by Jane Blythe
“How long have you lived in River’s End?”
“My family moved here when I was eight.”
“Who’s in your family?”
“I’m the oldest, and I have three younger siblings, Levi is two years younger than me, then Theo is two years younger than him, and our sister Dahlia is the baby of the family.”
“I bet she hated being a teenager with three older brothers,” she said with a smile, imaging how Abe and his brothers must have scared off any boy who wanted to date their little sister.
“I’m ten years older than Dahlia. By the time she was a teenager, I was already out of the house,” Abe replied.
“I bet no matter where you were any guy would have been scared of your wrath if he hurt your baby sister,” she said.
Abe mustered a half-smile. “There may have been a few warnings issued,” he said as he turned the car into his driveway.
Immediately she noticed that they weren’t alone.
There was a car already parked up near the cabin.
“Someone is here,” she said, wanting to hide the panic that she knew was written all over her voice and her face but knowing it would be impossible.
“It’s okay, it’s only one of my brothers,” Abe assured her.
One of his brothers?
Why was one of his brothers here?
It wasn’t that she was necessarily opposed to meeting new people, she had spent the day working at the hotel. But that had been different, Maggie didn’t have a large staff, and she hadn’t had to leave the kitchen to serve any of the guests, just cook in the relative quiet and safety of the pretty little kitchen.
Here she wasn’t in a busy hotel, here she was alone in the woods with two men. She liked Abe, she trusted him, but she didn’t know him, and she had been burned—badly—before, her skills at reading people were definitely lacking, and for a moment she wondered if she was once again going to offer herself up on a silver platter to a sick, evil man.
“It’ll be fine, you’ll like Levi,” Abe assured her as he got out of the car.
As she had known he would, he walked around and opened her door for her. She climbed out, but she was no longer as happy to be back here as she had thought she would be when she’d been thinking of the cabin throughout the day. She’d thought she and Abe would have dinner, maybe sit by the fireplace for a bit, then she’d take a long, hot bath and go to bed, but now they had a guest.
Battling her instincts which were telling her to run and keep on running and never stop, Meadow followed Abe up the porch steps and through the front door where they were greeted by a man with dark hair and hazel eyes.
“Hey, Abe,” the man—Levi—greeted his brother, then he turned to her. “I’m Abe’s brother, Levi, you must be Meadow.”
He held out his hand, and she reluctantly took it and shook it, but she didn’t say anything.
“Levi’s here to check you out,” Abe told her.
Check her out?
What did that mean?
“Since I wasn’t sure what led to you being homeless, I wasn’t sure if you’ve been going to regular check-ups to monitor your pregnancy,” Abe continued. “Levi is a doctor, he’s going to give you a look over, just make sure that everything is okay.”
A doctor.
Levi was a doctor.
She did not do well with doctors.
And Levi was a stranger.
There was no way she was letting this man anywhere near her.
When Levi reached out she darted backward, crashing into the now closed front door. “Don’t touch me,” she shrieked, possibly sounding just a tad bit hysterical. Without waiting to see what either Abe or Levi were going to do, she shoved past them and ran up the stairs. She went into the room she’d slept in last night and straight into the bathroom, where she locked the door behind her.
Meadow was breathing hard, her heart hammering in her chest as though she’d run a marathon instead of up one flight of stairs.
Scared and confused, she slid down the door and rested against it.
She didn’t know what to do.
Just when it felt like she was starting to get her footing it was like the world was shaken beneath her again, leaving her all jumbled up.
She put a trembling hand on her stomach, she felt so guilty. Was she hurting this little baby by not letting Abe’s brother give her a check-up? Was her emotional instability hurting her baby? How could she feel like the world’s worst mother when her baby wasn’t even born yet?
* * * * *
5:49 P.M.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Abe said as Meadow fled up the stairs. “Sorry, Levi, if I’d known that having you here was going to upset her then I would have waited, talked to her first, and then called you to come over.”
“It’s okay,” Levi assured him. “Given that we suspect she’s a victim of abuse we probably should have expected that kind of reaction.”
His brother was right.
He should have expected that bringing a stranger here without warning her first and then just telling her that a doctor should check her out wasn’t going to go down well. Meadow was obviously on the run, which meant she was hiding from someone, whether that be a father, boyfriend, husband, friend, family member, or acquaintance, so having someone just show up, unannounced, at a place that she felt safe must have been a shock to her.
“I’ll go see if I can get her to come down, I might have gone about this the wrong way, but I still think that she and her baby need to be looked at by a doctor.” He was worried about Meadow, he didn’t know how long she had been running, he didn’t know how much she had been eating the last few days, weeks, or months, and if she hadn’t been eating enough he was sure that would have affected her baby. He didn’t know what had happened to her to cause her to run, there might be injuries that they didn’t know about, and he just wanted to make sure that she and her baby were okay.
