“You’re telling this to the guy who’s been eating prison food for the last three years.”
My wife stalls, her face dropping at my statement.
“Char, it was a joke.”
“Oh!”
We both start to laugh, and I internally sigh. Laughing with Char. This is something I could get used to again.
CHAPTER 12
CHARLOTTE
Nine days go by and Tucker gets swept up in a life that is all his own. While I get up and go to work each day, he follows me until I turn off for my building, and he continues on to the job site.
He gets home each night, dirty and exhausted. But he seems … lighter. Like he has more of a purpose.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he quickly changes into casual clothes and runs out the door for his night NA meetings. And when he gets home from those, I can feel the sweet relief pouring off of him. While I’m jealous that he’s spending time with people who understand him more than I do, I’m also glad. Glad he feels he has someone, or someones, he can rely on and trust with his thoughts.
We eat dinner together, maybe throw a baseball game or one of my shows on the TV, and then I head up to bed. And he stays on the couch.
It’s an unspoken thing, a subject we have yet to broach after the explosion at the dinner table nine days ago. That felt like headway, like maybe he’d open up more after that. But if anything, it’s done the opposite. Aside from the few it was good’s and not much’s in response to how his day was, he hasn’t spilled his guts on anything else.
And aside from two hugs, forced by me and initiated by me, he hasn’t touched me.
I’m going crazy here. I went three years with no sex, and now … to have him dangled in front of me, sleeping a mere staircase away. It’s a tease. A girl has needs. I’ve gone without for so long … I’m going to scream if he doesn’t get me naked soon.
Which is why I’m relieved we’re going to therapy today. Tucker has gone once to this new shrink by himself, and let me know three days ago that Dr. Taylor would like me to come with him.
So here we sit, in awkward silence outside the good doctor’s office, waiting for our four o’clock appointment. I had to leave work early for this, and not to be a bitch, but inside I hope it’s worth it. I want to get back to where we were. I want Tucker to love me again.
The setup is very different than one of the last shrink’s office I’d been to. The other office was sterile, with a doctor who’s platinum blonde hair and high heels scared me more than comforted me. It felt like she was judging me the entire time.
Of course, I still hadn’t discussed with Tucker why I’d gone to see a therapist.
“Mr. and Mrs. Lynch, I’m ready for you.”
A kind looking woman with dirty-blonde hair meets us in the doorway. She’s not how I pictured a therapist, looking more motherly and homely than I imagined. I always picture shrinks with expensive glasses sitting on their noses and degrees lining the walls. Dr. Taylor’s office is more like a beautiful sitting room that no one ever uses in their home.
“Thanks for coming in today.” She gestures for us to sit in the chairs across from her armchair.
Tucker and I sit, and he doesn’t say anything. Per usual.
“Thank you so much for letting us come in.” I smile at her.
“I’m glad Tucker brought you along today, as I think there are many issues he needs to resolve with you. And that you two might need to resolve together. So, let’s jump right on in, shall we?”
I suck in a breath quietly. I realize this woman knows intimate things about our relationship, but I hadn’t thought so much about the things Tucker has told her about me. Now, I’m scared.
“Tucker, last time you were here you talked about feeling distant and closed off from Charlotte. Charlotte, do you feel that way too?”
He told her that? “Well … I guess so. But it’s not for lack of trying, I am trying to get close to him.”
Tucker grunts. I have no idea what that means.
“I think some of what is blocking Tucker from that is his experience in prison. Have you two discussed what he went through in there?”
Tucker was always very mum when it came to his experience in jail. “Um … not really. Whenever I visited, he didn’t really want to talk about it. So I didn’t push.”
“So you mainly talked about your life?”
She’s making me sound selfish.
“Tucker, do you want to address this? Let’s get some dialogue going here.”
“Fine.” Tucker says to Dr. Taylor.
“Tucker, talk to Charlotte, not to me.”
He turns to face me, and the silver scar running across his rugged jaw glints in the sunlight coming from her windows.
“For two years, we talked about everything that was going on in your life. Your new job, your new friends. But you never asked about what my life was like.”
He’s accusing me. Again. “Tucker, you didn’t want to talk about it. I asked you several times at the beginning, and you didn’t want to share. So at some point, I just stopped trying.”
He sighs and turns to look at Dr. Taylor, who prompts him to look back to me. What, he needs her to coach him to talk to me?
“You were the one person I had. The only person I could talk to, vent to. I needed that. The fact that you gave up on that, it hurt. And I wasn’t going to bring it up myself, wasn’t going to tell you about the beatings I was receiving or how scary it was in there sometimes.”
I rear back, appalled. “Someone beat you?”
He looks down into his lap. “That’s something you would have known if you bothered asking.”
Emotion clogs my throat. “I’m … I’m sorry. I just thought that you didn’t want to talk to me about it. I wanted to make our visits positive and happy. And we talked about your college, and the books you reading—”
Dr. Taylor interrupts us. “I think what Tucker is saying is that you focus a lot on the positive. That he feels you don’t want to delve deep into the negative. Why is that, Charlotte?”
