“I didn’t have much choice, and I won’t take credit. Grace takes after her mother.” Grace and Miranda hugged in the entry hall. Elizabeth lowered her voice. “If you hurt my niece, I swear I’ll hunt you down like a dog and carve out your heart with a dull spoon.”
He gave a soft laugh. “You know something, Ms. Walker? I like you a whole lot better for saying that. I was beginning to wonder if you cared.”
“She’s been hurt enough by cavalier treatment.”
“Not by me.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
GRACE TOOK OFF her sweater, folded it, and tucked it neatly behind her seat. “You and my aunt seemed to get along.”
“She’s not exactly warm and fuzzy, is she?” He accelerated onto the freeway, wove through cars, and settled into the fast lane. “Although Ms. Spenser was overboard.”
“She was like a second mother to me. It’s just her way to love people. If I needed mothering, Aunt Elizabeth called her. My aunt couldn’t abide teen angst or hormonal drama.”
“Teen angst?” Roman gave her a droll look. “How did that look on you?”
“Subterranean. I didn’t have time for emotions. I had to keep my grades up to earn a scholarship, and hold down a job so I could save for living expenses.”
“She didn’t give you any help? Looked like she was pretty well off.”
“I never asked.” She knew the answer would be no. “She gave me a home. That was more than she really wanted to do.”
“What about love? Is she capable?”
“Maybe you should examine your own life before you judge my aunt.” What right did he have to be critical? He’d cut off Chet and Susan for years. Jasper was his only true friend, and only because Jasper made all the effort. “You don’t know her.”
He didn’t say anything for so long she felt ashamed. She didn’t want him to judge, and here she was doing it. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” His tone was bland. “You’re right.”
“Her life wasn’t easy. She left Memphis to get away, and then got dragged back in when—” She caught herself. She couldn’t say more without bringing up what she didn’t want to remember.
She wished she’d had time to finish her psychology class, maybe take more of them. The courses that fascinated her all had to do with human behavior. She longed for answers. What had made her father snap? Why had her mother stayed in an abusive relationship? Was she her mother’s daughter, as Aunt Elizabeth believed, prone to make the same mistakes? Did she have to repeat the same patterns? Why had it been easy for Aunt Elizabeth to read Patrick’s character and impossible for her to see? And if Aunt Elizabeth could see the truth about people, what terrible thing had she seen in Grace that she could never love her, not even as a niece?
So many questions. A decade of searching for answers and trying to make good decisions.
“When what?” Roman looked annoyed. “Finish what you were going to say.”
Her heart pounded.
Roman’s expression softened. “Whatever you tell me stays with me. Who am I going to tell?”
“You might broadcast it on social media.” She hoped making light of it would end the conversation.
“I want to know more about you, Grace. I want to know what makes you tick. We’re trying to become friends. Remember?”
If she wanted to know him on a deeper level, she was going to have to take risks. Did she have the courage to open the door into the old darkness, that awful place of nightmares?
Tell him, came the soft whisper.
She released her breath. She recognized that still, small voice. She might not understand why He wanted her to speak, but she obeyed.
“Aunt Elizabeth hated my father. She didn’t tell me that, of course, but shortly after I came to live in her house, I overheard a conversation between her and Miranda. My mother was Aunt Elizabeth’s only sister, younger by six years. They were apparently very close until my mother started dating my father. Aunt Elizabeth warned my mother not to get involved with him. She said he was just like their father. But my mother wouldn’t listen. She got pregnant. With me. They eloped. Aunt Elizabeth told Miranda she knew what would happen, and couldn’t bear to watch. She left Memphis before I was born. I never met my aunt until the day she came for me. She called once. My father told my mother she loved her sister more than him. It was the first time I saw him hit her.”
Roman’s hands shifted on the steering wheel. “Did he ever hit you?”
“He broke my arm once. He cried and said he was sorry. My mother took me to the doctor. She told me on the way he didn’t mean to hurt me. He didn’t know his own strength.” The doctor had wrapped her arm in a cast and asked what happened. Her mother had told her to say she fell out of a tree. It explained the other bruises, too.
“He killed her, didn’t he?”
Hearing him say it aloud made the old anguish come up. “My aunt thinks so. I overheard her tell Miranda the coroner’s report said it was an accidental death. My mother fell against the kitchen counter and broke her neck. I don’t know any more than that.”
“Where were you when it happened?”
She clenched her hands to keep them from shaking. “My mother always watched out the front window for my father. If he came home looking angry, she’d tell me we were playing hide-and-seek again. I’d hide until she came to find me. I was hiding in the back of their bedroom closet. I didn’t hear what he said, but my mother was talking so fast. She was crying and saying, ‘Please listen; please listen . . .’
“I covered my ears. It got quiet for a few minutes, and I listened, hoping my mother would come. But my father was talking. His voice was different. He kept saying, ‘Leanne, Leanne . . .’ He sounded scared. And then he started opening doors and closets. I thought he was hunting for me. And then he slid the closet door open. He threw boxes off the top shelf and found a gun. I must have made a sound because he pushed the clothes aside and saw me in the back corner.”
Roman drove with eyes straight ahead. “Did he say anything?”
She wiped tears away with a trembling hand. “No. He just stood there staring at me.” Her voice broke, and she looked away for a moment. Closing her eyes, she could almost see her father’s face. “After a minute, he pushed the clothes along the rod so I couldn’t see him anymore. I heard him leave the room. I was afraid he’d come back, but a few minutes later, I heard the shot.”
Grace wondered what Roman was thinking. She gave a bleak laugh. “I’ll bet you’re sorry you asked.”
“No. I’m not. But it’s not the life I imagined you’d had.”
“Others have been through worse.” Bobby Ray Dean, for one.
A wry smile curved his mouth. “I assumed you grew up in a nice family in some middle-class neighborhood, had lots of friends, went to church every Sunday . . .” He grimaced and uttered a curse. “Were you the one who found him? Your father?”
“No. A police officer found me. He put my mother’s parka on me and covered my head before taking me out. A neighbor kept me until CPS came. I was placed in foster care until my aunt arrived.” She wanted Roman to understand. “It was hard on Aunt Elizabeth. She’d just lost her sister. Unfortunately, every time she looked at me—”
“It wasn’t your fault, Grace.”
“In a way it was. My mother wouldn’t have married my father if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with me. When I married Patrick, Aunt Elizabeth said I was just like her.” She hadn’t meant to say that.
“You were pregnant, and he was abusive?”
“No.” She felt the heat surging into her cheeks. “We never did anything but kiss in high school. Then we ran into each other at UCLA, started studying together. And he, well . . . we . . .” Embarrassed, she looked away.
“You had sex.”
What a blunt way of putting it. “I wanted to make things right. Patrick wanted to make things easy.”
“And Samuel?”
“My son came later.”
“How long were you married?”
“Long enough to get Patrick through UCLA.” She shrugged. “A few months later, I came home early from work and found him in bed with someone else. The girl’s father owned the gym where he worked out.”