No River Too Wide (31 page)

“We can talk anytime you need to. That might help for starters.”

“I want to find out what happened to my father. I want to know where he is and what he’s planning. Until I know that, nothing else is going to matter.”

“Do you want me to see if I can set up something? I used to be an investigative journalist. I still know people.”

“We’re afraid making inquiries might alert somebody we’re here.”

“I can almost guarantee complete discretion.”

Harmony considered. “I’ll talk to Mom, but there’s only one way he’ll never be a danger to us again.”

“I know.”

But Harmony had to say it out loud anyway, because she knew Analiese would understand. She met her friend’s eyes. “He won’t be a danger if he’s dead. And if he is, then I won’t have to worry about honoring him, will I? And I won’t have to be afraid or angry. I can just get on with my life, and so can my mother.”

Chapter 24

Harmony was still attending the self-defense class at Evolution. In a month of classes she had learned a number of things she might need if she was grabbed on the street or if she ever dated a guy who didn’t take no for an answer.

With Nate, of course, she didn’t have to practice the word or the strategies. Nate kissed her good night. Sometimes he held her hand or draped an arm around her shoulders, the way he had at the goddesses’ harvest campfire nearly two weeks before, but most of the time he was happy just to chat, the way a best friend would. There was little chance that some evening he would start making demands she didn’t want to meet. She was afraid if he did, she would simply dissolve into laughter, and after a second, he would probably join her.

She had even wondered if Nate might be gay, but since she was as unenthusiastic about moving forward sexually as he seemed to be, maybe he was wondering the same thing about her.

She knew her mother was making some headway in class, too. On one of their phone calls Jan had said that Adam had praised her for her ability to get out of a wrist grab. Since breaking free usually began with some form of strike, that really was progress.

Harmony might not be as good as Taylor, whose reflexes were so sharp she only needed one demonstration to understand what was required, but she was physically active and strong, and she was holding her own.

Tonight, though, there was a new member of the class. A sleek red and still somehow menacing punching bag.

“I know from experience it’s hard to strike a real person, even one who’s as well protected as I am when we work together. It’s a lot easier to put your full strength into a strike or kick if you’re aiming at a punching bag. So that’s why Taylor has graciously purchased our friend here.” Adam gestured to the heavy bag behind him, suspended from the ceiling in the corner. “Tonight you’re going to practice with B.G. here, wearing gloves made for the purpose. B.G. stands for Bad Guy, by the way.”

Adam stuck his cap on the top of the bag and turned it with the bill to the back. Then he waited for the polite ripple of laughter to subside. “The gloves will protect your knuckles and wrists when you go after B.G., but they have to be used correctly.”

As he launched into the rules, Harmony listened. Keep your wrists straight. Stay balanced. Hit, don’t push, the bag. Her mind wandered as he continued the lecture. She imagined landing a solid punch and what it would feel like. Adam was right. She didn’t want to hurt him or anybody else. Although her mother had often managed to intercede and turn the tide of her father’s rage she still knew what it felt like to be struck and struck repeatedly, and she didn’t want to inflict pain.

But a punching bag?

They lined up, and Adam passed out gloves and showed each woman how to adjust them. He checked hers when he got to the back of the line.

“Tighten the wrist guard just a little,” he said, and watched her do it. “And the padding should fit over your knuckles.” He took one hand, then the other, and felt to be sure. “You’re good to go.”

“What are the chances we’ll be wearing boxing gloves if somebody jumps us on the street?”

He flashed a quick smile. “What are the chances that at that point you’ll be so worried about your knuckles you won’t try to use what we’ve learned here, anyway?”

She liked Adam well enough. She still harbored a grudge because he had separated her from her mother, but she knew both of them were probably progressing faster. He was definitely an attractive man, as different from Nate as a bear from a border collie, but she was also aware that he and Taylor were working their way toward some kind of relationship. Taylor hadn’t said they were a couple, but Adam had shown up at the Goddess House for the harvest celebration, and the two of them had taken a long bike ride together just before evening fell. They had been late returning for the campfire, and neither had seemed sorry.

