Secrets Rising (15 page)

Chapter 12

October 21, 1979, Edgewater, Texas

Like your mother said your father would come back from the hospital. Like she promised at his funeral that she'd never leave.

Like anybody had any control over the dangers of living.

Heart pounding furiously, she dashed to the door, praying to see a neighbor, a girl scout selling cookies, even an insurance salesman.

Charles and another officer, Clyde Hartman, his and Ben's sergeant, stood on the front porch, hats in their hands. Clyde's broad, freckled face was distorted, his eyes sad, his lips compressed as if holding in words he didn't want to speak. Charles frowned solemnly but his eyes glittered with anger and something else. Triumph?

Mary's hand went to her throat as the world spun dizzily around her. "Ben—" The word came out a croak, a desperate plea.

Strong arms grabbed her, holding her just above the night. Ben had caught her. Ben would always catch her. He'd promised to keep her and their baby safe.

A scent of too-sweet cologne assailed her nostrils, a scent imposed over but not hiding the dark, musty odor of death.

It wasn't Ben who'd caught her.

"She's fainted!" The concerned voice came from far away. She wondered briefly who was talking and who'd fainted, but the comforting darkness beckoned.

"She'll be all right. I'll take her by the doctor to be sure. Get her a sedative. Ben would want me to take care of her."

She tried to sit up, to see if it was Ben who was groaning, ask the doctor if he'd be all right, but someone held her down. Someone who smelled of too-sweet cologne and death.

Charles.

A woman swore. "This'll hurt a lot less if you'll lay still."

"Who are you? Where's my husband?" She was lying on her back on a table. A bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, the harsh light blinding her. She squirmed, trying to rise, to see where she was, who the invisible woman was...to get away from Charles. The movement increased the pain between her legs. Panic burst through her. "What's going on? I want to get up!"

Abortion?

This couldn't be happening! She was having another horrible nightmare.

The room spun dizzily, the light above swirling like a drunken sun. Mary felt herself sinking back into that black oblivion where Ben was still alive and—

"I warned you what would happen if you started mouthing off," he said. "Now you'll lie still if you know what's good for you. Let us get this over with."

But only for a second. As Ben had said, it didn't matter who started the process, this was her child. Hers and Ben's. And she loved her baby with all her heart.

And hated Charles with a like intensity.

That hatred gave her strength to do whatever it took to save her child. She swallowed hard and sucked in a deep breath. "You're right." The calm, cold voice seemed to come from a stranger, couldn't possibly be hers. "I don't want any child that might grow up to be like you. I'll lie still but only if you go in the other room. I don't want you to see me...to see my body."

He laughed. "It's not like I haven't already seen everything you've got. It's a little late for modesty."

She pulled her knees together with every ounce of strength she possessed, ignoring the stabbing pain the action brought.

"Go on in the other room," the female voice instructed. "A woman's got a right to a little privacy at a time like this."

The pain eased, and Mary sat upright on the table. For the first time, she was able to see the woman, a very ordinary, somewhat mousy person who looked to be in her forties but could be younger. The hard edge to her plain face made it difficult to be certain.

"Why are you doing this?" Mary asked, her voice low to keep Charles from hearing and because every word, every movement, was an effort.

The hard edge deepened. "I owe Charles, and Charles always collects on his debts."

"You owe him enough to take the child of someone you don't even know?"

The woman reached for a package of cigarettes on a nearby lamp table, extracted one, lit it and blew out a stream of smoke. "Yeah," she said, "I owe him enough."

The woman took several short, nervous puffs on her cigarette then crushed it out in an overflowing ashtray, her eyes on her action, refusing to meet Mary's gaze. "Not too late for him to ruin my life. I'm a nurse. I got a kid, a boy ten years old. I'll lose all that if Charles throws me in jail for doing abortions. That man is pure evil. He uses his job to collect evidence on people, then he owns that person. Like he owns me."

"I'll go away! Leave town! He'll never know. I promise!"

The woman's brown eyes lifted to hers and softened, but her mouth remained hard. "Come on, honey, why would you want to have the kid of a man like that?"

