“What have I done?” Ray Sommers asked hoarsely. “Oh, my God, what have I done?”
Jack could almost feel sorry for him. Almost, but no cigar.
“You’ve blown it, you bastard,” he said. “That’s what you’ve done. Say goodbye to your nice family.”
He hauled Beth’s ex to his feet and planted him in a kitchen chair. Sommers slumped, head hanging, and wept. He hadn’t said another word when the Elk Springs P.D. came, raised eyebrows at Jack’s presence, went through the formalities and hauled Ray Sommers away.
Jack went looking for Beth and found her sitting on the living room couch, staring straight ahead at her boarded-over front window.
In profile, her face had a purity that awakened an ache under his breastbone. Somehow, even as an adult, she’d maintained an innocence that stirred a sense of chivalry in him. She and her daughter weren’t so different, both doing what they had to do but not understanding why anyone could want to hurt them.
But she heard his footstep and turned her head, revealing her right cheek, swollen and already purple. Her eye would be black tomorrow; she saw him only through a slit in the puffy flesh and through her one good eye.
“Is he gone?”
“Yeah. We need to get you to Emergency.”
She shook her head and then flinched. “No. I’m okay. I’ll get an ice pack.”
“Beth…” He sat on the couch beside her.
“No.” Sounding completely inflexible, she looked back implacably, nothing in her stiff posture suggesting she wanted to be held. “I’m not leaving the girls, and I’m not making them sit in a hospital waiting room for two hours. There’s nothing wrong with me that ice and a few hours won’t cure.”
“Where are they?”
“Upstairs. I made them go so they wouldn’t see their own father being shoved out in handcuffs.”
A frown began gathering on Jack’s brow. “You sound like you’d rather he strolled out and drove himself away.”
For the first time, her gaze fell from his. “No, I… I don’t know what I want. I just don’t understand why it came to this.”
“Because he’s obsessed with you and determined that you be the obedient little woman.”
“I never wanted to see him beaten up or bleeding.” Her voice was almost inaudible.
Beaten up? Maybe he was a little slow, but not until now had Jack realized that he, not her son of a bitch of an ex-husband, was being cast as the bad guy. The stereotypical brutal cop, apparently.
“What in hell does that mean?” he asked evenly.
Even her damaged eye sparked. “It means you enjoyed throwing him around! It means that for a minute there I was scared of you, too! It means—” Her voice cracked.
Jack shot to his feet. “He’d just hit the woman I’m falling in love with. How was I supposed to handle him? Ask him politely to leave? The way you did?”
She hugged herself, her unwavering gaze plainly despising. “The woman you’re falling in love with. You sound like him.” She couldn’t say his name; even “him” tasted bitter, Jack could see. “I know you mean well, but you’re just like him. You were as furious as he was, as ready to hurt someone. I want no part of it, Jack. Thank you for coming tonight—but please leave now.”
God. She was kicking him out. She didn’t want him because he’d defended her the way he should have defended Meg all those years ago.
Furious and afraid at the same time, he stalked toward the front door, then swung back to face her. Unclenching his jaw, he said harshly, “Tonight I handled your ex-husband exactly the way I would have any violent man who wouldn’t back off and who resisted arrest. He was drunk and blind to sense.”
Her mouth worked. “I saw your face.”
“And I saw yours.” His voice was pure gravel, scraping skin raw. “You don’t think you were angry? You don’t think you could lash back, if someone hurt one of your daughters? If you’d walked in to see that son of a bitch backhanding Stephanie? ‘Please leave?”’ He followed up a savage mimicry with a scathing, “You know what, sweetheart? You wanted me to protect you from your ex-husband. What do you say? Was that all that attracted you to me in the first place? Well, maybe tonight you’d better think it over—how did you think I would protect you? Or did you get exactly what you asked for?”
He felt a primitive satisfaction in slamming her front door behind him. Night had descended, a deep purple-black. The anger Beth had feared in him kept Jack warm halfway home before it wore off. He stopped suddenly and gripped the pickets of a neighbor’s fence, his own head bowed as he struggled for ragged breaths.
