangerous place for a woman and children living alone.
The phone calls had shaken her up, or else she wouldn’t have signed up for Caller ID. After a while the kids never answered, it had always been her. He could feel her terror even without hearing the gasp of breath, the sweaty sharpness with which she hung up.
He liked shaking her up when he had the kids, too. Maybe one of these weekends he just wouldn’t bring them home at all. See how she liked that big empty house then!
Ray tossed the empty can into the grocery bag and groped for another. On the brink of popping the top, he hesitated. Maybe he shouldn’t get drunk. Just do it, he thought.
Wasn’t that an Olympic motto or something? Maybe it was a beer commercial. Hell, he didn’t know.
“Just do it.” He tasted the words and liked them.
Decisively, he started the engine and backed out. He didn’t even have to go home. Everything he needed but a rock was in the toolbox in back. Conveniently, Ray himself had outlined a flower bed with softball-sized rocks.
Although he planned to make a quick getaway, caution made Ray park two blocks away. Damn, but nights were getting cold! He hated winter, a heartbeat away.
Ray dug out what he needed and then cut across lawns and through alleys to avoid streetlights. Plunging through a dark yard, fallen leaves crackling under his feet, Ray swore when vicious thorns snagged his pant leg. Still whispering obscenities, he turned and kicked at the shrub. Like a woman it lashed back and he let out a yelp.
He wanted to hurt something, and this was a good excuse. He found one long stiff cane with his questing fingers and then shoved the thorny arms down to a level where he could trample. Branches snapped and crunched under foot. He didn’t quit until a dog barked and a porch light came on. Then he ran.
He cut through a neighbor’s yard and came out in front. The rocks from the flower bed were just the size he’d remembered. One hefted in his hand, Ray crouched in front of Beth’s house. No, goddamn it! His house. For a moment, he saw nobody in the lighted front window. Then his dear ex-wife, as she liked to remind him she was, wandered into view with the phone to her ear. She glanced out the window, laughing. She was looking right at him as if he didn’t exist. Ray couldn’t believe it! She was laughing at him. Probably talking on the phone with her new boyfriend.
A bloody haze spread over his vision and he shot to his feet. Let her laugh, he thought savagely, and threw the rock with all his strength.
The front window exploded in glittering, golden shards like Fourth of July fireworks. Fitting, because he’d been saving the cherry bomb since the Fourth. He lit the fuse and flung it at the jagged hole. Glinting like a tiny firefly, it spiraled through the air. Just as it went through the opening, his triumphant gaze saw a shocked face staring.
Lauren. God help him, his freckled younger daughter was right there in the room.
His anguished bellow was lost in the boom that scattered more glass and sent him to his knees with his head buried in his arms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LAUREN SCREAMED and screamed even with Beth holding her tight. In desperation, Beth slapped her cheek just hard enough to sting.
The scream gurgled to a stop and Lauren stared with shock at her mother.
“Sweetie! I need to know if you’re hurt,” she said urgently. “Can you hear me?”
“I’m so scared!”
As patiently as she could, Beth repeated, “Can you hear me?”
Her youngest gave a jerky nod. Her pale freckled face was bleached to a pasty tint. Wet cheeks and runny nose didn’t help. “With this ear,” she whispered. “This one feels funny.”
“Oh, God.” Beth pulled her into a desperate embrace again. “We have to get you to a doctor.”
“Mom.” Stephanie appeared from the kitchen, looking scared. “The police are coming. I had to leave a message for Sheriff Murray.”
“Thank you.”
From where the three huddled in the entry hall, Beth looked through the arched doorway into the living room. Glass littered the hardwood floor in knifelike shards. She couldn’t take her gaze from one nearly a foot long that protruded from the couch like a dagger. What if a shard had exploded point first into Lauren’s tender skin?
Don’t let Ray have done this, she prayed.
Her own ears felt as if she had cotton wool in them. She seemed to hear a faraway throb, like war drums. Nearer sounds, like her daughters’ voices, were small and tinny, as if they came over the air-waves from a radio station she couldn’t quite tune in.
But sirens…she did hear the distant wail that came closer quickly.
Beth let the two uniformed officers in and said, “Thank you for coming so fast.”
It wasn’t their fault that neither was Sheriff Jack Murray.
Both were men in their forties with pleasant faces and the beginnings of paunches. From their voices, either could have been the officer she talked to the day Ray had kept the girls so late.
The two examined the living room, poking the rock and bits of debris from the bomb. She and the girls waited without moving from the foot of the stairs while the two male officers searched outside and came back in with wordless shakes of their heads.
“We’ll hope a neighbor spotted a prowler,” one said. “Somebody might have made note of a vehicle parked briefly. That’s our best hope.”
They would canvass the neighborhood several blocks each way, he added. Did she have any idea who might have done this?
Beth hesitated long enough that one repeated, “Ma’am?”
