“We both know better. Nobody goes through this and walks away fine. Nobody.” Tammy leaned back and peered intently at Maddie, waiting.
Maddie stood and paced to the window. “You shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t ask you, and you don’t know how I feel.”
“Yes, I do.”
Maddie whirled. “How can you?”
“You think you’re the only woman who’s gone through this?”
Maddie felt the color leave her cheeks, and goosebumps dotted her skin. Had she heard right? “What did you say?”
“I think you heard me. There are a million reasons to go into counseling, Maddie. Now you know mine.”
Tears pricked Maddie’s eyes, and she stumbled to the sofa, groping for the edge until she could sit. She kept blinking, not wanting to cry again. She didn’t want to feel ever again. And she didn’t want to be talking to Tammy about this, but she couldn’t help herself. It did help to know she wasn’t alone in her despair, that someone else had hurt like she had. “When?”
“I didn’t sprain my ankle during that race in college, Maddie. I did it the night before as I tried to escape. I almost made it.”
Maddie leaned forward, nauseated. Her stomach rolled, and she thought of her own attempt at flight. “But I never heard...no one said anything about it.”
The recognizable strains of “Fur Elise” halted Tammy’s answer, and she pulled out her cell, peered at the caller ID line, and turned it off before shoving it back into her pocket. “I didn’t tell anyone—not my parents, not the police, no one. I simply lived with the shame and hurt because I thought I deserved it. It was years before I could sort it out, and some days I find I’m still sorting. I probably always will be. That’s why I know keeping it locked away isn’t going to help. The longer you hold it inside, the harder it will be to let go of it.”
Maddie touched her healing cheek as she felt a heated flush. “I...I don’t like talking about it. I don’t want to remember.”
“It’s hard,” Tammy agreed as she leaned forward and touched Maddie’s knee. “I understand that. I really do. But at least when you remember it, you’re in control, not him. He hurt you once. Now’s the time to stop him from ever hurting you again.”
Maddie looked at the floor, trying to ignore the lump building in the back of throat, making it more and more difficult to swallow. Tears pricked her eyes. I won’t cry, she seethed. Not now, not ever. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” Tammy gently patted her knee.
“You’re so damned calm.” She brushed the back of her hand across one cheek and then the other.
“Lots of time and letting go.” Tammy leveled her gaze at Maddie. “Make no mistake--nobody will ever hurt me like that again. I’m a third-degree black belt.”
“But–”
”There are no ‘buts,’ Maddie. That’s the way I have chosen to deal with this issue.” As Tammy sat across from Maddie, the therapist rolled her shoulders, trying to erase the cramping there. “Do you blame yourself for any of this?” Tammy waited for her answer.
Stiffening, Maddie inhaled sharply and looked away. “I...I don’t know.”
“I think you do. I think we both do. The question is, why do you think it’s your fault?”
“I wasn’t careful. I hit his truck.”
Frowning, Tammy replied, “And that gave him the right to take you apart as he pleased? The truck is an object. You aren’t. It can be replaced. You can’t.”
Despite her will to keep her back in a rigid line, Maddie felt her shoulders curve, giving way to the pressure inside. As she shuddered and leaned forward, she could feel her body begin swaying back and forth just as it used to when she was so much younger and unsure, when she was hurt or afraid. But she hadn’t done that in years, not until now. And she couldn’t stop it.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. Maybe it was stupid to think a simple ocking motion would keep her safe, but as tears pooled in her eyes and ran over, spilling down her face in heated torrents, she knew she had to believe in something, anything. “Maybe if I hadn’t hit his truck, he wouldn’t have...done that,” she whimpered as sobs claimed her body.
“No,” Tammy replied, shaking her head. “He would have raped someone, Maddie, regardless of whether the accident had happened. Because you were unlucky enough to hit his truck, you were the person he chose, not someone else.”
Covering her eyes, Maddie collapsed forward, giving in to all the grief her body could no longer contain. “Help me.” Sobs tangled in her throat, choking her. Even breathing became difficult.
