When Never Comes

by Barbara Davis

  “Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what happened.”

  She looked down at the ground, hacking at the dirt with the heel of one boot. “Rhetta asked me to take Iris—permanently.”

  Wade’s eyes shot wide. “You mean adopt her?”

  “Yes.”

  It was little more than a whisper, barely audible, and as he studied her face, he was reminded of the disaster victims he had interviewed over the years—stunned into silence, as if she had survived some terrible calamity and was only now coming to terms with the devastation.

  He fought to keep his face neutral. “That’s a pretty presumptuous thing to ask someone you hardly know.”

  Christy-Lynn blotted her eyes again then shook her head. “Not presumptuous. Desperate. She’s terrified that when she dies Iris will end up in foster care—or with Ray.”

  “You’ve already gone above and beyond, Christy-Lynn.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing, Christy-Lynn. I just had to chase you into the woods.”

  She was quiet for a time, her gaze distant and clouded. “I know what it’s like,” she said finally. “To have no one, to be on your own in the world. I know what that’s like.”

  Wade reached for her hand, then thought better of it, afraid he might spook her again. “How old were you when you lost your mother?”

  She blinked at him. A fresh pair of tears slid down her cheeks. “I didn’t lose her.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Th . . . that she was dead, yes. It’s what I wanted you to think.”

  Wade wasn’t sure what he expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t this. “Why?”

  “Because I wanted it to be true,” she said with a watery hiccup. “And because as far as I was concerned it was. I was sixteen the last time I saw her. She was in the hospital, under arrest for smashing her boyfriend in the mouth with a bottle after he sliced her face open with a paring knife—and for being a thief and a junkie. She went to jail, and I went to foster care.”

  The news landed squarely in the center of Wade’s solar plexus as the pieces fell into place. One vital element of the story, and suddenly everything made sense; her obsession with Iris, her resolve to correct a parent’s neglect, her determination to safeguard Iris’s future. It all finally added up. And it was a gut-wrenching picture.

  “I don’t know what to say. I guess I get why you’ve been torturing yourself over all this. How long were you in foster care?”

  “Not long. I ran away. I lived on the street for almost two years.”

  Wade went quiet, absorbing the full weight of her words. Two years on the streets, and little more than a child. The urge to wrap his arms around her was suddenly overwhelming.

  “Foster care was that bad?” he asked instead.

  “It was for me. And when I think of Iris going through what I did, I just . . .” The words trailed off. She shook her head. “I can’t bear it.”

  She was rocking back and forth now, drawn in on herself, worrying the underside of one wrist repeatedly with the ball of her thumb. Wade locked on the gesture, frowning as he tried to pull up a memory. And then he had it—the night on the deck when he’d asked about her scars. At the time, it had seemed like nothing—three small scars whose origins she claimed not to remember. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  He reached for her hand, surprised when she didn’t resist. “I asked you about these once,” he said, tracing a finger over the trio of crescent-shaped marks. “You said you didn’t remember how you got them, but I think you do.”

  She nodded, and the tears began again. Wade had no idea what to say, no clue how to stem her pain, and so he said nothing, holding her hands instead and simply letting her cry. She had a right to her grief, a right to shutter whatever private hell she had endured, and to keep it shuttered if she so chose.

  And then, without any prompting on his part, the whole of it came pouring out.

  FORTY-THREE

  Goose Creek, South Carolina

  July 18, 1998

  Christy-Lynn cracks open the bathroom door, checking to make sure the coast is clear before slipping out into the hall in her towel. After two months at the Hawleys, she still feels like an intruder, the new kid everyone watches while pretending not to watch. She can hear the television downstairs, the eleven o’clock news punctuated by the steady sawing of Dennis Hawley’s snores. He was usually asleep by now, aided in part by the six-pack he killed each night while his wife worked the nightshift at Charleston Memorial.