“Girls,” she said through the pounding in her ears, “go to the car. I’ll be there in a second.”
Stephanie put her arm around Lauren and led her toward the kitchen. After only a few steps, she paused. “Do we have to go outside without you?”
Beth’s heart squeezed. She and Ray had moved to Elk Springs so their girls could grow up feeling safe and confident. If he had done this to them… Fury greater than she’d ever known stirred and lifted its head like a beast awakening.
“No. It’s okay, Steph. Wait for me at the back door. I won’t be long.”
Her oldest nodded and they disappeared.
“You might talk to my ex-husband,” she told the two officers. “I’ve called about him before. He’s…angry.”
They made notes about the phone calls and the ringing doorbell, about the sixteen-year-old she’d had to fire from his job. They suggested a company who would come and board over her front window until she could replace the glass. Beth hadn’t known anyone could make a living boarding over shattered windows, but apparently there were plenty.
“Mainly after fires,” one of the policemen said, seeing her distress and surprise.
At the hospital she and Lauren took audio tests and submitted to doctors peering into their ears. Eardrums were intact; they
were very lucky. Their hearing would come back slowly. They might hear other, strange sounds in the meantime.
Beth discovered, walking through the lamplit hospital parking lot with her daughters plastered to each side, that she didn’t want to go home. A hollow feeling opened in her chest as she pictured pulling into the detached garage and stepping out into the yard, unlocking the kitchen door—had they locked it at all?—walking into the empty house. She would have to search every closet, under all the beds, take her flashlight to peer into the black attic. Her solid old house, always beloved, suddenly didn’t feel safe or altogether familiar.
The girls felt her shiver. “Mom?” Steph questioned, her voice high and panicky.
For the first time, Beth wished her parents lived in town. She wanted to go home and sleep in her childhood bedroom, be a child again instead of the parent who must always seem strong and assured.
She groped for other ideas. Maria. Of course, her friend would take them in, but Beth didn’t even know if she had a spare bedroom.
And then what? Unlocking her car, she made herself face facts. They had to go home eventually. She couldn’t afford just to walk away.
The anger waking inside her stirred again. No. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
Beth buckled Lauren into the car as if she were two years old again. Steph fastened her own seat belt and sat quietly and stiffly in the front.
Getting in behind the wheel, Beth said with false cheer, “Well, this was quite a night.”
No response.
During the drive she rattled on about how mean some pranks were and didn’t they remember the time the O’Learys’ house was egged and the time all the air was let out of the tires on Tiffany’s brother’s car.
Stephanie had her head bent so that a curtain of hair hid her face. In the rearview mirror, Beth’s eyes met Lauren’s.
“Mommy? I’m scared.”
“Oh, honey.” She turned into their alley, wishing the hedges weren’t so high and weren’t evergreen, that the overhanging trees didn’t block the streetlight with brown leaves hanging on. Wishing she had an automatic garage door opener. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I really think this was the same kind of prank as those others. Someone thought it would be funny. They must not have seen us through the window. It’s an awful mess to clean up, but that’s all.”
She heard a sniff from the back seat.
In front of the garage, she let the engine idle and got out herself to heave the door open. The backyard was a grotto of deep shadows to one side. Leaves rustled and she started. Trying to hurry but not be too obvious, Beth gritted her teeth. Tomorrow I’m calling someone about installing an automatic opener.
Then all she would have to worry about were the few steps to the back door.
And what might be waiting inside her house.
Back in the car, she didn’t start it forward immediately. “You know,” she said, “if you guys really are scared, maybe I should have a security system installed. That way we wouldn’t have to worry at all.” At least she’d gotten that “we” in there somewhere. Admit it. She was scared.
“Could you, Mom?” Steph said in a rush of heartrending relief. “It wouldn’t cost too much?”
“Nope.” She put the car in drive and eased forward into the garage. The very idea made her feel better. They’d get through tonight; he wouldn’t come back, not so soon after the police had been here. And maybe she could get the security system installed tomorrow.
Sticking close together, herd creatures clustering, they all walked quickly from the garage to the back door. Inside, the girls stuck with Beth as she scanned the kitchen, glanced in the pantry and poked her head in the den.
“What if someone comes in the window tonight?” Lauren asked in a small voice.
“I called a company to come and board it up. Let’s see if they have.”
All three stopped on the threshold of the living room. Nobody wanted to go in. She was grateful to see that the window had been covered with ugly but solid raw boards. The fragments of glass shone wickedly.
“I’ll clean this up after you guys go to bed,” she said in that fake cheery voice.
“Can we sleep with you, Mommy?” Lauren asked.
Ding dong.
Beth jumped six inches at the deep chime of the doorbell. Both girls jerked, too.
Turning to stare at the door, she thought, And a peephole, too.
Yeah? And what good will that do, considering you have to let him in?
“Who is it?” she called.
“Jack. Let me in, Beth.”
