“I probably had less,” Harmony said, struggling not to dislike Lottie’s grandmother on sight. “She is small, but well within the normal range.”
“Davis was walking by the time he was that age.”
“You must have had your hands full.”
Grace gave a humorless laugh. “We had a nanny until he was five, so my hands were full with better things. His father and I both traveled frequently for business.”
“I’m sure she took excellent care of him.”
“Of course she did,” Grace said with obvious irritation. “We made sure of it.”
Harmony thought one response was as pointless as another, so she gave none at all.
“We’ll bring her back in a couple of hours,” Davis said quickly, as if even he had picked up on his mother’s animosity. “Mother’s flying out early this evening. This is just a brief visit.”
Harmony managed a tight smile. “I’ll be waiting, and I’ll have my cell phone with me if you have any questions.”
“Oh, I think we can manage,” Grace said. “Davis’s sister has two children, and we see them frequently. Of course, that situation is very different. They live in a two-parent family.”
“There’s no point in bringing that up.” Davis sounded annoyed.
“Why not? It’s the truth. Your father and I are happy to be seen with them. We can show them off to our friends.”
The rest of the sentence was unspoken but clear. Not like this one.
“Your son proposed, and I declined,” Harmony said, “so don’t blame him. I hope you won’t punish Lottie. Times have changed, and there are plenty of unmarried parents raising children.”
“I doubt you have any idea what I consider appropriate.”
Enough was enough. Harmony lifted her chin. “I doubt that I want to.”
“Let’s go,” Davis told his mother. “As usual you’ve thrown a damper over the afternoon. Let’s see what we can salvage.”
Grace just smiled, as if his words had been a compliment.
Harmony watched them head toward Davis’s car, and for the first time she felt a twinge of sympathy for Lottie’s father. She’d just gotten a peek into Davis’s childhood, and while the scenery surrounding him had probably been lovely, the actors and script had been B-movie grade, at best.
As Harmony watched, Grace got into the passenger’s seat, leaving her son to set the car seat on the ground, open the rear door and finally juggle it inside to begin the process of trying to fasten it in place.
Like her own mother, Harmony yearned for the best in bad situations, so she had foolishly hoped Grace would welcome Lottie and shower the baby with unconditional love. Instead, it was clear Grace and Davis would take Lottie to a restaurant closer to Asheville, do their familial duty and return her well ahead of schedule. Their visits—if Grace visited again—would always be short and stressful. Eventually Lottie would refuse to go with them.
Harmony had chosen a real winner when she’d moved in with Davis almost two years ago.
“Men...”
Not for the first time she wished her own mother could be here with her. Without a doubt Janine Stoddard would fold her baby granddaughter into her arms and smother her with all the love she had to give–and was so rarely allowed to.
But that, too, was a bad situation with no “best” to hope for. Right now, in a secluded house in Topeka, Kansas, her mother was probably preparing dinner for Harmony’s father, hoping as she struggled for perfection that tonight Rex Stoddard would praise what she cooked and otherwise leave her in peace.
Sadly Harmony could only guess, because she hadn’t talked to her mother in over a year. The last time she’d tried, Janine had told her never to call home again.
From the audio journal of a forty-five-year-old woman, taped for the files of Moving On, an underground highway for abused women.
I was a happy child. My father worked in a factory, and my mother was a dressmaker who sewed and made alterations in a corner of the bedroom she shared with my father. She was always home when I returned from school. There were homemade cookies waiting and open arms for my friends.
Most of the money Mama made was turned over to my father, who decided how to spend it, but her wishes were always taken into account. Daddy was a kind man, generous in every way, who found joy in providing for his family and keeping us safe from harm. When our front door was closed at night, love, not fear, was locked inside with us.
Every Sunday we attended a church where God’s mercy was preached from the pulpit. Every Monday I walked through a neighborhood of small, tidy houses to a school where I was expected to do my best. While neither of my parents had gone to college, they saved what money they could to guarantee I did. They wanted to give me the best.
Had they lived, my life would have been different, but in my third year of college, as they were on their way to visit me, a car traveling in the other direction crossed the interstate median directly in their path. The cars exploded on contact, ending a midday drinking binge for the driver and the lives of both my parents.
The accident left me without a compass. My sheltered background left me with little insight into people who were not decent and well-meaning. My parents left me with a yearning for what I had lost, but sadly they left me when I was too young to understand the difference between a marriage based on respect and one based on fear.
By the time nine months had passed, I had learned.
One month after their deaths, the Abuser came into my life.
* * *
Rex had done this before.
At two a.m., as she tossed underwear and socks into a canvas backpack, Janine Stoddard reminded herself this was not the first time her husband had stayed away all night without warning her ahead of time. Keeping her off guard was part of a strategy to keep her from leaving him. Sometimes, by piecing together hints in later conversations, she’d even concluded that Rex had stayed close to the house the whole time to see what she would do in his absence.
It wasn’t enough that she obeyed every whim when he was at home. He wanted to be sure she followed his orders when he wasn’t, too.
While their son, Buddy, was still alive, Rex had never needed to worry. At the first sign of his mother’s defection, Buddy would have called his father. Of course, Rex’s faith in Buddy had never been put to the test. Janine had loved her son too much to put that kind of pressure on him.
She couldn’t think about Buddy. Not now.
It was possible Rex was observing her right this minute. He might be in his car in a vacationing neighbor’s driveway, eyes trained on the road to see if Janine tried to slip away. He might even be camping in the woods behind their house, with binoculars and night-vision goggles. Rex considered himself something of a survivalist, and while he was too much of a loner to drill on weekends or join a militia, he collected survival gear the way some men collected fishing lures or model airplanes. He kept all his equipment under lock and key in the same room where he kept an arsenal that included an AK-47 and an assortment of Rugers and Remingtons.
He liked to tell her exactly what each gun could do. Sometimes he gave his lectures with the gun pointed directly at her.
For a moment she was frozen in place, one hand raised toward the dresser, as she thought about those guns. Was she insane? Did she really believe that after all these years she might be able to pull this off? That Rex had really been fooled by her eager attempts to please him, by her waning interest in anything that wasn’t