34

Last Days and Second Chances

Mari parked her truck in front of Rajni’s apartment. Checked her rearview and her side mirrors, then craned her head to scan the cars along the curb. There was a blue sedan she wasn’t sure she’d seen before, but when she checked the list she now kept in her glove box, the blue sedan was scrawled in near the bottom of the paper. Everything was normal.

She popped the list back in her glove box and slammed it, then unlocked her doors and went around to the passenger side to retrieve the cookie sheet she’d had to use as a serving platter for her cake. The words “Happy Last Day!” had been eaten down to just “Ha” by Jack’s ravenous crew—well, Gideon’s crew now. She’d barely saved the piece she’d promised Rajni. First to go were the pieces with her piped-on depiction of a lattice tower. With her dollar-store decorating tools, it had come out more like the Eiffel Tower than a power line, but her linemen seemed more smug than offended by the comparison.

The cookie sheet got juggled onto one hand as she fumbled with her keys and hurried up the sidewalk. The buttercream began to melt as soon as she took it out of the shade, and it’d be a puddle if she didn’t get inside quickly.

A man’s voice spoke up behind her. “Mari?”

Fear punched the center of her chest, and she whirled around to put her unprotected back to the locked door. The cookie sheet went flying, hit the browning grass of the yard, and cartwheeled. She barely heard the jangle of her keys dropping from her nerveless hand to the scorching concrete beneath her feet. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell, couldn’t think or breathe, because every cell in her body was focused on what she was seeing: her ex-husband’s face.

Brad was thinner. Clean-shaven like he never used to bother with except on Sundays, and wearing a new shirt buttoned all the way to his throat, though he was already sweating through it at the armpits.

He winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I planned to talk to you on the phone, see if you’d be okay with meeting up with me. Except at first I was afraid to say anything when you answered, in case I scared you off. And then after the last time, the number stopped working. I wanted to tell you, if you needed help with the phone bill to get it turned back on, I could give you the cash.” He bent down and flipped over the cookie sheet, scooped the cake back onto it despite the dirt and dead grass now matted into the top. He stood up and offered her the tray.

Her arms didn’t feel like they were attached to her body, electricity racking all her nerves in a soundless shriek of DANGER DANGER DANGER. She did not take the tray.

Brad started to fidget, wiping his hand along the seam of his pants and leaving a long streak of blue frosting and sandy soil. He’d always done that, wiped his hands only along the seam as if that would hide the stains. She remembered the sshht of thousands of sprays of stain remover, scrubbing the fabric against itself to get the stains out of his pants. When her hands were bruised or her fingers broken, it had been so hard to grip the fabric hard enough to rub.

“You didn’t come back to the motel you were staying at,” he said, his voice slower and softer than she remembered, as if he was worried he’d startle her into fleeing. “I thought the PI was wrong about what you were driving, or I’d have found your new place sooner.” He smiled, a little lopsided. “You always hated pickups. Said they were hard to park.”

What kind of private investigator didn’t check for restraining orders when they were hired to find someone? She wished she could scream at him, whoever he was, rip away his stupid investigator’s license, and throw the pieces back in his face.

Taking her shocked silence as assent, Brad came closer, and all her muscles balled tight.

Maybe she should take the cookie sheet from him. It was light, but she could use it as a weapon. Smash it into his face to blind him or shove the edge into his Adam’s apple. She wasn’t allowed to carry weapons on the construction site, and she was safe enough with the crew around her, so her borrowed pistol was locked out of reach inside the apartment. The restraining order wouldn’t protect her. It only allowed her to press charges more easily once he’d done his worst.

She had no idea when Rajni would be home. It was the last day on the project, and all the crews were doing different mop-up tasks, so there wasn’t an official clocking-out time. Organizationally, things had gotten more than a little chaotic since Rod had been fired for killing that tortoise to frame her.

She shifted her weight toward her truck, preparing to make a run for it.

Brad raised his free hand, palm out. “Hey. Look, you’ve got every right to be nervous, but I’m not here to hurt you, I swear. We can go somewhere more public to talk, if that would make you more comfortable. That’s what I’d planned on in the beginning, before your phone got shut off.” His eyes narrowed, studying her. “It did get shut off, right? Or did you shut it off?”