  She reaches for the knob of her bedroom door, trying to remember closing it in the first place. She can’t but isn’t surprised. She’s been in such a fog lately, still sleepwalking through most days. The room is dark. She tries to remember shutting off the lamp beside her bed. That’s when she feels the first prickle of warning crawling along the back of her neck.

  There’s a whiff of stale smoke, of sour sweat and old beer. She barely has time to register that she isn’t alone when she feels a hand wind through her damp hair, and she’s yanked backward. As she gathers her breath to scream, a second hand clamps down over her mouth and nose, cutting off her air. She kicks and flails, but it’s no good. She’s being dragged across the room, her towel lost somewhere in the dark.

  Her head slams against the headboard as she’s shoved down onto the bed, and a burst of blue light blooms inside her skull. And then there are more hands—fastened over her mouth, pinning her wrists, prying her legs apart. There are two of them, she realizes sickeningly, two sets of hands pawing at her. The reality of what’s about to happen—of what is happening—is almost too much to grasp. She can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t scream.

  Someone is on top of her, a faceless shadow in the darkness, crushing the breath from her lungs as a sweaty hand fumbles between their bodies. And then there’s a piercing between her thighs, a rend up the center of her that feels as if she’s being split in two. For a moment, she’s terrified she’ll be sick, that she’ll choke on her own vomit because of the hand over her mouth. There’s a brief battering, a sickening spell of gasping and bucking, and then finally, a collapse of heavy, sticky flesh against hers.

  She has no idea how much time passes as she lays there, pinned to the mattress, trying to breathe through the fingers still pressed to her face, but eventually the weight lifts away. There’s a rasp and then a flare of light, the brief flame of a disposable lighter, and for the first time, she can make out Terry Blevins’s face hovering above her, slack-jawed and slick with sweat.

  “You want a turn, bro?” he asks thickly, still straddling Christy-Lynn as he smokes. “I’ll hold her.”

  “Let’s just get out of here before the old man wakes up.” It’s Todd, the younger brother, the one who has her mouth covered and her wrists pinned. He sounds scared, as if he’s just realized what they’ve done.

  “Come on, man. She’s right here. Or are you scared?”

  “Ain’t scared,” Terry grunts sullenly. “Just don’t want to.”

  There’s a moment, a fraction of an instant when the pressure over her mouth goes slack. She wrenches her head free and opens her mouth to scream. The sound is cut short as an open palm connects with her cheek. Lights dance, and she tastes blood.

  “Hold her still, dumb ass,” Terry growls at his brother. He sucks on his cigarette again, then aims the smoke at Christy-Lynn’s face. “As for you, you stuck-up little bitch, you’re going to lay there and listen. Got it?”

  The grip on her wrists tightens again, and her fingers begin to go numb. She lies still and dazed, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

  “You ain’t gonna tell anybody about this,” Terry says with vicious softness, his face so close she can smell the beer on his breath. “You’re gonna pretend it never happened. ’Cause if you don’t, if you even think about making any trouble, we’re coming back.”

  He leans closer then and takes ano
ther pull from the cigarette. The tip glows hot orange in the dark, sinister and coming closer—so close she can feel the heat of it against her cheek. She closes her eyes and struggles to pull away. She isn’t expecting the blinding sting that suddenly sears the underside of her wrist. She begins to buck and thrash, anything to get free, but there’s another slap, and then another sting as he presses the cigarette to her flesh again. Somewhere above her head Todd lets out a groan.

  “Jesus, Terry . . . leave her alone. You got what you wanted.”

  “Shut the hell up, boy,” Terry barks. “I ain’t done.” He leans in then, crushing the cigarette out against her wrist, holding it there until the reek of burning flesh fills her nostrils. “Now, you remember what we talked about,” he slurs menacingly close to her ear. “Not a word. Or I’ll be back—and next time I won’t be nice.”

  When Christy-Lynn finally eases herself up off the bed, she isn’t sure if one hour has passed or four. She has wept herself dry and knows what she has to do. She has seventeen dollars to her name, the last of her tips from the doughnut shop. Not nearly enough. But she can’t stay.

