When Love Finds a Home (11 page)

Anna set her empty glass back
on the tray. "No, not at all."

Rona felt compelled to say
something supportive. "Sometimes it helps to get everything out." Her
face began to burn when she glanced over and saw Anna looking at her with that
strange mocking expression.

"If it helps, please,
continue," Anna said.

Tammy nodded and continued
with her story. "When I took the job as a waitress, I didn't realize the
place was on the verge of closing, which it did two months later. By that time,
I was seven months pregnant and no one was in any hurry to hire me. I was able
to buy food with the small unemployment check I received. When the girls were born,
I owed the landlord three months' back rent. I came home from the county
hospital to find a lock on my door. He let me take my clothes, but he kept the
few pieces of furniture I had bought to help recoup his money. I stayed with a
friend from the restaurant for a little while, but she was having her own
problems, and two hungry babies in the house only made things worse for her.
Then one day, I took the girls and walked to the store for milk. When I got
back to the house, I saw Wayne. He was sitting in a car across from the house
watching it. I turned around and started walking. A trucker gave us a lift to
Boise, Idaho. I managed to get odd jobs here and there and finally secured a
position as a receptionist for a small trucking company. It didn't pay much,
but Homer and Sophie, the old couple who owned it, had a garage apartment
behind their house and let me live in it rent-free. They didn't have any
grandchildren and they sort of adopted the girls. Sophie watched the twins for
me while I was at work." She traced aimless patterns onto the couch arm
with her thumb. "It took Wayne almost three years to find me, but he
finally did. I was using my maiden name. Pretty stupid, huh?" She tried to
smile, but it got lost in the effort. "He grabbed me one evening as I was
coming back from taking the girls to the park. He threw us in the car. I
pretended to be happy about going back. I kept whining and crying about how
hard it had been trying to make a living on my own. He got careless in Kansas.
He left us in the car alone while he went to the restroom. I stole the car and
drove until I saw a truck stop. There was an old abandoned barn about a mile
away and I hid the car in it. When it got dark, we walked across the fields to
the truck stop and managed to hitch a ride all the way to San Antonio."

"You can't keep running
forever," Rona said. This time it was
Tammy
who gave her an odd look. "All I meant was that the girls are getting
older."

"I know. I'm just so
scared of what he'll do when he finds us."

"Have you talked to a
lawyer? Or considered divorcing him?" Anna asked. "I'm not very
familiar with these kinds of situations, but I would think there are legal
steps you could take. At the very least, you should be able to have him
arrested on assault charges."

"If she serves him with
divorce papers won't that tell him where she is?" Rona asked.

"Probably," Anna
answered as she rubbed a finger over her lower lip. "But if she has a
restraining order against him and he tries anything, she can have him
arrested."

Tammy looked at Anna and shook
her head. "I'm afraid he's going to punish me by taking my girls."

"Why? He wanted you to
have an abortion. He obviously didn't want them," Rona protested.

"That doesn't matter. He
knows it's the only way he can truly hurt me. He'll tell the court I'm an unfit
mother and—" Her voice broke. "I'll lose them."

Rona tried to find a spark of
hope. "So much time has passed. Maybe he'll give up on finding you."

Tammy shook her head and said,
"I know him. He won't stop looking until he finds me."

Rona held her breath as she
watched Anna digest the last statement.

"You're telling me this
because you're afraid he might show up here, aren't you?" Anna asked.

Tammy nodded. "He won't
give up until he makes me pay for running away. It may take him a while, but I
know someday, somewhere, he'll step out and grab me."

"San Antonio is a big
place," Anna reminded her.

"Not big enough."
She stood suddenly. "I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

As she started off, Anna
stopped her. "Why did you tell us this, now?"

Tammy stopped and gazed down
at her. "I'm tired of hiding. Being with your family today made me realize
the full extent of what I'm doing to my girls. I know it's time for me to stop
acting like a coward, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do it on my
own." Tammy left the room, leaving Rona and Anna staring thoughtfully into
the fire.

Chapter Twelve

Rona said good night shortly
after Tammy's departure. She wasn't concerned about Tammy's husband showing up.
From what she had told them tonight, it had been at least a year since she last
saw him, and San Antonio was big enough for a person to get lost in if they
chose to. He no longer seemed a viable threat.

A more pressing issue to her
was the need to get her personal belongings from the abandoned building. When
she decided to make her move, things would start happening quickly. She wouldn't
have time to be running across town to pick up the cheap fake leather bag,
which contained a dozen carefully folded sheets of music and Mary's ring. As
soon as the weather improved, she'd find a way downtown to retrieve the items.

She walked to the dresser and
picked up each of the six porcelain kittens. She gazed at the one with the
butterfly on its paw. It was strange how something so small could be so
beautiful. She wondered if Anna even remembered the figurines were up here.

Had Anna bought the collection,
or had someone given them to her? Maybe they were simply something a decorator
had added, but this room didn't have the feel or look of being professionally
decorated. She suspected this room held the remnants of Anna's childhood
furniture. The twin-sized maple bed seemed much newer than the scarred dresser.
She let her finger trail along a deep scratch across the dresser top. The
obvious craftsmanship that had gone into building the dresser made the scar in
the wood seem hideous. She felt an overpowering urge to buff the wound away and
restore the battered old dresser to its original luster. She pulled her hand
away from the scratch. Anna was obviously happy with it the way it was—hidden
away out of sight.

She turned her attention back
to the figurine she was holding and tried to recall her own carefree days when
the band had been doing well and Mary was still healthy and vibrant. So much
had happened in the sixteen months since Mary's death. A faint, painful
tingling began deep within her chest. She set the figurine down and flipped out
the light before going over to the window.