Tammy darted to her side and knelt, wrapping her arms about Maddie’s convulsing frame. “I know this hurts, and you think it’s always going to be like this, but it won’t. As she felt Maddie’s rhythmic rocking motion, she swayed with her.
Maddie lingered in the spell of grief for a few moments as the tears spent themselves. Then she detangled herself from Tammy’s gentle embrace and swiped her hand across her face. The silence suffocated her, and she was glad when Yolanda’s grandfather clock down the hall began chiming six o’clock.
“I’m such a wreck.” Trying to take her mind off of what had just happened, Maddie stared at her toes as she curled them in the plush carpet below. “I guess now you know why I don’t talk about this with anyone.” She wiped her tear-dampened hands on her jeans. “I hate to lose control.” Even as she brushed the dampness from her face, she felt the moisture of more tears and kept dabbing just below her eyes.
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.” Tammy smiled at her despite Maddie’s glare. “But then again, maybe you really needed to lose control. It’s not a crime to grieve because you hurt, Maddie.” She slipped back to the couch. As she sat, she crossed one leg over the other and allowed her foot to bob slightly in the air.
Tracing the coarse fabric of her cast, she shook her head. “I don’t think it’s ever going to get out, Tammy. There’s too much locked away.”
Tammy peered at the clock on the mantle above the fireplace and looked down at her watch to compare the time. “Pain feels like that. But your heart is going to keep weeding out the pain like chaff. One day, you’ll find you’re whole again. I won’t lie and say you’ll be the same as you were before any of this happened, and I won’t say you won’t remember how it hurt like this. But you will be whole.” Her gaze darted back to the clock. “I hate to leave so abruptly, but I promised my sister I’d pick my nephew up from his soccer practice.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys.
Taking a deep breath, Maddie leaned against the back of the couch. “What do I do now?”
Tammy leaned over and patted her reassuringly on the knee. “Just breathe, Maddie, and when even that seems unbearable, call me.” She reached into her pocket. “Do you still have my card?”
Closing her eyes, Maddie tried to remember where she might have put it. “I don’t know. These past few weeks have been such a blur.”
Tammy pulled out a new one and handed it to her. “My numbers are on there, including my pager, which is usually the best way to reach me. It doesn’t matter what time you call.”
As Maddie accepted the card in her trembling hand, she glanced at the numbers and set it on the table next to her mug of now cold tea. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“A lot of us don’t know if we can handle certain things, but we find taking one step toward where we want to be isn’t so hard. So then we take another step. That’s what gets us there. Besides,” she said. “I believe in you enough for the both of us. It won’t be easy, but it is possible. Take care, and I’ll see you soon.” She disappeared into the hallway, and Maddie heard the front door open and close as she left.
For a long moment, Maddie focused on her fingernails as she felt the urge to sway back and forth reclaim her. As the movement started, Maddie spotted a shadow lurking in the doorway, and she glanced up, immediately stilling.
“Is she gone?” Yolanda half-whispered, peering around the room and down
the hallway.
“Yes,” Maddie said, grabbing what she knew was cold tea and drinking it just the same.
Yolanda reached for Maddie’s cup. “Would you like a fresh cup? I was going to brew some for me, anyhow.”
Shaking her head, Maddie replied, “No, I’m fine.”
Collecting her own cup and saucer from the table, Yolanda scrutinized Maddie’s tear-streaked face. “You’re a lot of things, Maddie, but right about now I’d say ‘okay’ wasn’t one of them.”
As Maddie peered at Yolanda, the young doctor touched her cheeks, feeling heated splotches where tears had caressed her skin. “Perhaps I should go clean up.” Her voice thickened with a fresh supply of tears. Rising too quickly, she knocked over the empty cup with her broken arm, and it fell to the carpet. Maddie lurched over and scrambled to set it back on the table as if she’d never knocked it over. “I’m sorry,” she gushed. “I didn’t mean to.”
Yolanda stepped into the room, and a concerned frown furrowed her eyebrows. “I know you didn’t mean to. It’s quite all right. Nothing is broken, child.”
