“No.” Kaine’s voice rose, vehement. No. Danny had done nothing but love her, and she had held him at arm’s length.
Grant didn’t press anymore. A tear trickled from the corner of her eye, betraying the truth she’d locked deep inside. She’d kept it buried for so long, she’d grown used to locking it away. Like it filled a place all its own. Every other secret had a way of slipping out, but this one was buried in such a way she’d need to excavate her soul to reveal it.
“It was my boyfriend in college. Freshman year.” It should have been Danny she told, not a man she’d known less than a month.
“There’s no shame in it.” Grant’s reassurance made another tear trace down her cheek.
Kaine swiped it away. “I know. Believe me. I preached that to every woman I’ve ever fought for.”
Grant nodded, the movement dancing on the edge of her peripheral vision.
“It wasn’t sexual.” Kaine had thanked God for that day after day. “But he was jealous. Possessive. If I even looked at another guy, he’d get jealous and shove me around later. Then he’d make me feel guilty, as if he was a victim and I’d ignored him, or hurt him by not being true.”
“That’s more common than people realize,” Grant said.
Kaine turned, but kept her arms wrapped tightly around her torso. She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “My sister and I were practically raised by my grandpa. He was kind but indifferent. I struggled in high school. I wanted to be safe. In college, it was as if . . . well, my boyfriend gave me that security. I didn’t want to jeopardize it, and I thought if I lost him, I’d never make it.”
“What happened?”
Kaine looked at Gabriella’s pages spread out on the floor. She took strength from the young woman’s handwriting. “One night I smiled at a waiter when he poured my coffee. Just a smile. When we got in the car later, as I was buckling my seat belt, my boyfriend lost it. He was in my face, yelling at me. Telling me I was cheating on him. That he was going to leave me and no man would ever want me because I was a—” she stopped then and let out a sigh—“I can’t repeat the word he used, not out loud.”
A muscle in Grant’s jaw clenched. He jammed his hands in his jean pockets.
Kaine continued, “The seat belt trapped me. I ended up in the hospital with two broken ribs, a black eye, and a few other bruises and scrapes. To this day, my sister, Leah, thinks I wiped out on my bicycle that I rode to class every day.”
“What ended it?” Grant shifted his weight to his other foot.
Kaine licked her lips, recalling the taste of blood on them after her boyfriend beat her. She remembered clawing at her seat belt, at his face. She was a fighter, she always had been. And that night she’d awakened to what she had settled for.
“I got a restraining order and I broke up with him. He moved out of town shortly after that. I found out a few years later that he died of a drug overdose. I fought back,” Kaine whispered, “and I won.”
A proud smile tilted Grant’s mouth. “Good girl.”
Kaine lifted her face to the ceiling and blinked fast to push away more tears. “No. I stuffed it all inside. It hurt my marriage to Danny. I couldn’t trust him. I buried myself in fighting for other women and teaching them to be strong, but in doing so I ostracized the one person who loved me the most.”
Annnnnnd here comes the tears. Kaine pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, hoping to stop the flow.
“And now, this. Everywhere. A reminder. I can’t get away from it. It seems every woman I know is affected by it and I can’t see God’s light, or this hope that believers preach about. I mean, I believe. In Jesus. In faith. But, I can’t see His promise of a future—a good future.” Kaine waved her hand at Gabriella’s pages. “But she could. How? How, Grant?”
When she spoke his name, Grant pulled his hands from his pockets and reached for her, one hand closing tenderly around hers. “Look at this.” With gentleness, he bent and lifted a page from the floor. “I don’t think you saw this one.”
He showed her page 113 of Great Expectations, hidden under the floor by a young woman whose identity had never been discovered. The ink had faded but was still legible. Its words reached deep into Kaine’s soul, gripped it, and she knew they would never let go.
My eyes see beyond today, beyond my circumstances in a world jaded and scarred by sin. I see into Heaven. And it is beautiful. And it is good. It is my future. There is no despair in eternity, in God’s presence, in His perfection. There is only hope. He is my hope.
Chapter 30
Kaine palmed Ivy’s locket, thumbing the tarnished gold and the engraved initials. She nestled cross-legged on the bed in Megan’s brightly colored bedroom, cozy in her pajamas, with Olive resting on the floor between the beds. Megan sat at her desk, colored markers strewn around her. Occasionally, she lifted her head to give Kaine a lopsided smile. Megan was so innocent, kind, and untainted. She was the most pleasant roommate Kaine ever recalled having. A fierce protectiveness overcame her. Kaine would hurt anyone who tried to steal that perfection from Megan.
Her new cellphone with her new number pealed. She glanced at the caller’s number, her heart beating faster. Detective Hanson. Thank God. She’d already given the detective her new number, so if her stalker had somehow retrieved this number, she would probably lose her mind. The fact that Grant was in the living room, crashed on the couch and watching ESPN was comforting. If she needed him, he’d be there, along with Sophie the pit bull. She’d hardly talked to Grant since her emotional breakdown earlier in the day and her confession that left her feeling like a limp dishrag.
“Hello?” Kaine waited for Detective Hanson to reply.
“Miss Prescott?”
“Yes.”
“I know it’s a bit late there in Wisconsin, but I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to call you.”
There was something in the detective’s voice that made Kaine sit straighter. She let Ivy’s locket slip from her hand into her lap. “Yes?”
“We found him.”
Visions of the blood-colored handprints and Danny’s name on Foster Hill House’s window flashed through Kaine’s mind. “Found who?” She didn’t mean to be obtuse, but if her stalker from San Diego had followed her to Wisconsin, she wasn’t quite certain who Detective Hanson might have found.
“The man who took your husband’s life.”
Kaine’s stomach twisted into a knot, and she lost her breath for a moment, though not in relief. A thousand questions swirled in her mind. “That’s . . . not possible,” she protested weakly.
Megan looked up from her Strawberry Shortcake coloring page with a concerned expression. Kaine mustered a confident smile. The girl didn’t deserve to be touched by Kaine’s messy life.