Never Let You Go

  When he gave me a concerned look and said, “Maybe you should see the doctor. These pregnancy hormones seem to be making you confused,” I said I was just tired.

  He’d been tired too. This new project was taking up so much of his time, but he still fussed over me, always making sure I was eating healthy and going for long walks. I was surprised when he came with me to pick out maternity clothes—most men didn’t seem to care about those things. My friend Samantha teased me that I was starting to dress like a forty-year-old soccer mom, but she liked to show off her body. I didn’t need to do that anymore. Andrew’s taste was more grown-up, mature. What man wanted everyone looking at his wife’s cleavage?

  The price labels blurred. I blinked a few times, widened my eyes, and tried to force myself to concentrate, but my eyelids still felt so heavy and I couldn’t stop yawning. I thought of our bed, the chicken stew in the Crock-Pot. Maybe I should give up on the faucets.

  I ran for my car, one hand holding my coat tight around my stomach, and kept my head down, but the rain still blew hard into my face. The November sky was dark and dreary, rust-colored leaves spinning and floating down the stream rapidly forming beside the road. My feet were soaked, my toes cold. I should’ve worn boots, but I’d thought it would be a quick trip.

  Wrenching open the door, I climbed in and huddled behind the wheel. When I turned the key, the starter made a clicking sound. I tried a few times, feeling more desperate with each attempt. Finally I gave up and reached into my purse for my cell, which I now realized I’d left at home. I huddled in my damp coat and tried to think what I should do. We didn’t have roadside service and my mom couldn’t drive. I was going to have to use the phone inside to call Andrew. But I hated that he’d have to leave work to pick me up.

  I slogged back through the puddles. My hair was drenched, and I was cold through to the bone. “Do you mind if I use your phone?” I asked one of the clerks. “My car won’t start.”

  “Need a ride?” the man standing behind me in line said.

  I turned around—it was Bob Irvine, who ran another construction company in town. Thank God. Now I didn’t have to bother Andrew. I’d known Bob for years. His daughter went to school with my brother. He’d always been nice.

  “Sure,” I said. “That would be great.”

  * * *

  I was stepping out of a hot shower and drying off my hair, luxuriating in the steamy warmth of the bathroom, when I heard Andrew’s truck in the driveway. He must have decided to come home early. I pulled on yoga pants and a long sweatshirt, made sure to hang the towel, and straightened the blankets on our bed so there wasn’t one wrinkle. As I passed through the house I did a quick scan, and shoved my shoes into the closet. I liked our house to be tidy even though it was getting harder now that my belly was so heavy that sometimes it felt as though I were going to topple over. My favorite aisle at the grocery store was the one with all the household cleaners. Andrew was always teasing me that I was addicted, but in a way, it was true. If there was a new wax or polish or scrub brush on the market, I had to try it. I liked to stand at the end of a room I’d just cleaned and take in the gleaming wood surfaces, the perfectly vacuumed carpet, the sparkling windows, the lemon-scented air. There was nothing as satisfying.

  Andrew was coming in the front door, the rain blowing in after him. I caught a glimpse of the trees outside, bending and swaying wildly. The storm had picked up.

  “Hi, honey!” I said. “Do you want some chicken stew and biscuits?” I’d popped some biscuits into the oven before my shower and I could smell the buttery scent through the house.

  I leaned up and gave him a kiss. He turned at the last moment. His face was ruddy, almost looked windburned, his cheeks cold under my lips. I stepped back, startled.

  “Where’s your car?” he said.

  “It broke down. I tried to call you. Bob Irvine drove me home.”

  “You should’ve called a cab.”

  “I didn’t think about it. He offered, and—”

  “You’re my wife, carrying my child. Do you know how this looks?”

  I didn’t understand what was wrong. I thought he liked Bob Irvine. “I was careful. I didn’t stress out the baby or anything.”

  “God, for a smart girl you can be so stupid sometimes, Lindsey.”

  My mouth opened, the pain so quick and sharp under my ribs it was as though the baby had kicked me, but she hadn’t moved. “That’s really mean.” My cheeks felt hot as I remembered all the mistakes I’d made lately. Was this what he actually thought of me?

  He pushed past me in the hallway, almost knocking me into the wall, and I caught the smell of whiskey. But that couldn’t be right—he was working all day. I hesitated, then followed him into the kitchen, watched as he took a beer out of the fridge. His balance was unsteady.

  “Have you been drinking?” He liked to go to the pub after work with his crew if they’d had a hard day—and he’d had a lot of them recently—but he didn’t have more than two beers and always called and checked that I was okay first.

  He turned around, opened the can. “I never want to see you getting out of another man’s truck again. I saw the way you smiled at him, your flirty little good-bye.”

  “Were you watching me?” I hadn’t seen his truck in the driveway or on the road. Maybe he’d come home early, then left again. But why would he do that?

  “You’ve had too many kilometers on your car. Where have you been going every day?”

  “Sometimes I just drive around. I get bored.” Andrew had asked me about my day before, liked to hear everything I did and who I saw, but I thought he was just interested. I had no idea he’d been checking my kilometers. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t right, but the look on his face was scaring me, the way he was leaning against the counter, his hands gripping the edge.