Her breath caught in her throat. It sounded like a question, but it echoed in her mind with the snap of a trap. He’d ask these things, all innocent and supportive sounding, but if she admitted she’d done it to get away from him, he’d be hurt. The hurt would twist to anger, and the anger would break her bones.

Brad shook his head. “I’m sorry, that’s none of my business. I didn’t come here to interrupt your new life. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For everything, all those years.” He swallowed. “For breaking the promise I made when I asked you to marry me, that I’d never be like our messed-up dads.”

A different kind of pain bit into her, and she hated it twice as much. She snatched the cookie sheet from him, swooped up her keys, and wished for the thousandth time that Jack hadn’t taken off after their argument.

She couldn’t hit hard enough to punch Brad’s face the way it deserved to be punched, but Jack could.

“You owe me that apology,” she said fiercely, recklessly. “Because you lied, Brad.” Her voice cracked and she nearly yelled what came next because she hated so much that he could still affect her. “When you promised you’d keep me safe, you lied your ass off.”

His eyes glistened, shiny suddenly with tears. “I know,” he whispered. “I wanted to be better, and I messed up over and over again. You deserved better than that, Mari-baby.”

She twitched at the old nickname. He hadn’t called her that since she was in her twenties. She looked away and scoffed, her nails scraping metallically over the baking sheet when her hand tightened.

“I’ve heard it all before. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll change, everything will be different.’ Well, guess what? Everything is different, because you’re finally out of my life. Now you can leave, or I’ll call the police and my friend with a very large gun who lives here and my two friends with large biceps who live down the street.” She’d never threatened him before, not ever, but instead of fresh fear, all she felt was strength welling up through her.

She’d faced off with Rod in his own office and she’d won. She was done crumbling in the face of a man’s fury. Maybe it was all the sleepless nights, trying not to miss Jack. Maybe it was the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach from the job ending that was making her reckless, but she just didn’t care anymore if Brad put her in the hospital for standing up to him. Right now, all she wanted was to able to look at herself in the mirror without shame.

But instead of the familiar flare of anger, his face stayed embarrassed. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me, not at first. That’s why I brought proof.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of folded-over slips of paper. He held them out, but she just glared at him.

“Receipts,” he said. “From my therapist. A different receipt for every week I’ve attended. Over a year now. There’s . . . there’s been a lot to work through, and it hasn’t been fun, but I’ve done it. For you. Mari, I never realized how empty my life was without you. I hate what I did to you, and I want our life back. But different this time, better.”

She glanced down, curious if he’d tried to forge the receipts. They were signed, though, with a signature that tilted left when his always scrawled right. Printed with an official-looking logo and a name. She leaned in just a little to see. Steven Partridge, PhD.

She nearly laughed. Of course it was a man. He’d never respect a female psychologist.

“Anger management classes, too,” he persisted. “Every Tuesday night at the Methodist church. I graduated the program after six months, but I went back for another round because I figured, more couldn’t hurt, right?” He took a step closer. “I could have tracked you down months ago. But I wanted to wait until I was sure the therapy was going to help. I’m sober, too, got my six-month chip, and both my sponsor and my anger management coach said you can call them to verify. I didn’t want to come to you until I had proof. Listen, it wasn’t all bad. Remember when we took that trip to the beach and made love so long that we missed dinner and all the restaurants were closed?”

He smiled, and it made him look young again, like the teenager who used to sneak in her window late at night just to kiss her.

“And you made us a picnic from candy bars and one sad little orange from a gas station that you squeezed over the candy bars to make them orange chocolate. Remember? Or when you had the flu and I tried to make you chicken soup from scratch and gave you food poisoning on top of the flu.” He grimaced. “Actually, never mind that. Don’t remember my terrible cooking.” He patted his waistline. “I’ve been meaning to start working out again, too, but I’ve already lost plenty of weight just from eating my own cooking.” He let out a small, tentative laugh, but she didn’t join in.

She remembered that flu, how he’d carried her to the car to get to the hospital for an IV, because she’d been so sick. But even so, they’d laughed and laughed about his horrible chicken soup.