I want to punch this woman. But in a corner of my brain, and my heart, I know she’s only speaking the truth. A dark truth about me that I don’t want to uncover.
“Our life was shitty. Fuck, our life now is shitty. But you go around pretending that everything is perfect. Like fairies are coming out of your fucking ass!”
Tucker is getting riled up now.
“Tucker, let’s not use that kind of language towards each other. It’s not conducive to an open environment.”
He mutters an “I’m sorry” after Dr. Taylor admonishes him.
“You had enough bad stuff going on in there, alright? I thought I could be a shining light or something for you. That I could brighten up your weekends and put you in a good mood. I know it was hard. I know it’s hard now. But why do we have to dwell on it? We could be making each other happy right now, but instead you’re choosing to focus on the negative.”
Tucker stares into my eyes. “Because you want to ignore the big fat elephant in the room that’s practically sitting on both of us. We’re not perfect, so can we please stop pretending to be? I’m a convict. A felon. I’m going to work a construction job until the day I die. And I think … maybe you regret getting involved with me. Deep down, I think you’re still trying to aspire to this perfect little wife and woman picture your mother put in your head years ago. You don’t have to be that person, Char.”
His words sting deep and hard. It’s like pouring salt in a bloody gash. His words nearly knock my breath from my lungs.
I can’t help being childish. “Well, sorry you don’t like the woman you married.”
Tucker’s voice is quiet when he responds. “I love the woman I married. The one from the woods. But this person, right now? I don’t really like her. I’m not thrilled with this version of the person I married.”
I look right at him. “I guess that makes two of us then.”
CHAPTER 13
TUCKE
R
One Year Ago
This is what hell looks like.
When they show you that stupid reality show about bad kids going to prison to see what their lives could turn into to … it isn’t all that stupid. And I’ve only seen the show because they play it on the TVs here, which is asinine because we’re already here. But yeah, irony.
The depiction is pretty correct though. Prison is scary when you’re a sixteen year old shithead, as well as when you’re a twenty-six year old convict.
After I took the two and a half year deal, I got transferred to a prison about half an hour away from the one I was being held at until my arraignment. Which meant further drive time for Char. And scarier inmates for me.
SCI Mahoney was an all-male facility within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. It housed murderers, crooks, child molestors and the worst scum of The State of Independence.
And now I was one of them.
But I was also a new one of them. Which meant I got fucked with.
Not physically, no … I would kill someone before I ever let them rape me. But I’d been threatened with it when I first got here a year ago. I’d been held up against the wall, or to my bed, and beaten until my ribs cracked.
“Watch those books, Lynch. Getting in my way and shit.”
Mike Raxon, or Rax as they call him in here, throws the books I was studying from to the floor. In the library. Where your meant to have books all over the table.
The guy is a thug, a lifer as they say. Has been in and out of prisons since he was a juvenile. Assault, robbery, attempted murder. You name it, he’s probably done it.
And he gets off on picking on the straight laced crowd in here.
I’ve done some shit. Seen some shit. But compared to the lifers and crooks in here, I’m a saint. When I got locked up, I made a promise to myself that I’d stop being a screw up. That I’d clean up my act so I could be the best person I could be when I got out. For Charlotte.
And now I’m days away from graduating with my college degree. But this place has a way of beating you down. Breaking your spirit. I’m not as guns ho as I once was. And that depression comes from guys like Rax. He’s not the first to rag on me, and I’m sure he won’t be the last.
Lifers hate seeing other people succeed. Try to build something or make something of themselves. He must have gotten word that I’ll be getting my degree in a few days, and has come to mess with me.
His little minions hang in the background, and I notice the library is eerily silent. As in, no one is in here but the five of us.
“Sorry about that, Rax. Let me just clean that up.”
I stand and then bend to retrieve the at least seven textbooks he’s scattered to the floor. But before I can reach the first one, a sneaker crushes my hand.
I want to twist in pain, but fight the urge to. Giving them what they want will only make this worse.
“Think you’re so fucking smart, you stupid little bitch? Want to show us all up? Don’t give me lip like that. I know what fucking sarcasm sounds like.” Rax whispers in my ear like some macho man.
I have to fight the urge to roll my eyes. Guys like this were wimps, too soft for the outside world and so they had to assert their dominance in an environment like this.
“Didn’t mean anything by it, I’m just trying to study for my finals.”
That answer doesn’t satisfy them, because I get one of his minion’s foot to my stomach.
He kicks the wind out of me, and the pain is blinding because I think for a second I might blackout.
“Awww, the little white boy can’t take us messing with him. It’s just a little kick, bitch. Give him another.”
I know this one is coming, so I tense my body. The blow hurts twice as hard. Fear personifies everything in here. If you let yourself feel it, everything will be twice as bad.
And that’s exactly what they’re doing to me.
They jump me all at once, pummeling my face and my stomach and my legs. I think Rax breaks one of my fingers on my writing hands, and that makes me howl.
Not because of the pain, but because I have finals in three days and I won’t be able to take the test.
They get bored with me after a while, and wander out of the library.