  “You had lunch with Samantha at the pub yesterday.”

  He looked so angry, almost accusing. I was starting to get upset too. I didn’t like being spoken to this way, didn’t like feeling as if I was in trouble—and didn’t even know why.

  “I told you we had lunch.” I rarely saw my friends anymore. Most of them were in college, or had moved away with boyfriends, and Andrew didn’t seem to like the ones who’d stayed in town. When Samantha called, I’d jumped at the chance to meet with a girlfriend and chat.

  “You didn’t mention it was at a bar, Lindsey. You’re about to be a mother.”

  “I wasn’t drinking. I don’t understand why you’re so angry.”

  “Peter’s wife used to go to the pub too.” He was holding my gaze steady. “You remember what happened to her.” Peter was one of his workers. One I didn’t particularly like. I usually avoided him when I came to the job site. He’d caught his wife cheating and divorced her, got the kids and the house. I couldn’t believe Andrew didn’t trust me. How could he threaten me like this?

  “I would never cheat on you, Andrew.”

  “You better not.” He took a long swallow of his beer, still holding eye contact.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you don’t get rides with other men.”

  My pulse was racing. I’d seen Andrew get frustrated, seen him come home in bad moods where he went into his office for hours or sat and stared at the TV, but he’d never been cruel or vindictive. I felt as though a stranger had walked into our house.

  “Maybe I should stay at my parents’ tonight.”

  “You’re not going anywhere. The roads are bad.”

  The baby was shifting and rolling. I imagined my heartbeat, how loud it must be. Stress was bad. I had to stay calm. I curved my hand over my belly. Shush, little baby. Shush.

  Andrew’s gaze was focused on my stomach. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Lindsey. You need to be more careful. I don’t want anything to happen to the baby, understand?”

  No. That wasn’t what he was saying at all. I saw it in his face. The warning. He wasn’t just threatening that he might divorce
me. This was a threat of something far more serious. Something I couldn’t even fathom, but it was thick and dark and dangerous.

  “I understand.”

  He drained his beer, grabbed another from the fridge. “Then I guess we don’t have anything to worry about, do we?” He walked into the living room and collapsed onto the couch, reached for the remote. I didn’t know if we were done talking, and I was scared to move. I slowly walked to the doorway and waited for a moment, but he was staring at the TV. I watched as he brought the beer to his mouth, his throat muscles flexing as he gulped it. Could it be the booze? Some men got really mean when they drank. Andrew would never normally say these things.

  The stew was bubbling on the stove behind me in the kitchen. Food. I needed to get him to eat. My mom always told my dad not to drink on an empty stomach.

  When I came back into the living room, Andrew didn’t look up. I placed the bowl on the coffee table in front of him. He was watching a hockey game, their red uniforms reflecting in his eyes. I slowly sat on the couch, my breath tight in my chest. His hand suddenly reached out and I flinched, but he just rested it on my stomach. His palm was hot.

  “We should get a security system in the house,” he said. “Been a lot of break-ins lately. We can hook it up so I can check the cameras in my office at the site.”

  I stared at his profile, thought about cameras watching me all day, following me around. His hand pressed harder against my stomach, and I winced at the sudden pressure.

  “Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  DECEMBER 2016

  When I get home Sophie is sprawled on the living room floor drawing. As a child, she was obsessed with painting and would stand in front of the easel Andrew made for her, chubby cheeks smeared with paint, hands gripping a paintbrush she splashed against the paper in bold purple streaks. “Look, Mommy! It’s you!”

  Since she started high school her chosen medium is ink. She can work on one sketch for weeks, her face grimly determined or full of blissful contentment. I find her doodles on the papers by the phone, on our mail, the newspaper, magazine pages. I started tucking them away into a box. Sometimes I take them out and study the lines, the curves of each pen stroke. I love this glimpse into her mind, her imagination. A world where fairies can morph into trees and fish into birds and boxes become flowers and wings and gnomes and dragons.

  Sometimes I worry about what I see: a skull with a broken heart, a tire with flames, devil’s horns, sad clown faces, rivers of tears. When I ask her what they mean, she shrugs.

  “I don’t think about it. They come out of my fingers that way.”

  Everything about Sophie is expressive, her words, her face, the way she moves her hands when she’s talking. She looks more like Andrew than me, but her style is all her own. She wears tunics, patterned leggings, and scarves, colors her hair pink and blue and turquoise. This week it’s violet, makes her green eyes huge. She has my shape. Small, but we’re strong. We run fast.

  When I told her Andrew was out of prison, she went silent, then said, “So? He told his lawyer he was going to leave us alone, right?” His lawyer called my lawyer after the divorce went through: Andrew wishes Lindsey well and won’t bother her anymore. He also sent a large check for Sophie’s support. I never used any of it and put it in a savings account for her.

  “We still need to be extra-careful from now on,” I said.

  “We don’t matter to him anymore,” she insisted.

  “You matter to me. So be careful, okay? Tell me if you see him.”

  “I don’t even know what he looks like anymore.” She was annoyed, frustrated with my anxiety, and I hoped that she was right and my worry was for nothing.