Except me, Maddie thought and scurried from the room before Yolanda had a chance to question her. She ran through the house and didn’t stop until she’d hidden herself behind her bedroom door, alone, where she sat and slowly rocked on the bed as new tears colored her cheeks bright red. Everything blurred around her, and she wished she could disappear.
Chapter Nine
“How did you get involved in this mess?” Sam asked as he leaned back and leveled an impenetrable gaze at his younger brother.
Gabriel stretched his long legs out in front of him. “It was my dog. You know, the one you got me?”
Tapping a pencil against a pad of paper, Sam frowned at him. “Donner? And how exactly did he get you into this?”
Gabriel shifted his weight in the hard wooden chair opposite his brother as he scanned the framed certificates of appreciation lining the wall. He focused on a new one from the local Wal-Mart. “Hey, how’d you earn that one?”
His brother turned and peered where Gabriel pointed. “That was from the last skunk infestation I cleared out.”
“Quite a specialty you’ve got there,” Gabriel mused as he picked up the stapler from Sam’s desk and turned the bottom plate to change the direction of the staple prongs.
“What’s wrong with you? Give me that,” Sam barked, leaning over his desk, grabbing the stapler, which he promptly smacked against his desk. “I believe we were talking about you—specifically about a case you seemed to be in the middle of. And your dog. Care to tell me what Donner has to do with all this?”
The door swung open, and another cop appeared. “The mayor’s office called and wants an update on the skunks.”
“Last I checked, the damned things will spray you if you get too close. How’s that for an update?” Sam folded his arms across his chest and glared. “Tell the mayor we’re working as quickly as we can. It’s not my fault the skunks are fascinated with the building housing his office.”
Nodding, the younger office replied, “I’ll tell him we’re on it.”
“You do that,” Sam barked at the closing door. “Maybe,” he muttered in a lower voice, “if the skunks didn’t smell the stink of their own walking those halls, they wouldn’t breed so damned much.”
Gabriel laughed. “Somehow I don’t figure he’s going to get your vote come re-election time.”
“He didn’t get it the first time, either.” Sam focused on Gabriel. “Now what’s going on?”
“A woman was raped and attacked a few weeks ago. The perp left her on a country road near her home. I was driving home with Donner, and he needed quality time with a tree. He led me to her.” Gabriel watched his brother’s frown deepen, adding creases across his forehead. Despite the fact that he knew they were both thinking about Jessie, Gabriel forced himself to relay the rest of what he knew about Maddie’s case, and he ended by telling him about the ring. He reached into his pocket behind his wallet and fished out a picture he handed to Sam. “What do you make of this?”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Tell me this isn’t a drawing of that ring.”
“One and the same,” Gabriel countered, peering intently at the dark rage glinting in his brother’s eyes. “Why do you ask that?”
“Shit.” Sam peered closer at the picture. “I think I know why the cop investigating this case was less than thrilled at what you found.”
“You recognize it?”
Nodding, Sam lifted his right hand in the air and turned his wrist to show Gabriel a similar ring on his finger.
Lowering his hand, Sam looked once more at the picture and gave it back to Gabriel. “The perp is now, or once was. a cop.”
As Gabriel refolded and shoved the drawing back into his pocket, he tried to think of something to say, but for once words refused to come. He clenched his teeth and remembered how Maddie had looked when he’d found her, her arm snapped like a branch, her bruised face, that keening wail. His heart hammered in his chest, and he forced himself to keep his breathing even.
Maybe he wasn’t a cop anymore. Maybe his fellow officers had known something about him that had gotten him kicked off the force. As he resettled in the chair, Gabriel latched onto that thought, relieved by it.
“Do you remember where the crime scene is?” Sam reached into his drawer, pulled out a vial of aspirin, and popped two pills into his mouth, washing them down with old coffee. “Those damned country roads can be difficult to find sometimes.”
Gabriel nodded. “Yeah, I went just after it happened because we got a call to go out there. Apparently, the perp set her car on fire.”