  She dresses in the dark, ignoring her wrist and the dull ache between her thighs. She empties her backpack—she won’t be needing her schoolbooks—then rolls up a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a denim jacket and stuffs them inside. It’s all she can fit in the backpack, but she’s afraid her duffel will be too heavy. And too conspicuous.

  Her hand is on the knob when she remembers the envelope in the stand beside her bed. It’s a silly thing to care about at a moment like this—a meaningless trinket—but somehow she can’t bear to leave it behind. After retrieving the envelope, she folds it into her back pocket, slides her pack up onto her shoulder, and steps out into the hall.

  She holds her breath as she creeps down the stairs. In the living room, Dennis Hawley is still snoring in his faux-leather recliner, his face flickering an eerie shade of blue in the glow from the TV. She eyes the front door then decides not to risk waking him. Instead, she turns down the hall and tiptoes into the Hawley’s bedroom.

  On the dresser is a wallet, a handful of change, a set of car keys. For a split second, she thinks about the Pathfinder parked in the garage but quickly discards the idea. She settles for the wallet instead, hoping it contains some cash, then moves to the window near the bathroom. It takes only a moment to slide the sash up and kick out the screen, then throw a leg over the sill and drop down into the hydrangeas.

  In the east, the sky has gone pink, the stars already winking out. The sun will be up soon, and by the time it is, she’ll be far away from the Blevins brothers.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Christy-Lynn stared down at her hands, clenched and bone-white. “I’ve never told anyone about that night. Not even Stephen. I thought I was past it. Then I met Iris. When Rhetta told me she could end up in foster care, it was like someone kicked in the door to my memory. Everything started seeping back in, only this time, my story was all jumbled up with hers, until I couldn’t tell the two apart. My past seemed like her future.”

  “And you felt like you had to fix it,” Wade said gently.

  “Yes. I wanted to believe the trust would be enough, that Stephen’s money would protect Iris from the things I’d gone through. But today, when Ray showed up, I realized money won’t change anything. She’ll have nice things and go to a good school, maybe even an Ivy League college if that’s what she wants, but all the money in the world won’t buy her what she really needs.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A mother.” The ache was back in her throat, guilt mingled with a bottomless grief. “I’ve been in Iris’s shoes. I know what it’s like to be a little girl and have that empty place in your life. That’s why I fell apart when Rhetta asked me to take her. Because I can’t give her that. I can’t be that.”

  Wade’s hands closed over hers, warm, firm. “I don’t know a woman who could. Not under these circumstances.”

  Christy-Lynn’s head lifted sharply. “It isn’t about that—about Honey or Stephen or any of that.”

  “Then what is it about?”

  “A promise I made a long time ago—to myself. I’ve always known I wasn’t cut out for the soccer mom thing. Mothers like mine make lousy role models, and then there’s the whole genetic crapshoot. Either way, I wasn’t risking it.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I think you were worried for nothing.”

  “Maybe, but the statistics aren’t good. And I’m not wired to feel things the way other women do. It’s like I skipped that line at the factory.”

  Wade stared at her openmouthed. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Because in my entire life I’ve never met anyone wired to feel things more deeply than you do, and I’m absolutely stunned that you don’t know that about yourself. I might buy that you’re afraid to feel things deeply, but you can’t help it. You’re one of the most caring people I’ve ever met. Maybe too caring, if there’s such a thing.”

  “Now maybe,” Christy-Lynn said, her eyes sliding away. “But not always. Not with my mother. I did what I could. I made sure we ate and had clean clothes. But she got to where she couldn’t keep a job. She started taking money from work, picking up men and bringing them home. When they arrested her, something in me shut down. I was just . . . done. But she’s my mother. I should have toughed it out or at least gone back.”

