Crossing Lines: A gripping psychological thriller (Behind Closed Doors Book 3) (5 page)

She blinks as I scan the length of her. My heart is pounding as I look for signs that something horrible had happened. But she’s clean and, despite the persistent rain this weekend, she’s dry. And she's wearing different clothes from the ones she'd been wearing at school. “Answer me, goddamn it, Lisa, where were you?”

She drops her backpack at the door. “Jeez, I'm only five minutes late. Anyone would think you cared.”

“You're forty-eight hours fucking late, Lisa! Where have you been?”

“What?” She looks genuinely puzzled. “I don't have a curfew on weekends.”

Suddenly I see red. My temper blows so fast I don't have time to breathe before I yell, “You still have to fucking come home!” My heartbeat pounds in my ears. “I haven't heard from you since you stormed out of school, and I've been going out of my mind, worrying that something had happened to you!”

“You sound disappointed that I'm not dying in an overgrown ditch somewhere I’ll never be found.”

“What?” I splutter. I know she’s mad, but is there any need for the attitude? "Caleb's here. Georgia's here. Patrick has half the police force looking for you and they've been wandering the streets, the parks. They’ve been showing your picture to everyone they've passed. And you just saunter in, two days and five minutes after curfew, like it’s no big deal.”

“Well, it isn't a big deal.” She shrugs, “You're the one overreacting."

“You didn't answer your cell.”

“I was mad at you,” she replies, confirming my first suspicions. “I’m
still
mad at you.”

“You’re punishing me?”

“I didn't do anything wrong.” She cries, “You’re blaming me because
you
overreacted. You're playing mind games and twisting the situation so that this is my fault. You know, Calvin would be very proud. You turned out to be just like
him
.”

Her words strike like a physical blow. I stumble backwards. “What?”

“You treat me exactly the same way Cat said her dad treated her.” I shake my head in denial. Before Faith died, Caitlyn had said she didn’t want to see Calvin anymore, because he treated her like she was invisible.
I don’t ignore Lisa. Yes, I’m a busy man but—
she cuts me off. "And you treated Izzy exactly the same way Calvin treated Faith. No wonder she left you.”

“No,” I gasp. I back against the wall. “I didn't.”

“Yes, you did!” she yells even louder. Both Caleb and Georgia enter the hallway, one from out back and the other from upstairs. “I saw you push her, Darryl. I saw you take her into the bedroom. So don't pretend you care anymore than he does, because you don’t!”

“No!” Again my head shakes. She was twelve, and it was late that night. She was asleep. She’d been in bed for hours. “You can’t have seen that!”

“Well, I did.” She sticks out a stubborn chin. “You care about no one but yourself, and I hate you.” She swoops down and grabs her backpack. “I'm going to bed.”

She stamps her feet hard against every step until she’s out of sight. Moments later, a door bangs shut. Georgia looks like she’s just been handed the keys to the candy store, but Caleb stares at me like the bottom has just fallen out of his world.

How the hell do I explain what Lisa claims she saw?

Chapter Four

MEMORIES FLOOD MY SENSES
from all directions. The lies Faith told, each and every one of them looping through my mind. She fell. She bumped into something. She cut herself preparing dinner. Pushed herself too hard during a workout, and was a little sore today. It had all been lies. Faith had lied and I had believed her. I'd trusted her word was the truth, because why would she lie to me?

I hadn't suspected anything. Not even after the day I’d found her sitting in the bathtub sobbing, and with a bloodied nose. She’d said she’d fallen taking a shower, when in truth Calvin had hit her. So I’d gone off to college, and left her alone, when the worst of her abuse was still to come.

It was abuse that had only begun because of me, because Calvin hadn’t wanted me, and she wouldn’t let me go back to social service to be rehomed. And now there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder if only I had been a better child, if I’d wanted less, or needed less, or if I’d been more help than hindrance to my sister's marriage, maybe she wouldn’t have had to live through all that.

Maybe I could’ve been a better brother, could have seen what was right before my eyes, and should have listened to my instincts that day in the bathroom. All was not well, but I had left her. Alone. With
him
.

