“Do you see them at all?”
“Oh, hell no. I’m not going back there. Once I left for college, that was it. I wasn’t going back there ever again.”
“Don’t you at least wonder how your mother is?”
Her shoulders slumped.
“I tried, Gavin. I tried to get her away from him, tried to get her to come visit me, because I sure as hell wasn’t going back there. She refused, said Daddy needed her and she couldn’t come.”
“So she chose him over you.” He swept his hand over her hair. “I’m sorry, honey.”
She batted back the tears that threatened. It had been too many years since she’d cried over what she couldn’t change. Never again. “She made her choice to put up with him and his demands. She has to live with it now. That doesn’t mean I have to.”
“So you never went home after you left for college?”
“No. Never. I was free and I wasn’t going back. I was on full scholarship, and I worked during school. I had no reason to go back.”
“So they never once came out to see you?”
“No. I’m sure my father was afraid if my mother left the state, she’d somehow escape him and he’d lose her. He was happy keeping her in that little town, and obviously she’d do whatever she was told.”
“She never called you or wrote?”
“Oh, sure. She’d call and ask me to come home at the holidays or during summer. Whatever Dad wanted her to say. After I said no enough times she stopped calling.”
He didn’t speak for a while. She knew what he was thinking. “You think I’m a cold-hearted bitch, that I abandoned my mother.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking at all, Elizabeth. You weren’t supposed to be responsible for her. Your parents were supposed to be responsible for you.”
“They were. They fed me and put a roof over my head. I got a decent education and I wasn’t abused.”
She heard his soft laugh and tilted her head to look at him. “What?”
“Come on. You’re smart, surely you know.”
“Know what?”
“Elizabeth, your father was an abuser.”
She shook her head. “No, he was a prick and a controller. But he never hit my mother or me.”
Gavin turned in the swing to face her. “Honey, an abuser doesn’t always hit. Abuse is emotional, too. Don’t you think that’s what your father did by controlling your mother, by forcing her to live in what was essentially a prison?”
Talking about it made her relive it, and she didn’t want to go back there ever again, had sworn she wouldn’t, not even in her mind. And she’d already spent way more time there tonight than she’d ever wanted to. She shrugged off the blanket and hopped off the swing. “I’m tired, Gavin. I had a long day and a long flight, and I’d really just like to go to bed.”
She walked away, didn’t look back to see if he was following, just headed straight for the bedroom, stripped off her dress, and crawled into bed without turning on the light.
She had to shut it all out, to forget, to shove the past where it belonged so it couldn’t come back and haunt her again.
Within a few minutes Gavin joined her, his body chilled from the cold air outside. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. She resisted at first, but he wouldn’t let go of her until she relaxed her body against his.
He didn’t ask for anything, didn’t say anything, just stroked her hair. The silence and his breathing finally calmed her, and she was able to shut her eyes.
But she couldn’t shut out the memories. She’d never be able to make them go away.
NINE
RAIN AND WIND BATTERED THE DECK AND WINDOWS, coming down so hard Gavin couldn’t even see the chairs.
The rain kept them shut inside. That was bad. No game today.
No sunshine, nothing to do but stay inside.
That could be good.
While Elizabeth slept during the morning, Gavin went to the store and bought food. He intended to cook for her, felt bad about making her talk about a past that was obviously painful for her.
She’d had a rough childhood. A very rough childhood with a father who’d been abusive to both her and her mother. And yet she’d managed to escape and grow up to be a strong, independent woman, which said a lot about her strength and character. He wanted to talk more about it, but it was clear she wasn’t ready yet. Maybe she never would be, and it was her right to decide that.
But he admired her more for what he knew now about her. There were facets to Elizabeth he’d never known about, things about her that made him appreciate the woman she’d become. She’d done it all on her own.