Beth Sommers had plenty of reason to fear any manifestation of male violence. He’d known that all along. He could have been more understanding.
He let out an oath that would have widened her eyes. How could she not see the difference between him and Ray Sommers? Her ex was on the thin edge, drunk and in a rage; he wouldn’t have been satisfied with giving her a black eye. In his view, she threatened his masculinity. Her very resistance goaded him. Until he was willing to admit his own problem, he was a dangerous man. He’d have hurt Beth badly tonight if he hadn’t been stopped.
Jack lifted his head and stared across Mrs. Finley’s dark yard to her golden, lace-curtained window beyond which, mercifully, no shadows shifted.
I did what I had to do, he told himself, but his self-righteousness crumbled under a sickening thought: On that long-ago day, did Ed Patton say the same, after he beat the crap out of his daughter’s boyfriend? Patton had been defending Meg, hadn’t he? Did he justify a moment of remorse the same way?
Had Ed Patton conducted his whole career as a brutal law enforcement officer under the same unshakable belief that he was doing what he had to do?
The very possibility made Jack feel sick. He’d worked under Police Chief Ed Patton’s tutelage. He had been determined to be a man who would never crawl again, never beg, never fail a woman the way he had Meg. Who better to learn from, he had thought, than the man who had been able to humiliate him so easily?
Somewhere along the way he’d known how warped that thinking was. Too far along the way, maybe. There’d been a time he was a cop too much like the man he now recognized as a monster. He had been too ready to use his fists or his weapons, too ready not to understand the shame in a man’s eyes, too blinkered to see the whole picture.
But he’d have sworn he didn’t wear those blinkers anymore, that he was a good cop and a decent man. Stumbling home, he asked himself: Had there been another way to stop Ray Sommers? Or had he, Jack Murray the man, not the cop, been itching to hurt him?
He spent half the night staring at the dark ceiling and rerunning the scene over and over, a director in the editing room wondering how it would play to audiences. How else could he have reacted? What if the woman wasn’t Beth, the man not Ray Sommers? What if he’d walked in on two strangers, like he had that first time when Sommers was shattering clay pots against her front door?
He examined his own emotions as well as he could remember them. Had he enjoyed the rush of adrenaline, the way some cops did?
God help him, how would Ed Patton have handled it?
Groaning, he grabbed the pillow and buried his face in it. Okay, how about Renee or Meg Patton? he asked himself. They were good cops both, but possessing a woman’s touch he’d once seen as weakness.
But no matter how many times he played it, Jack couldn’t come up with an alternative for him. He’d walked in too late; he’d let himself be a step behind, in part because he was trying too hard to respect Beth’s ability to deal with her ex-husband on her own. There was no way he could have let Ray Sommers’s fist connect with Beth’s face again.
And the bastard had fought. Jack had had to man-handle him. He hadn’t intended him to smash his nose against the refrigerator. It hadn’t bothered him. Okay, admit it, he told himself, fingers clenching the pillow, you did feel a moment of blood lust, of satisfaction Meg or Renee wouldn’t have shared. But he hadn’t tried
to draw blood. He had wrestled Sommers to the ground as efficiently as he could, given that the other man was fighting him with all his strength. He’d cuffed him neatly, held him down in the regulation way.
Jack saw again the hostility and contempt in Beth’s eyes, and a groan shuddered from deep in his chest. He was in love with a woman who detested him because he was who he was, because he’d done no more than what she asked of him.
His teenage girlfriend had despised him because he couldn’t fight back. Beth despised him as much because he had.
He had never expected again to feel the anguish he had the day Johnny Murray lost his girl and his self-respect. Meg was gone forever, but he’d spent a lifetime fighting to be able to look at himself in the mirror. Jack Murray hoped like hell he wasn’t wrong to stare squarely at himself tomorrow morning.