  Once again, Wade looked stunned. “How can you say that? You were a kid, for God’s sake. Living a kind of hell most of us can’t even imagine.”

  “I was supposed to keep her from self-destructing, and I did for a while. Maybe if I had stayed—” She paused, briefly closing her eyes. “The judge said I could go back if she cleaned up. That’s why I stayed gone. Because going back seemed worse than anything that could happen to me on the streets. So I disappeared. I never called, never wrote, nothing. I did a search for her a few weeks ago. Before that, I didn’t know if she was alive or dead.”

  Wade let out a long breath. “I’m starting to realize why you think it’s your job to fix everything. You’ve been carrying the world around on your shoulders since you were a kid, and you’re still doing it.”

  Christy-Lynn hiked a shoulder. She didn’t know if it was true or not, but if it was, she had certainly failed in spectacular fashion. Despite all her legal and financial maneuvering, Iris’s future hadn’t been improved in any meaningful way. And to top it all off, she had just run out on Rhetta in a full-blown panic.

  She lifted her eyes to Wade’s, suddenly exhausted. “What can I say? I’m a profound and irreversible mess.”

  “You’re not a mess, profound or otherwise. You’re just overwhelmed and rightly so. It’s been a bit of a day. We can either find a hotel close by so you can get some sleep, or I can take you home. Your choice.”

  “Home,” Christy-Lynn said without hesitation. “I want to go home.”

  It was almost midnight when Wade finally pulled the Rover into the driveway. Christy-Lynn was almost too exhausted to get out and go into the house. She had tried to sleep on the way back, but every time she closed her eyes, Rhetta’s words would float into her head.

  You need each other.

  It wasn’t true. Iris needed a mother, someone who could mend a broken childhood. That wasn’t her. In fact, it was becoming clear that she was still in need of mending herself.

  Wade grabbed her bag from the back seat then came around to open her door. She felt strangely detached from her body as she got out, as if she’d left a part of herself back in Riddlesville.

  “You don’t need to walk me to the door,” she protested when Wade took her arm and steered her toward the porch. “I’m fine.”

  “Hush.” He unlocked the door and let her overnight bag slide to the floor. “Why don’t you take a bath while I go scrape us up some dinner?”

  Christy-Lynn checked her watch. “It’s almost midnight, and you drove the whole way back. You’ve got to be exhausted
.”

  “Maybe so, but as I recall the last time either of us ate was twelve hours ago. I’m not getting in my Jeep until you’ve been fed. Now go start the water, and let me do my job.”

  “Your job? What job?”

  He smiled. “Taking care of you.”

  It was true. He’d been taking care of her all day. And long before that if she was honest. “Why do you do that?”

  “Because you don’t. And someone should.”

  There was a softness to his tone that unsettled her, a kindness that threatened to melt her into a puddle. It would be so easy to lean on him, to let him become a part of her life. But then what? How long before he realized he’d gotten involved with an emotional charity case and it all came apart? Because it would. Of course it would.

  “Look, I know you’re trying to help and all, but I’m fine. Really. I don’t need looking after.”

  “Well, I do,” he said, dismissing her words with a crooked grin. “I’m starving, which is why I’m off to ransack your kitchen.”

  A half hour later, Christy-Lynn padded back down the hall in a robe and a pair of slouchy socks. Wade had set up a pair of trays in the living room and was carrying two plates heaped with scrambled eggs and toast from the kitchen. He’d even made two mugs of tea. Her throat tightened absurdly at the sight. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had fixed her scrambled eggs. Or anything really.

  “You didn’t have to do this,” she told him, feeling self-conscious. “I know you think I’m this big helpless mess, but I’ve actually been taking care of myself for a long time.”

  “Yes. Too long, as a matter of fact.” Wade dropped down onto the couch and picked up his fork. “And I don’t think you’re helpless. But it’s okay to let someone help you once in a while. Now eat. I tried to find a chick flick, but at this time of night, it’s either the late-night shows or infomercials.”