Liberty At Last (The Liberty Series) (32 page)

“Guess it didn’t go that well, huh?” Matthew asked the next morning, as we were starting our second mile.

“What gave it away?” I asked, more than a hint of sarcasm tinging my voice.

John hadn’t spoken a word to the guys all morning. He’d eaten breakfast and then stretched in complete silence. When we started our run, he looked at me. “I think I need to run really fast today,” he said. He looked so sad I thought
I
was going to cry.

“Of course,” I said, and watched him sprint away. He was trying to outrun his demons. I wished he could. We were running five miles today — a cake-walk for them, a disaster for me — but I wondered if he would try to stay at that speed the whole time. Probably.

“What’s the deal?” Matthew asked. I knew John trusted Matthew with his life. He didn’t keep things from him, so I didn’t hold back.

“The doctor told them that Catherine isn’t crazy. Not medically, anyway,” I said, trying to keep breathing, talking and running. “They have no basis to hold her involuntarily.”

“Are we going to try to keep her here?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think he’ll do it. Eva wants to let her go, to make her own choice. I suggested getting charges brought against her so she can’t leave the country, but John didn’t like that idea.”

Matthew laughed. “You’re gonna make a great wicked stepmother,” he said.

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” I said, huffing.

“Is there a good way to mean federal charges?”

“I just want to keep her safe,” I said. “Not for her sake. For John’s.”

“I know,” Matthew said. “If she leaves and goes back down there, he’s gonna lose it.”

“But that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

“Think about it,” he said, working it through in his mind. “She already hates him. If we keep her here against her will, what’s it going to solve?”

“I don’t know,” I said, breathing heavily. “I just feel like I made everything worse. I wanted to give him some answers. I wanted to help him make his peace with what happened. But now there’s no chance of that. Not ever.”

“He’ll be alright,” Matthew said. “It’s just a new reality for him.” He was quiet for a second. “We’re going to have to keep him really busy,” he said finally. “‘Cause otherwise he’s going to go down there and start blowing things up.”

“That’s just great,” I said, inwardly shaking my head. I had achieved the opposite of what I wanted.

“Maybe it
is
for the best,” Matthew offered. “At least now John knows she’s alive. And she’s happy. Even though it’s not what he would’ve chosen for her.”

“You know he’s going to try to kill Angel,” I said. “It’ll eat at him forever.”

“He can’t,” Matthew said simply. “Not if he ever wants his daughter back.”

“She’s already gone,” I said. “She hates him. I didn’t see one thing that showed me she had any feelings left for him.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not ready to call it yet. Family’s a funny thing.”

“But don’t you think —” I started.

Matthew held his hand up. “Enough analyzing, Lib. We’ve got four more miles to go, and our time already sucks.”

I shut my mouth and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

“I need you to work harder,” Matthew said. “I need you to give these next couple of miles everything you’ve got. Can you do it?”

I nodded at him silently. I didn’t have a choice.

John was a mess, but he was a quiet mess. If you didn’t know him well, you would never know he was heartbroken. But I knew, and Ian knew, and Matthew knew. We just all paid him the respect of pretending we didn’t.

“Hey babe,” I said the next morning. I winced as I sat down at the breakfast bar next to him; my thighs were killing me. Ian looked over at me and gave me a look:
He’s still not talking.
Even last night in bed, he’d just held me, his face pressed against my shoulder.

He didn’t want to talk about it.

“Eva’s taking her back to California tonight,” he said suddenly. He sounded as if he was talking about the weather. “The doctors told her that her stay was discretionary. She’s decided to check out.”

We were all silent for a beat. “Why is Eva taking her to California?” Ian asked. “She’d be much safer here.”

“You mean she’d be further from the border here,” John said. Again, his voice betrayed no emotion. “Dad, she’s an adult. I can’t keep her safe from her own choices.”

“Can we see her?” Ian asked. “I haven’t even spoken to her, John.”

“You can go to Boston today if you want,” John said. “They’re not flying out until later tonight. I’ll call Eva.”

“Aren’t you going?” I asked him, searching his face. He looked up at me and I could see all the pain he was feeling, even though his voice betrayed none of it.

“I can’t,” he said. I’d never seen him look defeated before. It was frightening.

“I’ll go,” Ian said, clapping him on the back.

“I’ll go, too,” I said. She was the last person I wanted to see, and I was sure she wouldn’t be excited about my visit. But if she was going to disappear again, I had to talk to her one last time. I had to say I was sorry, even though I wasn’t — and I had to beg her to stay in touch with her father.

“Really?” John asked me, looking at me skeptically. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I need to tell her I’m sorry,” I said. “About her foot, about some of the stuff I said…” My voice trailed off and I looked at him. “If I don’t tell her, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

He ran his hand through his hair and stood up. “You sure you don’t just want to stay with me here instead? Misery loves company.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

“I’m gonna go,” I said, resigned.

