No River Too Wide (37 page)

“Oh, Adam.” Taylor squeezed his hand.

“I was clinically dead before they finally got me stabilized. You can see the scar on my chest. You can’t see the injury to my brain. That and post-traumatic stress were the bonuses that finally earned me an honorable discharge and disability compensation.”

“Are you back at the bazaar in your nightmare?”

“I’m looking down on the scene. It’s always the same.”

“Are the dreams getting further apart?”

“That’s only the second time I’ve had one in this apartment. I saw a V.A. psychologist for months. She taught me to cope, but the techniques don’t always work.”

“Does anything special set it off?”

Change set it off. He knew that from his sessions with the psychologist. A new town, a new bed, a new assignment, the feeling that until he settled in again and knew his way around, he wasn’t in control, that anything could happen.

Change
like falling in love.

How much more out of control could a man be? Especially when he was lying to the woman about his reasons for being in town?

“They seem to be random,” he said, which was another lie.

“Do you think I triggered it somehow? I mean sleeping here beside you? Or Maddie’s experience today?”

“Maybe the thing with Maddie. I wasn’t able to save those kids at the bazaar. I just lay there and quietly died.”

“The suicide bomber killed them, Adam. You were trying to save lives.”

He pulled her close and settled her against him. “I don’t usually talk about this.”

“I know. I think there are a lot of things you don’t talk about.”

“You should run screaming.”

“I don’t think so. You’re one of the good guys.”

As her breathing slowed and she fell asleep pillowed on his arm, he wondered how long she would think so.

Chapter 29

From the audio journal of a forty-five-year-old woman, taped for the files of Moving On, an underground highway for abused women.

Despite everything, why would I allow children to live in a marriage like mine? Of course, by the time my daughter was born my mistake horrified me, but by then I was in so deep I couldn’t find my way out. Keeping up with two small children, a large house that had to be spotlessly clean and three meals a day exhausted me. There was no respite, no friends to spend time with or talk to, no dinners away from my family. Except for the grocery store and Sunday mornings at the church the Abuser had chosen for us, I was a prisoner in my own home, at his mercy for whatever punishment he chose to administer.

It’s also important to note that not every moment was grim. When the Abuser was feeling happy and charitable, life in our house could be pleasant. He was a good provider and the master of thoughtful gifts. When I ran the house and cared for the children to his exact specifications, he let me know how grateful he was. Most Friday nights he rented movies and ordered pizza. After church services we always went out for fast food and ice cream. There was laughter, too, but only when I was certain laughing was safe. The Abuser had no sense of humor about himself or any action he had taken.

Sometimes weeks would go by without retaliation for any real or perceived misjudgment on my part, but by then I had lost hope the good times meant anything. I was simply grateful for the calm and tried my best to drag it out while I prepared for the inevitable storm brewing just over the horizon.

My son quickly learned that the best way to please his father was to copy everything he did. My daughter learned that the best way to please her father was to stay out of his way. Both children avoided the worst of his wrath by treading their chosen paths, but when even that didn’t work, I learned to deflect his anger so more often than not he aimed it at me.

There are millions of women worldwide who time and time again step between their abusers and their children. We do it for two reasons. We love our children and want to protect them.

And far less virtuous? Each of us knows we deserve to pay a terrible price for marrying men who thrive by destroying innocence.

* * *

By eleven Jan finally felt warm enough to shed her fleece blanket and just snuggle in the flannel robe she had bought because it was a lovely rusty red, and red was a color Rex had associated with fallen women. She had showered twice, the second time draining the hot water heater, and now she was on her second and final cup of hot chocolate. She still doubted she would sleep. The house was quiet, but her thoughts were not. She was sorry to be alone with them.

Early in the evening Taylor had called to say she was staying at the hospital with Maddie. Even river-rat Vanilla had gone straight to Harmony’s, so that Rilla, the skilled dog breeder, could check the dog to be sure she was really okay.