“This is going to be good for you,” he said, before he headed back to the head of the line.

“Why?”

“Because you’ve been holding back. You won’t have to now.”

“Doesn’t everybody hold back?”

“Not the way you do.”

She wondered about that as he demonstrated what he wanted them to do. They were going to practice jabbing the punching bag to get a feel for the way it reacted; then they would graduate to trying some of their strikes. This would help them develop confidence and translate what they knew in their heads into muscle memory.

She watched as Taylor began. Adam coached her, reminding her not to twist her body, to avoid winding up for a strike like a pitcher at the mound. She landed several good jabs, and finally he sent her to stand behind Harmony.

“How did that feel?” Harmony asked as Adam began to work with the next student.

“Strange, like a lifetime of training to be a good girl was for nothing.”

She’d had plenty of that training herself. Her father had always begun whatever punishment he planned to mete out with the phrase “You were not a good girl today.” It had meant anything from “You forgot to turn the knife blades toward the plates when you set the table” to “Buddy says you made a face at him on the school bus.”

She was still thinking about that when she got to the head of the line. Adam showed her what he wanted her to do. Keep her wrist straight; keep her body aligned; follow through on her punches.

She let him finish, and then she struck the punching bag with what she thought was plenty of force. It barely moved.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s try it again.” He moved around her, and with his hands on her shoulders, he repositioned her. “The most powerful part of a strike comes near the end. You want to contact the bag when your arm is almost extended. You don’t want to push the bag, you want to smack it. Try it from there.”

She did, and she was surprised how much better the strike felt. She heard a pop, which signaled she had made a connection with some actual power. She was encouraged.

Adam worked with her a bit more, and then they all tried it again. “You want to get this right,” he said as the women each moved forward to take a turn. “You want your muscles to remember how this feels when you do it correctly, not when you’re making mistakes. Breathe out when you hit the bag. Don’t hold your breath. Get used to that, too.”

She was ready when it was her turn. She practiced all the things he had told her, positioned herself just the way he had and she punched with some actual force this time.

“Good,” he said. “You’ve improved a hundred percent already.”

The third time up she was even better, stronger, more confident. Then Adam changed the routine.

“Okay, you’re starting to get the feel of it,” he said. “So now we’re going to do a couple of combinations at the bag. We’re going to practice the strikes you’ve already learned. I’ll demonstrate.”

They all stepped back. He executed a short series of movements. He began with a cupped hand to the side of the bag, approximating the location of an attacker’s ear, which could cause disorientation as well as pain. He followed with a hammer fist to B.G.’s nose—or what passed for one in their imaginations. The third strike was to the groin, and the reason for that was clear to everybody.

“For that one you can use a fist, an open hand or a knee,” he said. “Whatever seems most possible. So try them all. You need force and accuracy, not fancy footwork. That’s three strikes in a row. Taylor, want to start? We’ll walk through them slowly until it feels right, and then you can take off.”

Harmony was fascinated. This was more like real defense, not just disjointed individual strikes that seemed to have little application. A woman who needed to defend herself would need more than one blow to persuade her attacker she was serious. She would need an arsenal, as many strikes as it took to get him to back off or roll over or whatever he had to do to get away from her.

Then she could run away, which was the purpose of everything they had learned.

Taylor managed the three required strikes using the fluid, connected movements of a dance sequence. A bummed-out Harmony knew she would never manage that perfect choreography, but as it turned out, Adam wasn’t impressed. He told Taylor she wasn’t putting enough strength into the movements, that her attacker might be intrigued by how lovely she was as she performed, but he certainly wasn’t going to be thinking about his injuries, because he wouldn’t have any.

She tried again, with more force, and he told her she needed practice. The next woman tried her version, and he coached her while Taylor got in line behind Harmony.

“I thought you looked great,” Harmony said.

“That’s my plan. Bad Guy will be wowed by my yogilike calm and grace, and he’ll let me go because I need to share it with the world.”

“Works for me.”

