Leaving at Noon (18 page)

She let his shirt go. “No. They never saw
me.”

Theo raised a brow.

“
We were tucked away in a
dark corner. Even if they’d looked my way, they wouldn’t have seen
me.”

“
So what, you sat there,
hidden from view, watching them? You didn’t let them know you were
there?”

Zoey massaged her chest with the heel of her
hand. “I froze, Hughesy.” Her voice was fraught with pain. “I’d
forgotten about the emails and calls. