This was going to be okay, she told herself as she put her phone back and stared at the ocean. She had done the right thing …
And yet, even still, snapshots of Assail dogged her mind, barging in and taking over the beautiful view in front of her.
Bending down, she felt around her thigh and then pressed her fingers into the bandage. As pain shot up into her torso and raced her heart, she told herself to remember how she’d ended up here. Why she’d relocated.
Exactly how her prayers had been answered.
Yeah, the drive had given her something other than a sore body and a tired brain: all those highway miles had done wonders for her perspective on everything.
Up north, she’d told herself that her escape had been at her own direction.
But now, as that sun rose in front of her, the rays streaking out over the water, the dolphins frolicking in the morning waves … she realized, no. That had been a cop-out.
Because admitting to herself that she believed in God was too scary, too crazy.
Away from everything she had left behind up north, in a neutral territory where she was starting over, she was able to be honest with herself. That prayer she had offered up, that last one, had in fact been answered … and in coming down here, she was honoring her end of the bargain.
At great sacrifice, as it turned out … because she knew it was going to be a long, long time before she was able to stop checking her phone.
Getting up from the lawn chair, she went back inside, and as she paused to shut the door, she looked at the sliding glass … and remembered that first floor of Assail’s house. And as she picked up the suitcase she’d left just inside the door … all she could think of was that she’d packed the clothes in it when she’d still been with him.
Same as when she brushed her teeth: The last time she’d used her toothbrush had been in his upstairs bathroom.
And as she got into the white sheets, she recalled lying next to him after he’d come to her in the shower and taken her with such incredible power.
Closing her eyes, she listened to the unfamiliar sounds around her—someone talking loudly in the parking lot out back, the person upstairs running their shower, a dog barking on the other side of the wall.
Assail’s place had been so quiet.
“Shit,” she said aloud.
How long was it going to take before she stopped measuring everything by what she had left behind?
It was just like it had been when her mother had died. For months afterward, the metronome of life had been driven by nuances of her mom: last movie seen together, the things they’d bought at the store just that afternoon, the final birthday present given and received, that Christmas—which, of course, no one had known would be the end of the tradition.
All of that relentless remembering had gone on for a good year, until each one of the anniversaries, internal and external, had been exhausted. Getting through them had been like punching through a wall each time, but she had done it, right? She had put one foot in front of the other until life had resumed a kind of normalcy—
Ah crap. She really shouldn’t be comparing this walk away from a drug dealer to the mourning of the woman who’d given birth to her and raised her for how long before her grandmother had taken over?
But there you had it.
Before Sola finally fell asleep, she ended up reaching out to the bedside table, opening the drawer, and putting her father’s Bible under her pillow.
It was important to keep a tie to something, anything.
Otherwise? She was terrified she was going to repack that goddamn Ford she’d rented and head right back. And that stupidity simply was not an option.
After everything that had gone down lately, she really didn’t want to know what happened to people who broke an agreement with the big guy.
And no, she wasn’t talking about Santa Claus.
SIXTY-THREE
Good thing Beth had never had a hypothetical fantasy about what it would be like to find out she was pregnant.
As she sat in a perfectly nice waiting room, surrounded by cushy, neutral-toned chairs, magazines about menopause and motherhood, and women who were either in their twenties or fifties, she was very clear that whatever came from this appointment, positive, negative or too-early-to-tell, she would never have cooked up this scenario: Without her husband. Escorted by a Shadow with enough concealed weapons on him to blow up a tank—or maybe an aircraft carrier. Having taken a vein for blood, for chrissakes, some twenty minutes before leaving a house the size and make up of Versailles.
Yeah, not exactly shit that would get written up in, say … she picked up the nearest mag. Modern Motherhood, for example.
Flipping through the colorful pages, she saw all kinds of Happy, Satisfied Mothers holding their Heavenly Angels on Earth as they preached about the sanctity of breast-feeding, the importance of skin-to-skin contact, and making that critical, first postnatal doctor’s appointment.
“I’m going to be sick,” she muttered, tossing the propaganda aside.
“Shit,” iAm said as he leaped up. “I’ll find the loo—”
“No, no.” She pulled him back down. “I meant, yeah, no, it was just a comment.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. And next time I get annoyed, I promise to just say so. Not throw out a metaphor.”
iAm had to squeeze back into his own stuffed chair: The Shadow was so big, he overflowed the armrests and the back cushion—and he attracted a lot of attention.
Although not because of his size, necessarily.
Every single woman who came in, walked by, or worked at reception looked at him—in a way that proved you weren’t dead from the neck down even if you were pregnant or your ovaries were winding things up or you were frazzled from ringing phones, lots of patients and tons of paperwork.
“Have you ever been married?” she asked the guy.
Absently, he shook his head, those black eyes of his tracing around as if he were ready to defend her with his life.
Which was awfully sweet, really.
“Ever been in love?”
Another shake of the head.
“Do you want children?”
Looking over at her he laughed tightly. “Did I hear that you were once a reporter?”
“Is my who-what-where-why-when coming through again?”
“Yeah. But it’s cool, I got nothing to hide.” He crossed his legs ankle to knee. “You know, with everything going on with my brother all these years, I don’t ever think like that, you feel me? I gotta get him sorted, and shit knows, that ain’t been happenin’.”
“I’m really sorry.” She’d heard enough through the household gossip lines to get the gist of their situation. “To be honest, I keep expecting to come down one of these nights and find you both gone.”
He nodded. “Might well happen—”
“Marklon, Beth?” a nurse called out from an open door across the way.
“That’s me.” Getting to her feet, she put her purse up on her shoulder and headed over. “Right here.”
Jesus, talk about nausea: At the prospect of going in to actually meet the doctor, she thought, okay, now she really was going to throw up again— The nurse smiled and stepped back, motioning to a little triage room behind her. “I’m just going to get your weight and blood pressure in here.”
“Can you hold this?” she asked iAm, holding out her Coach bag.
“Yup.”
As he took her purse, the nurse paused and pulled a head-to-toe on the Shadow. Then she flushed brilliant red, and had to clear her throat. “Welcome,” she said to him.
iAm just nodded and kept scanning the back area. Like maybe a matched set of ninjas was going to jump out of an exam room or something.
Beth had to smile as the nurse refocused and got into the business of taking vitals.