"It's not his baby!"
This baby is ours
, Ben had said.
I don't care whose eyes or hair she has. I don't care who started the process, who planted the seed. It's our baby.

Mary shut out the hateful words. She couldn't think about that now. Later she'd have to face it, accept it, figure out how she could possibly live with it, but not now. Now she needed every resource she could muster to fight for the life of her child.

"This baby's all I have left. You're a mother. Surely you can understand."

The woman pushed her short brown hair away from her face and sighed again. "Yeah, I can understand. I don't know what I'd have done without my kid when my husband took a walk." She shook her head. "I gotta take care of that kid, and I can't do it from the inside of a jail cell."

"I swear Charles will never know. I have a friend who'll help me. She lives—"

The woman lifted a hand. "No. Don't tell me. Lord, I can't believe I'm even thinking about this. Okay, listen. You go in that bathroom over there and close the door then turn on the water. And get your ass out the window as fast as you can. You got five minutes. That's all before I go in and tell Charles that you tricked me. And, so help me God, if you ever show up in this town again, I'll do worse than an abortion."

Tears sprang to Mary's eyes as she slid off the table. "Thank you! You won't be sorry. Thank you!"

"Five minutes."

Chapter 13

When they returned from the library, Jake went to his room and Rebecca to hers. Trapped there for the morning, she paced restlessly for miles, turned the television on and off dozens of times, tried in vain to understand the bursts of muffled, one-sided conversations from Jake's room and grew more distraught with every slowly passing minute. This was the way she'd felt before she left Dallas to come down here...wandering in aimless circles, going nowhere with no goal in sight.

Since she'd arrived in Edgewater, she and Jake had been busy every minute. She'd felt as though they were accomplishing something, as if she were once again taking control of her life. No matter that they hadn't ended up with a lot to show for their efforts. It had felt good to try, to push forward.

But now Jake was in his room making a couple of calls, and she hadn't dared to demand to go in with him. Being in the confining, bed-filled space of Jake's room tended to dull her brain processes and intensify her hormonal processes.

If she had any sense, she'd take his advice and go back to Dallas, let him finish the job here and send her those reports he kept talking about.

She picked up the phone and dialed her home number, intending to see if she had any messages. But before the second ring, she hung up. Nothing that could conceivably be on that machine would have any relevance for her. She couldn't go back because she had nothing to go back to. She was disconnected from that part of her life and not yet connected to another.

And Jake Thornton was her only link to that nebulous, unknown world.

How ironic that, to find herself, she had to risk losing the small bits of herself she had left, had to relinquish whatever remnant of control she still retained. Even though she was doing all she could, in the long run she had to trust Jake to help her, to do his job.

It would be far too easy to lean on him for more, the way she'd done in the cemetery.

She felt like a vacuum, needing to suck in the touch of another human being, to bond with that human being, to take from him the missing parts necessary to make her complete.

As a child, she'd done that with her parents, needing more than they could give. Was it possible she'd always remembered, somewhere on a subconscious level, the rejection by her birth mother? She'd heard that hypnosis had been known to bring up memories from time spent still in the womb.

As an adult, she'd thought herself past all that, but now she was right back in that trap. Except she knew only too well the futility of looking to anyone, especially someone like Jake. She had to find herself, get herself back together...and then she wouldn't need Jake or anyone else.

Or would need only what Jake needed from her...physical satisfaction. Nothing more. Nothing he couldn't deliver. She suspected he could deliver the physical satisfaction quite competently.

The ringing of her phone pulled her from her thoughts.

Heart pounding, she stared at it through two more rings before she mustered the courage to lift the receiver. Even then she couldn't speak, couldn't bring herself to invite another mystery caller to give her another message of discouragement about her mother...about her own future.

When she left her room this time, the heat from the sidewalk slapped her in the face. At least it wasn't as misleading as the beautiful, hopeful morning she'd come out to earlier.

"Who did you call?" she asked as soon as they pulled away from the motel. "Unless they were personal calls," she added, the possibility suddenly rearing in her mind. "In which case, of course it's none of my business."

The possibility that he'd been making personal calls, that he had someone to call, hadn't occurred to her until now, until she heard the demanding tone in her voice...until a sick sensation rolled over her at the idea.