  Now I know Andrew had just been waiting.

  I grab a pillow from the couch and lie beside her. “How was your walk?”

  “It was okay.” She glances at me. “How was work? Is your back sore again?”

  “I took an Advil.”

  “You need to do yoga. It will help.” Sometimes she pours me a bath or massages my feet with lavender oil, nags at me that I need a different job. She doesn’t understand that I enjoy cleaning. I let my mind drift as I scrub and wash and sort. Everything calms down inside me and I feel content and satisfied, proud as I close my client’s door behind me. I like that I have my own business, that I’m independent and can support myself and my daughter.

  I tried to tell Sophie that cleaning gives me the same feeling she has when she’s painting, but she just said, “What are you going to do when you’re old? You need to think about retirement, Mom.” I told her that she was my retirement plan and she just laughed, then gave me a hug. Some people would probably say we are too involved in each other’s lives, too enmeshed, that we lack boundaries, but to hell with them. I need it this way.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say. We’ve had a lot of hard conversations, more than any child should have had to endure, but I don’t know how to start this one.

  She glances at me. “Did you and Greg break up?”

  “What? No.” I notice she looks upset about the idea and tuck it away for another time. I can tell she likes him, but Greg and I are only casual. I hope she isn’t getting too attached.

  “Something happened today,” I say.

  Now I have Sophie’s full attention. “What?”

  “I had to call the police because someone broke into Mrs. Carlson’s house, but it doesn’t seem like anything was stolen.” I take a breath. “I’m pretty sure it was your dad.”

  She looks shocked. The pen rolls out of her hand. “Why would he go there?” Then she meets my eyes and I see the awareness settle in. “You think he wanted to hurt you?”

  “I don’t know what he wants.” Yes. Yes, I do. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary today? See any cars driving by our house or parked nearby?”

  She shrugs. “Everything was normal.” She stares down at her drawing, notices where there’s an ink splotch, blots at it with her finger.

  Normal. Such a simple word, and something our lives will never be. I get up and look out our front window, check the shadows under the maple tree. I turn around, pause for a moment to take in the comforting sight of our cozy living room, the sagging couch we found at a garage sale and covered with a multicolored afghan, the coffee table we made out of driftwood we dragged home from the beach, the paintings we collect from secondhand shops, our choices based solely on whether they make us smile—from a bright bouquet of paper flowers to a group of whimsical owls perched on a snow-covered branch.

  After Sophie and I ran away, we waited in hiding for a year before Andrew’s case went to trial. We lived in cheap hotels all over BC, surviving on loans from Chris and some money I earned doing cash jobs. I couldn’t risk him finding us while he was still out on bail. We even stayed on the border of Alberta for a few weeks. I’d wanted to cry every time Sophie packed her little suitcase and asked, “We’re moving again?” It was even harder when she stopped asking and packed silently.

  When Andrew was finally convicted, we took the ferry from Horseshoe Bay up the coast until we reached Dogwood Bay, a tight-knit community built on a hill facing the ocean. I fell in love with the quaint shops and pubs down in the city center where you can see the dark blue ocean and coastal mountains stretching for miles, taste the salty mist in the air, then order crab pulled up from the water and watch the float planes land, white froth spraying out from behind.

  Sophie and I needed a home, needed to be close to the ocean, and a couple of hours from my family. The only way to Dogwood Bay was by float plane from the island or an hour-and-a-half ferry ride from the mainland. We could be happy here, I thought. We could be safe.

  I come back to sit beside Sophie on the floor. She’s drawing, her face still. She has that ability, same as Andrew, to tuck everything far in behind her eyes and disappear for hours. The difference is she’ll come dancing out again, with the right touch or question, blinking as t
hough she’s emerged from a dark cave and wondrous about where all the time has gone.

  “What are you thinking?” I say.

  “Dad. The night of the accident. Do you really think he would have killed you if he found us?” She turns to look at me, her eyes searching my face.

  “I think he would have tried, yes.”

  “But why would he want to hurt you now? You said he’s stopped drinking. He didn’t hurt you when he was sober.” I thought I was doing the right thing by sharing everything Chris had heard through the grapevine about Andrew’s life, but now I have serious regrets.

  “He didn’t hurt me physically when he was sober, and I know this is hard to understand, honey, but it’s like drinking was just an excuse for him. Even when he was sober, he was jealous and cruel and threatened to hurt me if I ever left him. I was terrified.”

  I remember how hard it was to explain to her that her father had gotten into a car accident when he’d been drinking and someone died so he had to go to jail. She would still ask to visit, no matter how many times I told her it wasn’t a safe place for a little girl. I’d shielded her so well from his drinking, his anger. She only knew him as a loving father and she missed him. Finally I told her she could write letters and draw pictures and give them to him when he was released.

  When she was old enough, I told her more about our marriage, how jealous and controlling he’d been, how many chances I’d given him, but that he was an alcoholic and violent and nearly killed me. That’s why running away was the only option—because I was scared. She stopped asking about him. When I was putting clothes away in her closet one day, I found the box with her letters pushed all the way to the back. I hated how relieved it made me feel.