“Don’t push her too hard,” Levi warned. “It’s obvious that she feels safe here with you, I think that’s the most important thing right now. If you want her to open up to you then just talk to her, get to know her, let her get to know you, and then maybe once she does you’ll have earned her trust enough that she’ll tell you who she’s running from and why.”
That was good advice.
And something he needed to keep in mind.
Levi was right, Meadow did seem to feel safe with him, maybe he could take advantage of that to find out what had happened to her.
Abe knew how that sounded, and it wasn’t like he wanted to take advantage of her in a bad way, but he was a cop, it was his job to protect people, especially those who were vulnerable, and right now Meadow was about as vulnerable as it was possible to be.
Taking the stairs three at a time, he assumed she had gone into the spare bedroom, and since the door was open and he couldn’t see her, he had to assume that she was in the bathroom. He had enlisted as soon as he turned eighteen, done six years before returning home, by then his little sister had been fourteen, nearly fifteen, and from what he remembered, whenever she had an emotional outburst, she would lock herself in the bathroom, he hadn’t known how to deal with that, and he had no idea how to deal with Meadow now.
Feeling more out of his element than he had in his life, Abe walked through the bedroom and rapped on the bathroom door. He might not know what he was doing, but he knew enough not to try to open the door, even if it wasn’t locked she’d closed it for a reason.
“Meadow?” he called out, trying to listen to see if he could hear crying. In his years in law enforcement, he had dealt with his share of weeping victims and their families, but it never got any easier. He didn’t think he would ever be comfortable around crying people.
There was no answer.
He knew that she could hear him so he said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have sprung this on you, I was just concerned, and my brother is only here to help. I’m not going to push you to let him give you a check-up, it’s your body
and your choice, but he’s going to be here for the next hour, so if you change your mind you can come downstairs. If you want to come down anyway, have some dinner, watch TV, you can, and you can just tell us that you don’t want to talk to Levi.”
Again there was no answer.
Pressing his ear to the door, he strained to hear through the thick oak, Abe thought that he could hear crying, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Meadow, you can talk to me. I know that something is going on with you, whatever happened to make you run away, you can tell me, I’m the sheriff, I might be able to help.”
Silence.
She needed space, he got that.
“I’m here when you’re ready to talk,” he told her as he retreated back downstairs. Levi was right, there was no use pushing her too hard, it was only going to be counter-productive.
“You get anywhere?” Levi asked when he entered the kitchen.
“Nope. She’s in the bathroom, she wouldn’t come out, I told her that you would be here for the next hour if she changed her mind. Is that okay?”
“Of course.” Levi nodded as he started peeling carrots. “I’m making soup.”
“That vegetable soup that you’re obsessed with?” he asked with a curl of his lip. He much preferred meat over vegetables, but his brother was always on some health kick, and most of them involved cutting meat out of his diet.
“I can throw a little chicken in if you’re going to complain,” Levi shot back with a grin.
Growing up, he’d been close with his brothers, they’d been thick as thieves, and since their cousins, Julian and Will had always lived close by, it had been like having two more brothers. He’d always felt sorry that there was an age gap between Theo and Dahlia because they’d been so much older and hadn’t been interested in hanging out with a little girl, so a lot of the time she had almost been like an only child.
Abe wondered what Meadow’s childhood had been like. Had she had good parents like he had? Did she have any siblings? Did she have aunts, or uncles, or cousins who cared about her and were wondering where she was and if she was all right?
“Thinking about her?” Levi asked, his face serious.
“Did you see her arm when she put her hand out to shake yours?” he asked. Meadow was still wearing the same clothes she’d been in when he saw her in the diner, but his mom had dropped off a few of Dahlia’s things for her. When she had shaken Levi’s hand downstairs in the living room the hem of her sleeve had moved up a bit, and he’d seen scars. At least that’s what he thought they were.
“Looked like there were some old scars,” Levi said, confirming his suspicions.
“She was abused,” he said grimly. Although he had suspected as much, having it confirmed still sucked.
“You think it was from whoever raised her or whoever got her pregnant?”
“Who’s to say they’re different people?” While he hoped that incest wasn’t what had led to Meadow’s pregnancy, she hadn’t told him anything so he was working blind.
“You really think that?” Levi looked repulsed and furious by the notion.
“I don’t know. There’s a chance that the scars were from an accident or surgery, or they were self-inflicted.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No,” he said slowly. His gut told him that Meadow was a victim of abuse, and that the pregnancy was related to that abuse. Which meant that her abuser was out there somewhere and if there was one thing he knew about abusers it was that they didn’t like to let go of their victims. They saw them as possessions, possessions they didn’t like to share, they were controlling, and there was no way that whoever had hurt Meadow and gotten her pregnant was going to just let her go and build a new life somewhere else, without her.
The man would come for her.
Sooner or later he would manage to track her down.