And
I should’ve known it was not over after she’d left him. It would never be over, and I should have watched him like a hawk. I should’ve known he was waiting for the chance to get her alone. I should’ve trusted Faith when she said ‘a piece of paper would not stop him.’ It didn’t. He had killed her, and then taken Caitlyn and Zoe and disappeared.

If I’d been a better brother-in-law, I wouldn’t have let John go to meet with Calvin
.
I would've known it would lead to John’s death. Faith did—she even told me herself in her last letter. I should have known that too. Now I’m responsible for a broken dynasty. One I can’t fix, no matter how hard I tried because I was not worthy of this position. If I’d been a better child, a better brother, a better uncle, a better husband, even a better man, none of this would have happened.

The night Izzy left, she had pushed me. She’d pushed, and pushed some more, until I snapped. She’d pushed me beyond the point where I no longer knew what I was doing. I did grab her, pushed her into our bedroom even, and it was because of that night she had left.

“You,” Caleb’s hoarse gasp breaks into the murky puddle of my mind. “Did you hit Izzy?” He stares at me like a kid who's just been told Santa Claus isn't real. All the magic has gone from his boyish blue eyes, replaced with a desperate loss that I’ll never be able to erase. “Izzy divorced you because you hit her?”

“No.”

“Of course he hit her.” Georgia steps down the remaining stairs. Unlike her brother, she looks happy about the inaccurate revelation. “Now it all makes perfect sense." She smiles. “You're making up these lies about Dad abusing Mom, because you’re projecting your own vile behavior onto him. Of course, no one would suspect the poor little orphan boy!”

“That's not what happened,” I repeat, unable to say anymore. I can't admit what I've done to anyone. It was an accident. I lost control, and I never wanted to hurt her.

Georgia laughs. “At least we know why Lisa hates you, right? And why she’d rather go to school in Seattle. I have a good enough reason to cancel my trip to Kathmandu and take her with me to Florida tomorrow. You can’t be trusted with her.”

My back goes ramrod straight. My gaze burns into hers. “What happened between Izzy and me, is between us!”

“What? Like it was between Mom and Dad?” Caleb hisses.

“Yes!” I cry, turning my attention to him. “No!” I say, instantly knowing how it sounded. “It's not the same—”

The doorbell cuts me off. For a moment, no one moves. In the silence, I look at Caleb, and then Georgia, and as though we have silently agreed to ignore whoever is at the door after midnight, I continue, “It’s not the same thing. Ask Izzy,” I tell them. “Go on and ask Izzy why I threw her out!”

She wanted a family. She'd always wanted a family. A family as big and as loving as the one I'd grown up in. But what she wanted was based on lies, Faith’s lies. There was no happy family. It was all smoke and mirrors, and no matter how many times I tried to correct her, she only ever remembered the illusion.

She had waited, though. She’d hung on. Gave me all the time I’d asked for, so I could help my family heal from our multiple losses. But we didn't heal, we just floundered. As the years passed, Izzy's patient waiting succumbed to her desire for a family of her own. I'd been too preoccupied with trying to get our lives back on track after Faith and John had died. Even three years into our marriage, I’d misjudged Izzy’s subtle seduction attempts.

But her plans had finally come tumbling out. One minute I'd been in the shower, with a goofy smile, happy, and hopelessly in love with my wife; the next I was hyperventilating. We’d taken a spontaneous stroll in the park. We held hands, kissed, cuddled, like we should have as newlyweds. We took time for just the two of us, and it had been exactly what we'd needed: a breathing space within all the madness. But it had built into an inability to keep our hands off one another, and what had followed had been rushed, needy, and explosive. It had also been unprotected.

Nothing else mattered to me. The thought of an unexpected pregnancy, at that stage of our lives and with everything still so up in the air, had gripped on my chest and I could barely breathe. I couldn’t think of anything else. I turned the bathroom upside-down, searching for Izzy’s birth control pills. I had to reassure myself she had taken one that morning, that we were safe. We couldn't have a baby. We weren’t ready.