My body is in agony, and I don’t have the energy to pull myself up. I’ll have to lay here until someone finds me, bruised and bleeding on the library carpet. I pray to God they come soon.
It’s taking a long time for someone to find me. I know this because the blood is clotting, drying into the carpet.
And I’m hallucinating. I see Charlotte bending down and kissing each one of my broken body parts. I can feel her soft lips caressing me. I want to tell her, to talk to her about the ugliness that goes on here. But she doesn’t want to hear it. She never wants to hear it.
In the end, it took someone two hours to discover me unconscious in the library.
And I had to postpone my college finals and graduation by three months to let my hand heal so I could properly hold a pen.
CHAPTER 14
CHARLOTTE
One Year Ago
Tucker doesn’t know that I’ve been seeing a therapist. I don’t know what he would say if he knew, and if he knew why, it would only make him feel more guilty.
Even though I fell in love with, and trust implicitly, the man who kidnapped me … I was still kidnapped. There are still times I’ll freeze up in a bank or a restaurant or any kind of retail store when a large man walks in. I have to check around me, grip the can of mace in my purse and try to control the beast of anxiety that creeps up my spine.
My therapist says it’s because I was traumatized during my kidnapping, even if it wasn’t by Tucker.
“The winter cold, the coyote attack, and then Tucker going to prison. It isn’t so much that the man who took you hurt you, but how he took you. It led to you ending up in the hospital, and him in jail. You may love him, but you’re still traumatized by events that took place.”
I nod, picking at the whole in my jeans. Part of me doesn’t want to do this anymore, doesn’t think it’s working. But I can’t cower into the rack of clothing at LOFT anymore. I can’t up and leave a Panera because a tall, muscular man gets in line behind me. I can’t wake up in a pool of my sweat, the image of a gun between my eyes burned into my brain.
“I just feel like being here, addressing this … I feel like I’m cheating on Tucker somehow.”
The blonde doctor shakes her head. “You’re not. You’re getting healthy, getting ready for his release so you can be one hundred percent focused on getting your relationship back on track instead of working on getting past this. But, if you feel guilty, then tell him. I think it would be good to get this out in the open.”
I doubted that. “I don’t think I can tell him about this yet. I don’t want to freak him out.”
She frowns, crossing her slim leg over her other equally slim leg. While I know that therapy isn’t supposed to be easy, I’m not sure I’ve found the right shrink. I picked her because she’s on the outskirts of Lancaster, but she can be harsh at times. There are other times I feel looks of judgment from her, and that is the last thing I was coming here for. But I was a wishful person; each time I came I thought it might get better. So far, it hadn’t.
“Well then, you need to work harder to work through this then. How did this week go for you?”
I adjust the fringe on my pants and look up. She always likes it when I engage as I tell her what’s been going on.
“It hasn’t been bad. Work has been good, I am working on a new project for this hair care client. They’re an all natural brand, and I’ve been getting to test the products out. My hair is super smooth. And um, I’ve been hanging out with Jackie, my coworker, more lately, we’ve gotten close and she really understands my situation. She doesn’t judge, and like I’ve said before, that’s been hard with me and friends in the past. Since I was a child even.
She nods and scribbles. “Good. But
I want to know more about how you’ve handled your anxiety this week.”
I cringe, because it hasn’t been a smooth week. And even though I don’t feel totally trusting of her, I know I’m here to open myself up.
“It’s been … alright. On Monday, I got home and a cabinet or two were open. I couldn’t remember if I’d left them open or not, so I had to sit down and take deep breathes for twenty minutes until I got the anxiety under control. And I talked myself through it, then remembered I had gotten an allergy pill and that’s why I left the cabinets open.”
She nods again. “Anything else?”
I was trying to keep this one under wraps, but it will probably feel better to talk about it. “I was in the grocery store, in the condiments aisle on Thursday, when a toddler was walking around with his mother. My back was turned, he must have knocked some pickle jars off the shelves … the noise was so loud, I shrieked and ran. I had to leave the store and sat in my car for forty minutes before I could drive home.”
“Did you practice the breathing and soothing words we talked about?”
“I did.”
“Well, I think we’ve made some good progress today. But our time is up.”
What? This is what I meant. I didn’t feel any better. Didn’t feel like I had worked through anything. The doctor starts to get up, and I know that I won’t be coming back. I’m going to face this on my own, get better so that I can fully be with Tucker once he gets out.
As I walk out of her office, disappointed in her but hopeful in myself, my phone starts to buzz in my coat pocket.
SCI Mahoney flashes across the screen.
“Hello? Tucker?”
A unfamiliar voice speaks from the other end. “Hello, Mrs. Lynch. This is Dr. Varger, I’m with the prison’s medical staff. Your husband had an incident today—“
“And incident!?” My blood level spikes as I cut him off. “What kind of incident?”
“Ma’am, unfortunately I can’t disclose the details, but I wanted to let you know of your husband’s condition. He has broken his hand and has a few broken ribs, but other than that he’s fine. He’ll take a little while to heal, but he will make a full recovery.”
The Complete Captive Heart Duet Page 21