RAY SOMMERS AWAKENED in a jail cell for the second time in his life. Somebody was using a maul to split open his head as if it were a round of knotty hemlock. In a nightmarish sequence, he rolled over and puked his guts out into a basin waiting for him.
Only then, with a foul taste in his mouth and agony crashing through his skull, did he remember why he was here.
Stephanie. His pretty, gentle daughter. Behind closed eyelids, he saw her stare as if he were the psycho stepping out of her closet in a slasher movie.
Ray let out a hoarse cry. She was right. God help him, she was right. He wasn’t her daddy anymore. How long had it been since he’d thought about what she needed or wanted?
His belly empty, his mouth full of cotton, he lay back on the bunk with his forearm blocking the painful light from his eyes. The sledge kept whamming down, driving that sharp-pointed maul into his skull. The steady throb was like a deep-toned bass, background music to his black thoughts and the visions that came as quick as he could banish them.
Him sitting at the wheel of the pickup last night, downing beers. Not getting drunk; not him. But, wincing, Ray saw the pile of empties on the passenger-side floor. Must’ve guzzled eight twelve-ouncers. He who’d never drank more than a six-pack a week, not in his married days.
Next he was standing outside the kitchen door peering in, a damned Peeping Tom, not so much hungry for the sight of Beth’s face or his children’s as he was angry because they were in there and he was outside.
The shouting… He could hear himself, although it was hazy what he’d said or she’d said. I love you and want you back, was what he meant to say. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t.
Most of all, he kept seeing her face. She didn’t love him, that was plain. She looked at him with such contempt and sometimes fear. Ray wasn’t sure which was worse.
Again he groaned, his face twisting as he fought to hold back tears.
He was a lowlife who deserved both. He’d hit her. Hit his own wife. His ex-wife. No matter how much rage washed through him, he’d never done such a thing before. Never even thought about it.
That expression on her face had been more than he could stand. Without Beth his life was nothing. Empty. And there she was, staring at him as if he were a kindergarten teacher caught slapping the five-year-olds. He had almost heard the crack as his self-control snapped. He hurt so bad, he wanted her to hurt that bad, too. He wanted her sorry. He wanted…
Sweating now, Ray curled into a fetal position on his side. Mother of God, what would he have done to her if that cop hadn’t come? Would he have kept hitting and hitting until the red haze covering his vision cleared?
Was it in him to kill a woman?
He whispered a hoarse prayer, though he wasn’t a praying man.
He didn’t deserve Beth. Never mind his girls. He didn’t deserve to live. Whatever the law did to him wasn’t enough.
And Stephanie had seen him. She must have been the one who’d called the sheriff. She’d seen her own dad spitting blood, facedown on the floor in handcuffs. She knew who had hit her mother.
He hadn’t just lost Beth for good last night, Ray thought in despair. He had lost at least Stephanie. Who could blame her if she never wanted to set eyes on him again?
The hot, humiliating tears came then, wrenched out of him by racking sobs.
“Not my little girls,” he cried into cupped hands. “Don’t let me lose my little girls, too.”
BETH STAYED UP into the small hours comforting Stephanie and Lauren, explaining again and again what grief and alcohol could do to a decent man. She had to reassure Stephanie that she had done the right thing to call Jack even though her own heart was breaking and she would have given almost anything for him not to have come.
She knew what a fool she was even to give the time of day to such an idiotic thought. If Jack hadn’t come, Ray would have hurt her even worse. He might have killed her. It happened. Jack had saved her.
How could she blame him for riding to her rescue?
“Do you hurt really bad, Mommy?” Lauren’s small hand touched her mother’s injured cheek with incredible delicacy.
“No, no!” She smiled, although that did hurt. “It looks worse than it feels.”
The girls lay on each side of her on the bed, both nestled so close she knew they were afraid to be separated from her.
Throat closing, she wondered how could she blame Jack when he had saved not just her, but her daughters, from worse?
“Dad is really in jail?” Stephanie asked gruffly.