Reading hadn’t helped Jan fall asleep. Television hadn’t helped. No matter what she did, the whole nightmarish afternoon continued to play in her head. Blaming herself for everything was a legacy Rex had bequeathed her. Convinced she should have found a way to stop the events before they began, she had tried repeatedly to figure out where she had gone wrong.

Could she have pleaded with Harmony not to take the girls so close to the water? Could she have asked Taylor not to let Maddie go with them? Of course, but when had she been given the right to control the lives of others, particularly when old fears were making the decisions?

In the end, even if the decision to follow the others downhill had sprung from her personal nightmare, it had been the right one. She would never know what might have happened if she hadn’t reached Maddie so quickly. If Adam had located the girl immediately, he might have been able to reach her in time. But those extra minutes facedown in the water might also have been fatal.

Just before another try at sleep, somebody tapped on the front door. She froze, wondering who would be knocking this time of evening.

Before she could run through a list of frightening possibilities, she heard her daughter’s voice. “Mom?”

She crossed the room and flung the door open to let Harmony in. They embraced and held each other for a long moment. At the riverside Harmony had known her presence wouldn’t be needed at the hospital, and she had taken Lottie and Vanilla home so they wouldn’t be in the way. And of course, once they had been seen by a doctor, Taylor had called Harmony to report that the waterlogged trio was going to be fine.

“What’s wrong?” Jan asked, holding her daughter away at last. “Have you heard something?” She left the question open, because so many things were up in the air.

“No. No! I was just worried about you. I couldn’t get Lottie to sleep for the longest time. She knew something was wrong. She’s little, but she knows.”

Jan was afraid that was true. Children knew, and children remembered. She had always been sure that on some level Buddy had remembered that day at the creek.

“She’s with Rilla?”

“She doesn’t mind. Once Lottie’s asleep she’ll be out for the night.”

“Hot chocolate?”

“That’s always been your cure for everything.”

“It was one of the few I could administer without being questioned.” Jan went into the kitchen, with Harmony following, and poured milk into a mug and set it in the microwave to warm. “Vanilla’s okay?”

“Rilla gave her a hot bath and dried her with a blow–dryer. Then we covered her in blankets. Tonight we put her in bed with the boys. She’s fine. She’s acting like she’s just gotten back from a day at the spa. Stupid dog.”

“Maddie went after her without thinking. I doubt she realized the water got deep so quickly, and when she lost her footing, she just got swept away.”

“You saved her life.”

Since it might be true, Jan simply shook her head. “We’ll never know.”

“You went into that water like you’d been doing it every day of your life. I’ve never seen you swim.”

“It’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget.”

“You do if it scares you to death.”

“Watching Maddie drown scared me more.”

“I would have gone in after her. I was going to give Lottie to you.”

“Watching you rescue Maddie would have scared me the most.”

Harmony’s eyes filled, and Jan turned to take the milk out of the microwave. She replaced it when she saw it wasn’t steaming and added more time.

“I...” Harmony rubbed her nose on the sleeve of her Radiohead sweatshirt. “You know what they say about your life flashing in front of your eyes when you die?”

“Mine didn’t, don’t worry.” Jan struggled for humor. “That
would
have been scary.”

“Well, mine did. I remembered all the times you threw yourself in front of me when I was growing up to keep me safe. When Dad looked for an excuse to hit me, you were right there making yourself the target. When he came home in a bad mood, you made sure I went to my bedroom or outside so you could calm him down or offer yourself as a sacrifice.”

“Whatever I could do to protect you was never good enough.”

They were silent until the microwave dinged. Jan took the milk out and carried it to the counter to mix in the powdered chocolate. Then she carried it to the table and Harmony joined her.

“Do you want something to eat with this?” Jan asked.

Harmony sat, but she didn’t pick up the mug. “If you knew nothing you could do was good enough, Mom, if you knew Dad was never going to change, why didn’t you just leave Buddy with him, take me and get out? Didn’t you see if you left Buddy behind, Dad might have left us alone? He might have let us have a life outside that hellhole?”

“We can’t know that.”