After opening the shades, she
stood looking out over the houses along the street. Some were dark, while
others were brightly lit. She thought about a few of the people she had met
while living on the street—Malcolm, Tammy, Roach and Harper. They were like
those houses. Somehow, Malcolm and Tammy had managed to retain a spark of
humanity, refusing to allow it to be extinguished no matter how hard life
punched them down, while Roach and Harper had succumbed to the darker ugliness
of humanity's baser instincts. She wondered where she would fit in her analogy.

On the distant horizon was the
faint glow that marked downtown. Hidden in the shadows of that artificial glow
were thousands of men, women and children whose American dream had turned into
a nightmare.

She wondered where Malcolm was
and how he was getting along. She needed to go find him. Survival was easier if
you worked in pairs.

Brief glimpses of the day's
events flashed through her memory.

Anna's family was nice. An
atmosphere of love and respect existed within the family that she had never
experienced within her own. Her parents weren't physically or emotionally
responsive people. Maybe it was because they gave so much of their love and
devotion to God and the nondenominational Church of God's Love that they had
nothing left over for anything else. It was as if she and her siblings had been
under contract. Their parents provided all the material things they required to
survive; in exchange, the children were supposed to repay that support with
perfection. Their part in the contract was to make good grades in school, avoid
all unpleasant matters that might embarrass their parents, marry well and
provide them with cookie-cutter grandchildren. Where her older siblings, Walt
and Kimberly, excelled at these things, she failed miserably. She had been a
mediocre student. The only time her photo ever appeared in the local paper was
in connection with a botched attempt to hold a Gay Pride parade. That had been
the final straw for her father. When she refused to beg God for forgiveness for
her wicked thoughts, he kicked her out of the house. She tried to contact them
once after the band was beginning to gain some public exposure, but as soon as
she mentioned the band, her mother hung up on her. She occasionally wondered
how Walt and Kim were doing, but she was afraid to call. If she didn't give
them a chance to reject her, she could hold on to the fantasy that someone out
there still cared if she were dead or alive.

She closed the shade and
stretched out across the bed on her stomach. She wondered what Anna was doing.
Had she gone to bed or was she still sitting in the den? Several times during
the day, she had caught herself watching Anna. She liked the easy manner in
which she moved. The way her eyes sparkled when she laughed. It had been a long
time since she'd felt anything for anyone. On a couple occasions, she had
wanted to reach over and smooth away the small crease that appeared between
Anna's eyebrows when she concentrated. Then there was the way her jeans
stretched so deliciously across her hips when she bent over the pool table. A
small ember of desire began to make itself known.

She rolled over on her back
and tucked her hands beneath her head. It made sense that she felt some inkling
of desire for Anna. After all, it had been almost two years since she'd made
love to anyone. She was young and healthy. Why shouldn't she feel desire?
Lust,
she told herself. She intended to keep a vow she made to herself after her
parents disowned her and Mary died. It was all right to think and lust after
Anna Pagonis, but it could never go beyond a fantasy. In the darkened bedroom,
she slipped her sweatpants off and opened her legs as an imaginary Anna slowly
trailed her fingers down Rona's stomach. She pulled a pillow over her face as
the fingers parted her swollen lips and began to stroke their way through the
creamy wetness. A whimper of pleasure escaped her as fingers slipped inside and
eased back out. As the first inklings of orgasm began, she rolled over onto her
stomach, straining against the fingers until escalating pressure melted into a
mediocre release of tension.

Afterward, feeling lonely and
dissatisfied, she lay in bed staring at the ceiling. It was a long while before
she fell asleep.

Rona didn't know what time it
was when something jarred her awake. It took her a moment to remember that she
was no longer on the streets but in the relative safety of a home. Her pounding
heart began to slow as she tried to pinpoint what had disturbed her sleep. After
several seconds of careful listening, she realized that it was a dream rather
than a noise. She couldn't remember the details of the dream, but there was the
vaguest image of Anna being involved.

The following morning, Rona
was in the kitchen drinking coffee when Anna came in wearing expensive-looking
black slacks and a matching black and tan fitted jacket. The white sneakers on
her feet seemed out of place.

"Good morning," Anna
said as she hung the black nylon bag that she was carrying over the knob of the
door leading to the garage. "Are you always such an early bird?"

"I hope I didn't wake
you," she said as she filled a cup for Anna.

"No. I normally try to be
at the office by six-thirty. That's when I catch up on paperwork." She
took the proffered cup of coffee. "Thank you. It smells good."

"Do you normally work on
Saturday?" Rona asked as she sat back down to her own coffee.

"It's not a regularly
scheduled day, but I usually go in most Saturdays. I meet with clients who have
problems scheduling appointments during the week."

"You mentioned you did
something with investments, but I don't remember which company you're
with."

Anna sipped her coffee.
"I'm a Certified Financial Planner, or C.F.P., but I'm no longer
associated with a bank. I used to work for Bank of America, but a little over a
year ago, I decided to go out on my own."

"What does a C.F.P.
do?"

"I help clients with
their investment portfolios and basically provide advice on all aspects of
their financial picture."

Rona had never possessed
enough money to worry about investing it. Not knowing how to respond, she
changed the subject. "It looks like the roads are worse today. It snowed
again last night."

Anna grimaced. "I know,
but this client I have the meeting with is one of those self-made old ranchers
who doesn't believe in letting anything get in his way. He made millions in the
oil business back in its heyday and was smart enough to sell out fast when
things started going sour. I called him yesterday to reschedule, but he
insisted that we meet today. He'll be flying down in his helicopter."