She tilted her chin up, really looking at him for the first time since he got here. He did look different. Tired, skinnier. More earnest. No trace of the anger that he’d always carried around like a thick cloud riding on his back. He had changed.

She knew it all in a second, like a shift deep in her gut. No one had known him longer than she had. No one, not even her parents, had spent as many years by her side as he had. She knew something was different this time, not because of the therapy receipts or the sobriety chip, but because she knew Brad.

All she had to do was nod her head, and everything would be easy again. She wouldn’t have to live every day under the scalding desert sun, sweating half to death when she tried to sleep in her truck when it was still 99 degrees at midnight. And he’d fought for her. Hard enough to track her across half the country even after not seeing her for years.

She could go back to their little ranch house with the blue bistro set on the back patio. For as much as Jack seemed to occupy her every thought, she hadn’t heard from him in two weeks, and she didn’t know if he was even still in California. He’d disappeared like a dream she’d had about the kind of man she would want if wishes weren’t as fickle as fate.

But Brad was real. He was right here and he’d always take her back.

He’d been quiet for a long time, watching her think, but now he spoke. At just the right moment, because he knew all her expressions as well as his own. “Come home,” he whispered, and it was his voice that put her over the edge.

It wasn’t the right voice. Wasn’t that gravelly sweet Alabama drawl she’d give anything to hear again.

She stepped back. “That was never my home. And I’m happier here.” She gestured to the expanse of desert, stretching out beyond the spare few houses.

Hurt flashed in his face. “I know you’re angry, but—”

“If you’d really changed, you wouldn’t have followed me,” she interrupted. She hadn’t interrupted him in probably twenty years. Had never been so stupid, even with her lawyer at her side during the divorce proceedings. “After I disappeared to get away from you, any decent person would have known that was THE END in capital letters.”

Jack’s absence ached like a phantom limb. How many times had she debated calling him? But even when her resolve wavered, the facts remained. He was gone, and that was his choice. He hadn’t chosen her.

She straightened, and focused on the man in front of her.

“I’m glad you’re getting help, I am. Any woman in your future deserves that much from you. But whatever kind of better man you want to turn yourself into, you’re going to have to do it alone. You’ve used up all your second chances with me.”

She turned her back on him, the fear returning to thrill coldly up her spine at the vulnerability. But she needed this moment, needed them both to see she could still be the strong, new version of herself even when her past had found her.

“You lied, too.”

She left her keys dangling from the apartment lock and turned around. “Oh, really?”

“You said if I signed the divorce papers, you’d give me another chance. But you took off instead, and now, you won’t even have a damn coffee with me. Won’t give me five minutes of your fucking precious time after I’ve spent months, hell, years doing everything you ever wanted to make myself better for you.” His sneer didn’t quite cover the little-boy hurt in his eyes.

“Yeah, I lied. I would have said anything to get you to sign those papers. But seriously, Brad, what made you believe a woman who promised to give you another chance only if you’d give her a divorce?” She arched an eyebrow.

“What makes you so much better than me, huh?” He jerked a long step closer to her. “You’ve made mistakes, too, Mari. I’m doing all the apologizing here, making all the amends, and you just give me that holier-than-thou look like you’ve never so much as forgotten to put a dollar in the collection plate on Sundays.”

In chapter eleven of the book that Jack had given her, it said that men like Brad often looked for victims who were used to being poorly treated, anyone who could be convinced to accept their behavior as normal. Mari lifted her chin and stared him down, her whole body calm and still, like in the early days on Wyatt’s crew when she wanted Jack to know he couldn’t fluster her.

She wasn’t an easy target. And when her hands wanted to shake and her eyes wanted to drop and her heart tried to climb out of her chest, remembering how much Brad’s big hands could hurt if she pushed him . . . she just remembered the feeling of Jack’s scars under her hands. The bumps and textures that reminded her of what he’d risked when he tried to leave the abuse.

Freedom didn’t come for free.

She knew that, and she was terrified but willing to pay whatever toll she had to in order to get through this, to convince both Brad and herself that she wasn’t his property anymore.

“You gonna hit me?” she murmured.

She honestly didn’t know the answer. She knew he was capable of killing her. But she didn’t know if he would. If the person he was right at this moment would cross that line.