“We can. He almost never hit Buddy. Buddy was his treasure, his stupid legacy to the world. And Buddy didn’t need you. He always took Dad’s side. He was Dad’s eyes and ears in the house. Almost every time I got in trouble, Buddy was behind it. It was like I was his guinea pig. He wanted to be like Dad, and he practiced on me.” She began to cry.

Jan rested her hand on Harmony’s arm, and her heart squeezed painfully. “You never knew your brother the way I did. He was confused and unhappy, and your father tormented him, too, only in a very different way.”

“He was never cruel to him!”

“Crueler than he ever was to you.”

Harmony reached for a napkin and wiped her nose. “How can you say that?”

“Because I was there.”

“Buddy used to set traps for me, and if I took the bait, he would run to Dad and tell him what I’d done. Once he found the key to the gun cabinet and left one of Dad’s guns on a table, do you remember? I picked it up thinking I would take it to you so we could figure out what to do with it, and then Dad came in and saw me. Buddy told him I’d opened the gun cabinet and taken it myself.”

Jan remembered the unfortunate aftermath. “As hard as this is to understand, Buddy didn’t hate you. He was just fascinated with guns, like boys often are. And he didn’t want his father to see him doing something he wasn’t supposed to. So he lied. But he didn’t set out to hurt you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he talked to me. Sometimes on the nights when your father was gone Buddy would open up. He wasn’t bad—he was confused. He saw the way his father treated us, but he couldn’t believe his own father was bad, because what would that do to his world? He had to choose, but it was never easy. He wanted to do the right thing, but as he got older that became increasingly less clear. Your father praised him for all the wrong things. When I could I tried to counteract that, to make him think about other people’s feelings, to assure him that his own mattered, his real ones, not the ones his father told him he was allowed to have.”

“You’re saying you had an influence on him?” Harmony shook her head. “We’re talking about the same person, right? The one who picked on anybody he didn’t like? The one who got kicked off the football team for slamming another player’s head against the goalpost? The same guy who started one too many fights at the local bar where he was too young to be and died because of it?”

Silence fell, and Jan felt the weight of it smothering her.

“Are you saying that you stayed with my father all those years, that you subjected yourself and sometimes me to his violence, just because you thought that Buddy needed you?”

Jan knew she had to be honest, that it was past time for her daughter to understand. But she struggled for a way to make things clear without revealing every detail.

“He did need me,” she said at last. “He needed somebody who loved him and believed in him.”

“Dad believed—”

Jan held up her hand to stop her. “Let me say this my way. Your father
never
believed in your brother. He only believed in himself. Something terrible happened to Buddy before you were born. He was a wonderful little boy, my sweet baby, but by then I had realized he wouldn’t stay that way if we remained with your dad, so I tried to leave. Secretly and carefully, but in the end without success. That day I saw the full extent of your father’s cruelty and need for revenge.”

“What—”

Jan held up her hand again. “I’m not going into it. Afterward I realized the only thing I could do was try to help Buddy be the person he was meant to be. Again, secretly and carefully. I had to be the push to your father’s pull. The only choice left was to keep my little boy in touch with his humanity. And so I tried. I believed it was a better choice than sacrificing both your lives. Because I believed then—and I still do—that your father would rather have killed us than let us go free. And nothing the law could do for us would have stopped him.”

“It didn’t work. Buddy lived and died a bully.”

“No, he took his own life.”

“No, he was killed in a bar fight.”

“One of many he started, yes. Buddy was tempting fate and hoping, I think, that he would lose. And he finally found peace.”

Harmony stared at the table.

“He used to bring me flowers,” Jan said softly. “When nobody else was home he would pick them, dandelions or the daffodils from our woods. And sometimes we would sit together and talk about the conflicts raging inside him. Of course, he didn’t know what to call his feelings, and he didn’t see clearly what had happened to him. By then he was so much more your father’s son than mine, but I believed...” She swallowed hard. “I believed that once he left home, all the seeds I planted would grow. That he would see his father for the man he is...or was. In the end, maybe that’s why he died. Because he was torn inside. All the time. And he just wanted it to end.”