“Yep, and probably feeling pretty crummy by now. I could tell he was drunk.”
“Will they let him out tomorrow?”
Both girls were very still, waiting for her answer.
She gave them each a squeeze. “I don’t know. But you don’t need to worry. He’s going to be ashamed of himself and in plenty of hot water. We’re just going to have to wait and see what happens.”
“Will he make us keep going with him for weekends?” Stephanie asked, eyes pleading.
“Not for a while. Not until he works out his problems.” If he ever does, remained unspoken. “But I hope you can eventually. I know he loves you.”
At least, she’d thought he loved them. How could she be sure now? But some lies had to be told.
Eventually the girls fell asleep. Pressed between them, treasuring their closeness but also feeling trapped by their need, Beth had more than enough time to brood.
She heard Jack’s scathing voice. How did you think I would protect you?
Looking back, Beth despised herself. He was right; she had craved, so desperately, the security she felt with him. Had she wanted that sense of security to be an illusion? How could she be angry because he’d proved it wasn’t?
She told herself for the hundredth time that she was grateful he had come, that she didn’t blame him for anything he had done. It was only that she didn’t want to be involved with a man capable of that kind of violence. She hated the rage that had risen from both men like the smell of sweat, the bared teeth, the guttural obscenities as they struggled.
From now on, she would know. Her mind’s eye would see the snarl beneath the smile, and she would be afraid of what he could be. Jack had been kind to her thus far, but she couldn’t live with the possibilities.
No—if she were ever to have another serious relationship, it had to be with a gentle man.
One who would have been incapable of wrestling her crazed ex-husband into submission, a small voice whispered in her head. Who might not even have come when Stephanie called. Was that really what she wanted?
Her daughters found Jack a comfort; obviously, Stephanie had trusted him more than she did her own father.
Eyes feeling grainy, Beth stared into the darkness. She couldn’t date Jack just to keep him around like a security blanket for her children.
Or for herself, she added hastily, in the fear that he was right in his accusation. Perhaps the very facet of him that she now feared was what had attracted her initially, when she needed him.
But they had no future unless she could trust him. And she could never completely relax around a man so readily capable of viol
ence. She would always wonder when it might be unleashed on her.
Beth slept finally, and was surprised not to awaken until hot bands of sunlight passing between window blinds laid golden bars across the bed. Ten-thirty, she saw, turning groggy eyes on the clock. Stephanie stirred beside her, while Lauren murmured and burrowed into her pillow.
“Hey, sleepyheads,” she teased. “Rise and shine.”
She hadn’t set the alarm. Write notes for both girls excusing their late arrivals, Beth added to her mental list for the morning routine. Better than sending them to school tired and fearful.
Beth didn’t hear from either man that day. Would probably never hear from Jack again, she admitted to herself, not after the things she’d said to him. She would have to call and thank him again, soften what had sounded like criticism. She hated to think he didn’t understand. She knew in her heart that the problem wasn’t with him, it was with her.
Which didn’t change the outcome.
The arresting officer from the Elk Springs P.D. did leave a message saying that Ray had gotten out on bail but was fully cooperating. What did that mean? she wondered bitterly, before erasing the message on the answering machine so the girls didn’t hear it.
Ray phoned her at work the following day. She was alone in her office working on orders for a new line of greeting cards while a clerk covered the register. When she recognized his voice, Beth almost slammed down the phone.
“Don’t!” he pleaded, as though he’d read her mind.
Breathing hard, she hesitated, holding the receiver away from her as if it embodied him.
“Beth, I’m sorry. I had to tell you once, I’m sorry.”
She swallowed and replied with steel in her voice, “I won’t accept this apology. I’m sure you understand.”
“Yeah. I understand.” He sounded…sober.
“Why, Ray? What did I ever do?”
“Nothing.” Defeat came through in his voice. “I just couldn’t deal with losing you. That’s no excuse. I don’t want you to think I’m making one. I’m just…” A rasping sound might have been a suppressed sob. “I just went crazy.”
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