Evan kept his attention locked on her, but didn’t answer the question.
“Yes. We’re having a baby.” She spoke with an even, unexcited tone, so different from how she’d felt before everything bad had happened.
“Well, then, congratulations.”
She pushed a smile onto her lips. “Thanks.”
Evan hadn’t said anything about being excited to be a dad. But he loved her again, and wasn’t that what was most important? As long as they loved each other, they’d figure everything else out.
*
“Leave him,” Dad pleaded. “Be the mom you want to be to Evanee and Thomas instead of just some woman who visits them a few hours a week. They need their mom, not an old man, raising them.”
Dad’s words hurt but were the truth.
A few hours a week—Evan’s rules. Not what she wanted, but what she had agreed to in order to keep him happy. The simple fact that she put Evan’s happiness above her kids made her a bad mom. The worst kind of mom.
She rocked her sleeping baby boy gently. Just like Evanee, he’d been born with a thick cap of black hair. And just like when Evanee was born, Evan had insisted she make her father watch him. Evan hadn’t seen Thomas since his birth, and that was the last time he’d seen his daughter too. He had absolutely no feelings for either of his kids beyond jealousy for the few hours she spent visiting them at her dad’s house.
She’d thought she could change him, make him love the kids, but now she realized how naive she’d been.
“You can move back here. Save your money. I’ll be here to help if Evan gets out of control. You won’t have to deal with him alone.”
Dad wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t said a hundred times over the past two years, but today it was tempting in a way it hadn’t been before. She was tired, worn down mentally from being split between pleasing Evan and knowing she was letting her kids down. Up ’til now, she’d focused on Evan, made changes for him, while he made nothing but demands of her.
“Okay. You’re right.”
Dad slumped in his chair like he’d gone boneless. “Finally.”
“I’ll go home tonight, act like everything is all right, then while he’s at work tomorrow, pack my stuff and be gone by the time he gets home.”
“That’s probably wise.” Dad had seen Evan in a temper. That was part of the reason he’d agreed to take both Evanee and Thomas. Didn’t want Evan to hurt them when he got into one of his moods.
“I’ve got to go.” She handed her sleeping son to her father, then knelt down next to Evanee. “Baby, I’ll be back tomorrow and I won’t leave ever again.”
Evanee never looked up from playing with her doll. Why should she? Rosemary was practically a stranger to her own daughter.
She tousled her child’s hair, stood, and walked out the door.
Once she was in her car, the doubts crept out of the dark corners of her mind. She loved Evan. How could she leave him? The man she fell in love with was still inside him, still knew how to be a romantic, still knew how to twist her heart into a love knot. But lately, the bad days had been outnumbering the good days. Ah, but the good days weren’t merely good, they were spectacular.
She glanced in the rearview mirror. The two empty and rarely used car seats were a glaring reminder of everything wrong with her life. Her resolve returned.
She pulled into their driveway, suddenly aware that she didn’t remember one moment of the drive home. She parked next to Evan’s cruiser.
A stillness settled in her body, something she hadn’t felt in so long that it was foreign. She was doing the right thing. She just had to get through tonight.
Her legs were steady as she headed up the sidewalk.
Inside, the house was too quiet, too neat—not at all how it should be. Cartoons should be blaring on the TV. Thomas should be fussing, and Evanee should be banging her toys together. Toys and bottles and laundry should be all over the place. The house should sound and look like a family lived there.
And suddenly she couldn’t stand to be there. But she knew she couldn’t leave—not yet. She picked up the phone and dialed Rob’s number. He’d intervened a number of times when Evan got out of control. She needed him now.
“Who you calling?”
She startled so violently that she dropped the phone. It clattered to the floor, dangling by its cord.
Evan stood in the kitchen doorway. He still wore his uniform. As he walked into the room, he took off his gun belt and draped it over a chair. “I said, who you calling?”
“I’m moving back to Dad’s.” She shouldn’t have blurted the words out. She should’ve kept them secret and hidden until she was safe, but a sick part of her wanted him to beg her to stay, wanted him to promise to change, wanted to give him one last chance.
“The hell you are.” The beast in his eyes promised to hurt her. Bad.
She turned to run, but he caught her around the waist and slammed her face down on the kitchen table. Pain dazed her senses, and by the time she could think again, she realized he’d cuffed one of her hands to the table leg. Her wrist ached from the way it was bent over the edge of the table at an unnatural angle. She bucked her hips, tried to move, but Evan pinned her legs against the other end of the table.
“Evan. No! Don’t do this.” She screamed against the wood. “I won’t leave. I promise. I’m sorry.”
*
She lay underneath his body. His blood gushed over her, scalding her back and pooling underneath her torso. It dripped and poured onto the floor, the sound loud as a faucet in the silent house.
She’d shot him. Killed him. With his own gun. She hadn’t meant to, or maybe she had. Why else had her free hand sought his gun belt? Why else would she have aimed the gun over her shoulder at him?
She began crying and knew she was never going to stop. She cried until the blood cooled, then chilled, and she shook as much from her sobs as from the cold.
“Rosemary.” Rob was suddenly there, hauling Evan off her.