“You think she’s in danger,” Levi said.
“Oh, I know she is.”
“How are you going to protect her?”
How, indeed?
Abe had no idea.
He didn’t know anything about this man so he didn’t know how to prepare for his inevitable arrival. If he had a name he would track him down, call the police in whatever city he lived in, and have him arrested.
One thing he did know was that this man couldn’t have Meadow back.
She had fought for her freedom, and she and her baby deserved a chance at a normal life, and he was determined to make sure they got it.
* * * * *
11:33 P.M.
It had been six hours since she had locked herself in the bathroom, that should be long enough. Abe had told her that his brother was going to stay for an hour if she changed her mind and decided she would like a doctor to check her out, so he should be long gone, and it wasn’t far from midnight so surely Abe would have gone to bed by now.
Slowly, partly because she felt like she had been drained of energy and partly because her body had stiffened up sitting on the hard tiles for the last six hours, Meadow stood and stepped over to the vanity. Turning on the tap, she waited until the water heated up, then ran a towel underneath it and used it to scrub her face, washing away the tearstains she knew were there. She was embarrassed about her hysterical outburst, and part of her wanted to make a run for it so she wouldn’t have to face Abe.
Drying off her face, Meadow unlocked the door and cracked it open, half expecting Abe to be standing there waiting for her, or lounging on the bed, or sitting in the armchair in the corner. But he wasn’t. The room was empty and the cabin was quiet, he really must have gone to bed.
Although she didn’t want to admit it she was disappointed.
Maybe she just needed someone to care about her right now. She had only known Abe for twenty-four hours, that wasn’t enough time for them to even have formed a friendship, but she thought that he cared about her. Even though she knew it was only in a he was the sheriff and she needed help kind of way, it was better than nothing. She hadn’t even had that in her life so it was definitely a step in the right direction.
Creeping, because she didn’t want to wake Abe, she tiptoed down the stairs and toward the kitchen. She was hungry, and Abe had told her that she should feel at home here and could use his home as she would her own, so she would fix herself some dinner and then try to go to sleep.
As she stepped through the kitchen door, she was lost in thought thinking about how if Abe knew what the houses she had lived in had been like he wouldn’t have used that analogy, when she saw a moving shadow.
She screamed.
He was here, he’d somehow managed to track her down, and he was here to take her back with him.
Meadow probably would have turned and bolted, but light suddenly flooded the room and Abe appeared before her.
Abe.
It was only Abe.
She was so relieved her knees buckled and she wobbled.
Abe snapped his hands around her arms and steadied her. “It’s only me,” he said as though she might not have registered that yet. “I was waiting for you to come down, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
How lucky was she that the man who had found her and decided to help her was this sweet? “I thought you had gone to bed.”
“You mean you hoped I’d gone to bed, am I right, sunshine?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as he released his hold on her.
“I suppose,” she replied with a smile. While she had been waiting in the bathroom for him to go to bed, as soon as she had crept out she’d realized that actually she didn’t want to be alone right now.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“My brother made soup,” he said, going to the table and holding up a bowl.
She couldn’t quite help a nervous shudder at the mention of his brother. She felt bad for being rude and running away when Levi had only come here to be helpful, she hoped he wouldn’t hold it against her. It hadn’t been personal, just a bad experience with a doct
or in the past that she knew shouldn’t overshadow all doctors, but she hadn’t been able to stop the visceral reaction.
“I’m sorry, Meadow, I shouldn’t have sprung that on you. I should have spoken with you about it and then taken you to see Levi in the morning if you agreed,” Abe spoke up.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “It was a nice gesture, and I’m sorry I didn’t react very well. Is your brother mad at me?” Years of conditioning had trained her to want to make others happy, no matter the cost to herself, and she was genuinely worried that she had hurt Abe’s brother’s feelings.
“He’s fine. He understands, we both do, you ran because you were afraid of someone, someone who hurt you, probably the same person who fathered your baby, but I know you’re not ready to talk about it yet. When you are, you know right where to find me.”
His direct approach took away some of the panic that threatened to smother her as memories of why she had run attempted to shove their way to the front of her mind.
“Why don’t we eat our soup in the living room? There’s still a fire in the fireplace, and it’s more comfortable in there,” Abe suggested, carrying two bowls as he walked past her.
Meadow followed him across the hall and into the living room, it was cozy in here with the fire crackling, and she took the bowl Abe handed her and dropped down into one of the rocking chairs that sat in front of the fireplace.
Abe joined her, and they ate in silence, her eyes roaming the room and looking at the family photos that hung on the walls. There were old ones from when he was a kid, standing with a woman with wild red hair who was no doubt his mother, and a serious man with dark hair. She could pick out Levi which meant the youngest boy had to be the other brother, Theo, and as time progressed a little girl who was the spitting image of her mother appeared in the pictures.