He ducked his head and stuffed both hands in his pockets, the carefully hoarded therapist receipts making a crumpling sound. “No. I’ve changed, Mari. That’s what this is all about. That’s why I’m here. If you’d spend just a little bit of time with me, I’d prove it to you. No strings, no obligations. If you change your mind and want me to leave, I will.”

“I want you to leave,” she said without hesitation. “Right now. And if you want to do something for me so bad, pay all the medical bills I racked up from all the times you hurt me,” she said. “That would show me you’ve changed. I still won’t come back, but it would ease my mind to know that other women might be safe from you.”

She let herself into the apartment, her heart racing in the tiny scrap of a second before the door latched and she flipped the dead bolt. It had been so incredibly risky to face him down on her own. She should have run, screaming for any help she could muster, just in case.

Mari whipped around, nearly sick with adrenaline and fear and pride, and crammed her eye up to the peephole.

It magnified the view of everything outside, so she flinched when she saw Brad’s face in the fish-eye view, his eyes beginning to glisten. The cookie sheet bit into her ribs as she tried to lean even closer, to be sure what she was really seeing.

The first tear broke free and disappeared into the deep creases beside his eyes.

“Mari,” he whispered hoarsely, his shaking hand stretching toward her until it hit the door between them. He leaned into it, as if he couldn’t quite stand on his own.

Her throat clamped closed. The last time she’d seen him cry, it was when his father had stabbed him in the hand with a fork, for reaching for the last piece of chicken without permission. He was fourteen.

She’d comforted him that time, and washed his wounds, but this time she was the one causing his pain. In his slumped shoulders, she could see so clearly the boy he’d been, and the hopeful young man she’d married.

Her free hand curled around the doorknob, and it wasn’t until she felt the cold metal that she realized she was doing it. She hated when people were upset with her; she couldn’t stand to hurt anyone. She felt sick when his shoulders started to shake.

It would have been a thousand times easier to turn him down if he’d punched her.

But then again, Brad knew that. Knew her and all her soft spots. He was using them against her now, as clearly as if he’d used her hair to drag her down the street and into his car. After all, if things had been all bad between them, she’d have left him ten years ago.

It had never been the threat of violence that held her. It wasn’t as if she was safe even if she didn’t try to leave. Fear, even extreme fear, could be faced. Bones could be healed. Scars could be endured. It was his love that crippled her. And it was the good times that kept her doubting herself until it was almost too late.

Mari closed her eyes.

She leaned her head against the door and listened to the quiet huffs of her ex-husband crying on the other side. Slowly, the fingers of guilt eased their grip on her heart. It didn’t really matter if his tears were genuine or calculated. Either way, they were a lure that would only draw her back to a place she never needed to be again.

When she heard his footsteps shuffle outside, she ducked over to the window to make sure he wasn’t about to take a run at the door. Instead, Brad’s back filled her view, retreating down the sidewalk.

Holy shit. He’d listened to her. He was walking away.

She just stared, clutching the cookie sheet to her chest with every emotion of seeing him again catching up all at once.

She could hardly believe he’d just listen and stay gone, but what if he did? She walked slowly into the kitchen, setting down the cookie sheet with a clang of metal that sounded loud in the empty house.

The job was over. She and Jack were over. She could move back into her pickup and hike and read and listen to the empty wind until she found more work, but the thought of the solitude she’d once craved now stuck in her throat like a sob. On this job, she’d finally found the friends she’d always wanted, and it had steadied something in her, shifted something about the person she thought she was.

The whole time she’d believed no one liked her enough to get close, it turned out they were worrying the same about her. She wondered how many other potential friendships she’d let slip away.

Not only that, she’d stopped feeling guilty for every man who got mad at her, and figured out what was beneath all that shouting: insecurity and fear. For decades, she’d let men like her stepfather and Brad and Rod make her feel like she spoiled everything, and she could never have a home with people she cared about. But she was done waiting for other people’s approval before she could have the kind of life she’d always secretly dreamed of. Probably, it had been there for the asking all along. Just like everything else.

Mari slipped her hand into her purse, took out her phone, and made the call.

“Hi, Harriet,” she said. “Have you filled the biologist-in-residence job yet?”