For the Love of Suzanne

• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Chapter 34
  
• Chapter 35
  
• Chapter 36
  
• Chapter 37
  
• Chapter 38
  
• Chapter 39
  
• Chapter 40
  
• Chapter 41
  

“You bitch!” he raged and slapped her
hard enough to send her sprawling to the floor. He came at her again
and yanked her to her knees by the long, blond ponytail at the back
of her head and glared at her. “How could you do that?”

She cowered, hoping he wouldn’t hit her
anymore. “I didn’t mean to,” she said shakily.

“You’re pregnant and you didn’t
mean to. How nice,” he hissed as he pulled her hair tighter,
getting a little yelp from her, glaring into her swelling blue eyes.
“Who’s the father?”

“You are,” she squeaked.

He laughed harshly. “How can that be? I
haven’t touched you in months. You’re far too ugly for
me.”

But he had touched her. He’d forced himself
on her a couple of months ago while he’d been drunk and angry.
She didn’t want to remind him of that, though. He was drunk and
she saw no need to antagonize him more.

It hadn’t always been like this. They’d
been high school sweethearts and had gotten married the summer they’d
graduated, against the wishes of their parents. Her mother had
remarried shortly before Suzanne’s graduation and her new
husband brought four daughters with him when he’d moved in.
Despite her weak protest, Jeannette had seemed almost relieved when
Suzanne had told her she was marrying Beau Dillon. Of course, she’d
told her daughter they were too young and suggested she go to college
instead, but Suzanne hadn’t listened.

Beau’s father was a minister and had refused
to marry them. With their eyes full of stars and their heads in the
clouds, they’d packed what they could into Beau’s Grand
Am, and had run away to New York City and eloped.

That was seven years ago. Although the first few
years had been happy, they didn’t have much money. They’d
moved to a small town in Arizona when Beau had landed a job as a
heavy equipment operator for a construction company. The money was
good, but she got a job waiting tables at a local café to add
to their income anyway.

Along with his new job came new friends and his
new friends liked to drink themselves stupid. He’d never been
much of a drinker and the first few times he’d come home drunk,
she’d taken care of him. But then he’d hit her in one of
his stupors. He’d hit her as hard as he would hit a man and
had given her a black eye.

The next morning, he’d apologized and was
nice to her all day, but he’d gone out that night, and had come
home and given her a bloody nose and a split lip. There were no
apologies after that. There was only blame and contempt. She knew she
should have left him after the first time, but their bank account was
dry and he’d taken her tips she’d been saving to go to
the bar.

She often wondered where the man she’d loved
had gone. He’d been so handsome with his shoulder-length dark
brown hair and dark eyes. He was tall, slim, and muscular, and had a
charming personality when he wanted to. She used to love to lose
herself in his eyes, but the love he’d once felt had been
replaced by anger, hate and resentment. Now, she feared him more than
any person who walked the earth. As big and as muscular as he was, it
wouldn’t take much for him to kill her.

She knew she was no match for him. Standing at
five feet five and weighing a hundred and fifteen pounds, she wasn’t
able to put up much of a fight. She’d tried to hit him back in
the past, but that had only served to infuriate him more. With the
advent of the pregnancy, she knew she couldn’t let him do this
to her anymore.

She wrenched away from him and jumped to her feet.
“Don’t you ever touch me like that again!” she
shouted.

He stepped back, staring at her in shock. She’d
never raised her voice to him before. “What?” he asked
dumbly.

She wiped the blood away that had been running
into her mouth from her nose. “I said, don’t touch me
like that again,” she said a lot more evenly but still
breathing hard. “I’m pregnant and there isn’t a
damn thing you can do about it. Now, stop hitting me.”

“Oh yeah?” he challenged, stepping
toward her, sending a lamp shattering to the floor.

She backed up. “Yeah,” she said
defiantly with bravado she certainly didn’t feel, backing her
way into the kitchen.

He followed her with menacing steps and venom in
his eyes. “What are you going to do about it?” he
sneered.

She quickly grabbed a butcher knife from the
cutlery block on the counter and held it to his genitals. “Get
out of here, Beau,” she said shakily, brushing more blood out
of her mouth. She applied pressure to the knife, piercing the heavy
denim material. “You’re going to lose ‘em if you
don’t.”

He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“You can’t make me leave. I own this dump,” he said
angrily, gesturing toward the trailer as a whole.

“You’re drunk and I want you to leave.
Now,” she said venomously.

With a quick movement, he had her by her ponytail
again and was about to slap her when he felt a sharp pain go through
his forearm. He dropped her to the floor and gaped at the sizeable
cut she’d inflicted upon him. “You cut me,” he said
wondrously.

She scrambled to her feet and held the knife to
his genitals again. “You’re going to get it a lot worse
if you don’t leave,” she seethed, breathing hard.