“Thank you,” he whispered into my ear, and I suddenly felt better about my decision.

If Eva was surprised when she saw me, she gave no indication. Her hair was pulled back from her face today, but I still couldn’t see one single wrinkle. “Hello,” I said, sounding more friendly than I felt. I liked her less now. Not only because of her eerily smooth skin, but also because she was doing something to hurt John. It was inadvertent, but it was still unacceptable to me.

“Eva,” Ian said, hugging her stiffly. He took a step back and immediately starting cleaning his glasses. He’d done this about thirty times on the ride here, so I was pretty sure they were already clean.

“Why, Eva?” he asked, as soon as he put them back on. It was as if they were clean, they gave him courage. “Why are you leaving so soon? The girl’s just gotten here.”

Eva’s eyes filled with tears and she took a shaky breath. “Don’t you think I know that?” she asked, the tears spilling over. “But she said she’s leaving either way. No matter what I say. I thought it was better to take her with me than to just…lose her again right away.” She really started to cry then, her nose running and everything.

“She’s being impossible,” Eva said through her tears. She gratefully accepted the handkerchief Ian handed her. “She’s so angry. I keep trying to explain that we all love her, and that it’s been horrible not knowing if she was alive or dead. But it’s like she’s brainwashed.” She blew her nose again, and her mascara was smudged on her face, and I felt really bad about the mean thoughts I’d had just a few minutes earlier. It wasn’t Eva’s fault. Catherine was just breaking her heart, too.

“But that’s not what the doctors are saying,” she said, shaking her head. “They said that it’s not
Stockholm syndrome.
She insists that Angel didn’t kidnap her — that he
saved
her from the people who did, and that she made a conscious choice to stay with him. The doctors estimate that she was only with her initial captors for under a month. They don’t believe she’s operating under any sort of delusions or coercion. They believe that she’s acting out of her own free will. And that she genuinely loves him.”

“It’s okay,” I said, gently, patting her back. “It’s going to be okay.”

I’d been saying that a lot lately.

“Ian, do you mind if I go see Catherine now? I’ll only be a few minutes…then you can spend all the time with her you need,” I said, feeling a cold sweat suddenly appear in my armpits.

Ian nodded. “She’s not going to be very friendly, I’m afraid,” Eva said, apologetically.

“It’s okay,” I said.
I was used to it. She was usually a lot less than “not very friendly” — but I figured I could spare her mother this fact.

“She’s in Room 212.”

I hurried down the hallway. I wanted to get this over with, and get back to John and our training. I had so much to do, so much to learn, and in such a short time. I looked at my ring sparkling as I moved further towards Catherine’s room. I briefly considered pocketing it before I went into see her, but she would see it for what it was:
cowardice.

I walked through the open door of her room. She was sitting on the bed, still in a Johnny, inspecting her foot. “Liberty,” she said as I walked in. “I was just cursing you out in my mind. While I was looking at my gunshot wound. What a happy coincidence.”

“Ha, ha,” I said. “Tell me how you really feel — no wait, don’t. Please don’t. I don’t have any cigarettes to help you express yourself.”

“Oh, I love it when you have an attitude. You’re just so
fresh
,” she said, fake playfully, scowling up at me in disdain. She went back to inspecting her foot. In my defense, it was a clean shot — it’d gone straight through, and the stitches appeared to be healing nicely.

“Can you walk on that yet?” I asked, hating to ask her anything about it. Her response was going to be caustic. I could count on that.

“Yes,” she said. “I can walk on it. I just have that ugly boot.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, and I was, sort of. “I was so scared when I shot you,” I said, blurting it out in a rush. “I just didn’t want you to shoot Matthew. I didn’t want you to drag me down that dark hall.”

“You just wanted to see my father,” she said, flatly.

“I wanted to get the hell
out
of there,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m sure you can understand,” I said, motioning to the room. “I wanted to go home.”

“You really are a fucking idiot,” she said, but for once she didn’t sound mean. She patted the seat beside her. I sat down and looked at her cautiously. Being this close to her made me sweat even more. “I understand
exactly
what you’re saying,” she said, like we were girlfriends having iced tea, discussing our similar approach to the SAT’s.

Except you want to get out of here so you can run back to that darkness,
I thought. But I didn’t say a thing. I just looked at her, expectantly.

“Well, my husband is not as egregiously old as your fiancé is” she said. “But people have their concerns about him. They want to keep me from him.”

“It’s not just that,” I blurted out. “We’re all worried that you’re not rationally making a choice to be with him. You were beaten, you were sexually abused — you have to be messed up from that. We’re worried that you didn’t know what you were doing when you married Angel.”

“I knew exactly what I was doing.” She considered her foot for another minute. “Just ask the doctors here. They get it. Check my chart:
no syndromes, no delusions, no coercion
. And I think you knew that when we were in Mexico. You knew I wasn’t crazy.”