But there were no pills.

“Izzy!” The contents of the bathroom cabinet were all over the counter. Her cosmetic case was upside down and emptied into the basin, and still there weren't any pills. “Izzy, where the hell do you keep them?”

“What?” She appeared in the doorway of our deconstructed ensuite. “What the hell? D, what are you looking for? I'll tell you where it is.”

“Your pills.” I was on the edge. Couldn't cope. Not with the idea of a child. Not when my life was such a mess, and not when the pictures flashing through my mind of the only father-figure I'd had in my life were of the man who had murdered my sister.

“Izzy, tell me you took it this morning,” I demanded.

“D, I haven't taken them for months!”

“What?” There seemed to be no air in the tiny bathroom. My chest felt tighter, the ball in my throat grew wider. “Why not?”

“You said yourself we’re going to have children, D, and it takes a while for the effects to wear off. I just thought because we use other methods—”

“But we didn't use any other methods today.”

“I know,” she smiled, “and I'm ovulating too. Isn't it great?”

No.
My heart squeezed just that little bit tighter
. What did she mean she was ovulating? How did she know?
The ball in my throat got thicker. It was the first time I'd heard Izzy had stopped taking birth control; compounded with the knowledge she was monitoring her cycle it threw me into a spin
. Was she trying to get pregnant?

“Is that what this is about? Darryl, accidents happen all the time.”

Accidents?
But this was no accident. Was that what she was planning on telling me if she got pregnant before we began trying? That our baby was unplanned? An accident! She was manipulating me into fathering a child I didn't want? Hadn't she listened to a word I'd said? I wasn't ready for children of our own. I'd messed up already with Lisa, and with Caitlyn and Zoe by default—since I still hadn't found them.

My peripheral vision blurred. Why didn't she get it? Why didn't she understand I was the child Calvin had never wanted? And when Faith had stood up to him over keeping me after our parents had died, it had become a pivotal moment in Faith's marriage. That was the day everything had changed for them.

“Look at Faith and Cal,” Izzy had enthused, as though my sister's marriage was something to aspire to. “Not a single one of your nieces or nephew were planned, yet they had a fantastic marriage and your family was amazing for a really long time!”

“How many times do I have to tell you? It was all lies!” I hated to shatter her illusions, to shred apart what fantasies she took from my upbringing. I especially hated doing so, when hers had been marred by her parents frequently fighting, and the years of their relationship being on again and off again, finally concluding with her mother losing her battle with cancer. But Izzy needed to face reality.

“They weren't happy,” I told her. “They were never happy; it was all just a mask to fool everyone into thinking their marriage was perfect. He abused her for twenty-five years … and then he murdered her.” She flinched at the venom in my words. "Why can't you understand that?”

“You don't know that, Darryl. All you know is what Faith told you, and if it were true why didn't she press charges?”

If
it were true? The dark emotion I continually forced deep down inside burst through my bloodstream. The anger poisoned my ability to control it. I felt the red mist burst from every pore, with all of it focused on Izzy. “Go!” I yelled. I knew if she didn’t go, I’d hurt her.

“Don't you dare dismiss me, Darryl Hawthorne. I am your wife. You don't get to speak to me like that!”

“Get out of my sight.” I spun away from her. I couldn't face her. Didn't dare stand within arm’s reach of her. How could she say something like that? How could she push me like that? Didn’t she realize I was seconds from hitting something? Anything to expel the rage inside.

“Just who the hell do you think you're talking to, Darryl?”

That’s when it happened. I did exactly what Lisa said. I grabbed Izzy by both of her wrists and I forced her back. I pushed her through the doorway. I watched eyes grow wider and wider as she struggled against me, begging me to let her go. But I didn’t. I forced her into the bedroom. I shoved her onto the bed. Part of me reveled in the fear I saw in her eyes, told me it was nothing more than she deserved. And it brought me to a thumping halt. I could see everything and feel everything. I was acutely aware of Izzy’s whimpering, and I knew, just knew, I was exactly like the man who’d raised me. So I told her to leave and never come back. If only she’d listened.