He felt the point of the blade against him and
figured she might just do it. He was already bleeding profusely from
the cut on his arm. “Maybe we can talk this over,” he
said uneasily.

“We’re done talking, Beau. Get out of
here right now. You can come back for your stuff in the morning after
I go to work.”

“But where will I go?” he asked
lamely.

She pushed the knife a little harder through his
blue jeans, causing him to take a sharp intake of breath. “You’ve
never had that problem before. Go find one of your girlfriends. Just
don’t come back here,” she said coldly. “We’re
done for good this time. Now GET OUT!” she raged.

He slowly backed away from her, raising his hands
to calm her down. “Easy, honey,” he said smoothly as he
looked at her, never before seeing her like this. She was always
calm, cool and collected, not this angry beast with fiery eyes and a
desire to unman him.

After she heard his pickup start and saw him back
out of the driveway, she sat down in a kitchen chair and let the
pent-up tears of anger, frustration and humiliation roll down her
cheeks. She tossed the knife onto the table and buried her face in
her hands.

She’d booted him out at such a crucial time.
They could have raised this baby together, but she didn’t want
it to be subjected to his excessive drinking, drug abuse and
philandering. She also knew that she couldn’t take anymore of
his beatings. Not in her condition.

It was over for good.

Suzanne went to work the next day and put in a
full day with Beau on her mind. She hoped all of his stuff would be
gone when she got home. She was worried about how she was going to
pay her bills and support the baby without his income, but knew she
would figure it out eventually. She wanted to stay here, but moving
back to New York was not out of the question.

She waited on a table of four big, burly men
dressed in blue jeans and t-shirts and knew they were all truckers
from a nearby distribution warehouse. They teased her about her black
eye and cut lip, laughing when they told her they hoped the other guy
got the worst of it. She gave them a congenial smile and played along
despite her acute embarrassment.

“You know, you really should call the
police,” Angela, the other waitress, told her seriously as she
was getting food out of the window. “Your old man should be in
jail for what he’s done to you.”

Suzanne watched her whisk her plates of food away
before she could even muster an answer. Angela was right. Beau should
be in jail. There were laws against this sort of thing and she didn’t
have to take it. Still, for whatever reason, she couldn’t bring
herself to make the call.

She’d come to work on numerous occasions
with black eyes and bruises where they were easy to see and had been
the topic of conversations many times amongst the patrons and her
coworkers. Yet she still couldn’t make that call.

At the end of her shift, she got into her rundown
black Chevy Cavalier that had body damage, rust and fading paint.
Beau had kicked in the driver’s door while he’d been
drunk, leaving a big dent in it, and had keyed it a few times. It
looked terrible, but ran like a top. The other added bonus was it was
paid for. She wasn’t in the market for a new car anytime soon.

When she got home, she was surprised to see that
Beau hadn’t come for his stuff. Maybe it wasn’t so
surprising. He looked like she’d kicked him right where it
counts when she’d told him to leave. Maybe he was going to hang
on as long as he could or even beg her to take him back.

She shook her head at the absurdity of that
thought. He wasn’t going to beg her for anything, and it was
easy to see him hurting her again. She needed to get his key or have
the locks changed. She thought getting locks changed would be
expensive and she was short on money. She had to get his key.

She was tired and not feeling so well. She put on
her bathrobe and went across the hall to start a bath when there was
a knock on the front door. She turned off the water and gathered her
robe around her, making sure she was covered as she went to answer
it.

She was surprised to see Pete Hood, a local
deputy, on the porch. She knew him from the café. He was a
young man with dark hair and eyes and was always polite and
respectful with her. “Hi, Pete,” she said pleasantly
with a forced smile, wondering what Beau had done now. It couldn’t
be good if the sheriff’s department was here. “Come on
in.”

He took off his hat. “Thank you, ma’am,”
he said politely and stepped inside the air-conditioned old trailer
and closed the door. He took off his sunglasses and slipped them into
the front pocket of his light blue shirt, then ran his hand nervously
over his dark hair.

She knew something was up. He never called her
“ma’am” and he’d never acted nervous around
her before. She wondered if Angela had called the cops and pushed the
thought to the back of her mind. “Can I get you some iced tea
or something? It’s really hot out today.”

“No, thank you. I’m here on official
business,” he said uneasily, fidgeting with his hat as he held
it in his hand.

“Am I in trouble?” she asked
worriedly, then remembered her manners. “I’m sorry.
Please, sit down.”

He sat down on the ripped green sofa. “Thank
you,” he said politely and cleared his throat nervously. “You
aren’t in trouble, ma’am.”

“Then it’s Beau,” she said
flatly. “What did he do?”

“Ma’am, I hate to be the one to tell
you this, but Beau was killed in a freak accident today,” he
blurted in an unsettled manner.

She sunk down in the tattered brown leather
recliner in shock. “What?” she asked as if she hadn’t
heard him right.