“I’m off tomorrow. I’ll meet you at your place at two, and we’ll go out there and poke around. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can dig up.”
Gabriel immediately sat up straighter. “You think the investigation isn’t on the level?”
“I don’t know what to think. But if the perp is a cop, things could go to hell in a handbasket pretty damned quickly.” Leaning over his desk, Sam rubbed his eyes. His shoulders slumped slightly, and Gabriel thought he appeared more fatigued than before Gabriel had told him about Maddie. Averting his gaze from his brother’s rugged expression, Gabriel peered at the bookshelf and the pictures lining the top–one of the two of them. One of their deceased parents. One of Jessie. He stood, stepped to it, and picked it up. In the photo, their sister sat on a log. Sand buried her feet, and in the distance, ocean waves lapped at the shore. A slight breeze toyed with strands of her long, dark hair, and her blue eyes glowed at him, exuding the joy her smile belied. An aquamarine one-piece accentuated her trim figure. He’d always liked that picture. Then again, Jessie couldn’t have taken a bad one.
More silence as they both focused on her. The air seemed weighted with her spirit, haunted by her loss, and neither of them had never talked about it, about her death. Maybe this wasn’t the time. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything, but he couldn’t help it. “Guess who I saw a couple of weeks ago?”
Sam shifted in his chair, and it squealed in protest. “This damned thing could use some WD40.”
“Guess who I saw,” Gabriel demanded.
“The Tooth Fairy?” his brother smirked.
“Tammy Ballard.”
For a moment, Sam just looked ahead, as though he hadn’t heard a word. Then he opened his center desk drawer and shoved some pens inside, moving them to and fro just to make noise, anything to distract him. “Who?”
“Don’t give me that. You know exactly who I’m talking about.” Gabriel gently replaced the picture. “Anyway, I thought you might want to know.”
“You thought wrong.”
“Still punishing her for making you admit you feel, Sam? That’s quite a crime.”
A flush crept into Sam’s cheeks, and he refused to meet his brother’s gaze. Instead, Sam shuffled from behind the desk. “You want to go grab that burger? I skipped lunch.”
“If I say no, does it mean we can talk
about this?”
Sam grabbed his coat off the rack. “There’s nothing to talk about.” He gestured to the door. “Hell, I’ll buy your damned burger. It might give that mouth of yours something useful to do besides talk to me about an old girlfriend I barely remember.”
“You remember Tammy, all right.” Gabriel walked to the door. “Hell, I’ll bet you remember her far better than you want, and that’s the problem. She hit a nerve, and you didn’t like it.” He opened the door and stepped into the hallway. “Guess we’ll have that burger now. Maybe chewing will loosen your jaws a bit so we can talk about this.” He wasn’t actually counting on that, but it didn’t hurt to hope. It had been too long since they’d lost Jessie, and enough silence. Besides, he wanted to ask his brother how he could deal with so many skunks but not one female he might have loved. Still, he knew what the answer would be: “None of your business.”
Chapter Ten
Despite the clear winter sky, a light dusting of snow collected on the grass. The asphalt road melted the flakes as they touched down, and Maddie stared out the windshield from the passenger seat, looking past the rhythmic swish of the wiper blades as they cleared the blur of melted snow. From time to time, her gaze happened upon Yolanda as she drove, but when her best friend returned the glance, Maddie turned away.
Although Yolanda couldn’t see Maddie’s face as they accelerated down the long country lane toward the doctor’s house, Yolanda knew Maddie was probably just barely containing the tension singing throughout her body. She glanced at Maddie’s hand, watching her fingers curl inward, forming a fist. Her breathing shallowed, and she fixated on something to the left, continuing to stare even after they were even with it. Then her gaze followed it, forcing her to turn her body to stare out the rear window.
“Are you all right?” Yolanda asked, wishing she knew what had caught Maddie’s attention. “You look pale.”
“I’ll be fine,” she replied.
Two minutes later, they pulled up in the driveway, and Maddie slowly climbed out of the sedan and shut the door. Yolanda followed suit.