When it was her turn Harmony got into position and focused as if her life or at least her safety depended on it. Then she performed the sequence, putting every bit of energy in her body behind each strike.

“Excellent,” Adam said. “But you’re separating the strikes by seconds. B.G. here has plenty of time to recuperate and block the next one well before you wind up to try it. Can you move faster?”

She thought he was being unfair. There had been nothing more than a hiccup between strikes. But she tried again, moving faster this time.

“Better,” he said. “But you’re telegraphing what you’re about to do. Take him by surprise.”

She focused harder and ran through the sequence with the most speed yet, sparer movements, maximum strength.

“Again,” Adam said.

She went through it again.

“Again!”

Frustrated, she slammed her palm against B.G.’s ear, brought her fist down on the region of his nose and this time used her knee in the punching bag’s groin area, nearly stumbling backward when the bag swung away from her.

“Again!”

She turned, furious he was keeping after her the way her father always had no matter how well she performed at anything. She had never been good enough for Rex Stoddard, and now apparently she wasn’t good enough for Adam Pryor, either.

She would never be good enough for anybody.

She lunged for Adam’s ear with an open palm. He jumped aside so she didn’t even graze his cheek, but by then she was already aiming for his nose with her fist. Knowing what was coming, he blocked that easily, too, but by then her knee was lifting to slam between his legs.

He danced away just in time.

She heard a horrified gasp behind her, and somehow that, not the surprise on Adam’s face, brought her back to reality.

“Oh God...” She stepped back and put her face in her hands.

“Take five,” Adam told the class.

Harmony could hear the other students moving back and away. She was too humiliated to look up and see. She was too humiliated to ever lift her head again.

She felt hands against hers, pulling
her
hands apart. And she was forced to look up.

“Well, you got the sequence down,” he said.

“I’m...” She swallowed.

“You’re living somewhere else,” he said. “I’ve been there, so I know. Nobody understands better. Sometimes the past slips into the present. But you’re okay. You’re here, and we’re all friends in this room.”

She tried to nod and couldn’t.

“Who are you angry with?” he asked gently.

And because above all she owed him an explanation, she had to answer. “My father.”

“I get it.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I think maybe you fought back tonight the way you couldn’t when you were growing up.”

She had revealed too much and she tried to retreat. “I never needed to fight back. Nobody ever hurt me.” She finally looked into his eyes and saw he didn’t believe her.

“The past is nothing to be ashamed of. You felt cornered again, and you fought back. You defended yourself. That’s part of what this class is about. Now you have to channel the anger and deal with old feelings in a new and better way. You have to gain control.”

“I’ll drop out.”

“Not an option. You’re going to finish. Then I’m going to find a good martial arts program for you, and we’re going to get you enrolled for the next session. You have enormous ability, Harmony, but you need discipline and training, and you need to deal with your past. They’ll help you.”

“It’s nothing I can’t manage on my own.”

He smiled sadly. “Sure it is.”

She closed her eyes.

“Don’t let this defeat you,” Adam said. “You struck a blow to liberate yourself tonight. Now you just need to remember who the enemy is.”

“I
know
who the enemy is.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Of course you do,” he said. “And now you’re going to learn how to stay safe from him and the damage he did. Forever.”

Chapter 25

Rain sluiced from the eaves of Taylor’s house to the walkway and flower beds below, glistening silver sheets and symphonic splashes. Maddie and Edna sat on the sofa with their chins resting in their hands, staring out at the wind-whipped landscape.

“I am so, so sick of rain,” Maddie said.

Taylor had heard that sentence countless times in the past week. At least half-a-dozen repetitions ago she’d given up answering or encouraging her daughter to be positive, and now she clamped her lips and continued to chop vegetables for soup. They had received an uncharacteristic amount of rain for autumn, enough that low-lying creeks had flooded and leaves had been knocked to the ground before they’d had time to make the leap on their own. The studio was high enough to avoid flooding, but much of the River Arts District was holding its breath. She was hopeful the rain would end soon and they would get back to a normal fall.