She almost fell against the door in her eagerness. The kids were still pressed to her sides when she got the dead bolt undone and swung the door open.
Jack shoved it wider to step across the threshold. He wore sweats. His hair was disordered, his eyes dark and tense as his gaze swept comprehensively over them. “You’re all right.” He sounded ragged asking what wasn’t quite a question.
“You got Stephanie’s message.”
“Walked in the door five minutes ago. I called and you weren’t here.” A nerve ticked beneath his eye. “Scared the…dickens out of me.”
Beth stepped back wordlessly, her ducklings shuffling with her. Jack followed and turned toward the living room. A profanity slipped out.
“None of you was in there?”
“I’d just started toward the kitchen to hang up the phone. Lauren was…about where you’re standing. She fell back.”
“A cherry bomb, the Elk Springs P.D. say.” The hard note in his voice gentled when he looked at Lauren. “You can hear okay? Did the doctor check you out?”
She nodded like a small bird. “I can’t hear so good out of this ear.” She pointed. “You sound funny. But the doctor says it’ll get better.”
When he looked at her, Beth nodded. “Thank God, her eardrum didn’t rupture.”
“You didn’t see anyone.”
She shook her head.
“Did you just get home?”
“Yep. I was going to take the girls upstairs and tuck them in.” She squeezed both. “In my bed,” she whispered in Lauren’s good ear.
Her daughter’s sweet smile lit.
“I’m going to spend the night,” Jack said, tone making clear that he wanted no argument. “On the couch.”
Another wash of relief almost buckled her knees. “You don’t have to….”
Their eyes met. “I couldn’t sleep if I didn’t.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“You’re welcome.” Jack nodded toward the stairs. “You been up there yet?”
Both girls shook their heads.
“Would you feel better if I check it out? Since you’ve been gone? Maybe stick my head in closets?”
“Will you look under my bed?” Lauren asked hopefully.
“Especially under the bed.” The smile softened his harsh face amazingly. “You guys brush your teeth while I go see if I can rouse some dust bunnies.”
“Well!” Beth said lightly. “I think I’m insulted.”
Any other time, she might have been worried about how neat closets were. Tonight she didn’t care. Jack already knew everything about them. He might as well see what it looked like under Lauren’s bed, too.
His presence made all the difference. Both girls began to talk as they changed into nightgowns and brushed teeth. Lauren kept saying, “I’m talking too loud, aren’t I? I can’t tell if I am.”
Stephanie admitted to screaming. “I wonder if anybody heard us?”
Passing in the hall, Jack said, “Yep. Five separate neighbors phoned the police. None of them was quite sure where the explosion had come from, but they reported hearing screams.”
“Oh.” Stephanie sounded satisfied. “I’ll bet I’ll be the only kid in seventh grade who had somebody throw a bomb through her front window.”
“I should hope,” Beth said with rolled eyes.
“All clear,” Jack reported a moment later. He tousled
Lauren’s head. “Some spots clearer than others.”
“Did you see any cassettes under there?” she wondered. “I have one that’s Greek myths. I listen to it at bedtime, and I can’t find it.”
“I saw a few Garfield books, some jeans, a headless Barbie.” He scratched his jaw. “A cassette now… I couldn’t say.”
“It’s disgusting under there,” Stephanie said with sisterly superiority. “She’s a slob.”
“Just ’cause you think you’re a teenager now…” Lauren flared.
Beth turned them toward her bedroom. “Save it for tomorrow, okay?” Secretly she was relieved by their byplay; they sounded normal.
She was very conscious of Jack filling the doorway of her bedroom as she tucked the girls into her queen-size bed. She wasn’t used to strange men seeing the lacy chintz pillows heaped on the window seat or the porcelain dolls sitting stiffly atop her dresser.
When Ray left, she had needed, on some deep level, to redecorate this room, to stamp it as hers. Perhaps to pretend he’d never been an occupant. She’d stripped the tan plaid paper from the walls and replaced it with an old-fashioned flowered paper. Woodwork she painted white. Even the rag rugs were pastel colored, the bedspread a fluffy chenille in soft lemon yellow.
Alone, she was comfortable in this bedroom. It expressed a side of her that employees used to her brisk decision-making and insistence on organization and record-keeping would be astonished to know existed.
Jack was so intensely masculine, so rough-hewn and blunt, so terribly out of place in this bedroom, she wondered how he could attract her when she also was a woman who craved lace and flowery wallpaper. Or had she deliberately created a bedroom in which any man would feel out of place? One designed, even, to repel the male of the species?
Disconcerting thought.
She kissed the girls good-night and left on a bedside lamp. Each had brought a book to bed. Lauren, who was rather fond of scary stories, had chosen to read a collection of knock-knock jokes. Which she would no doubt want to read aloud and drive her sister crazy. Tonight, Beth suspected, Steph would be indulgent.
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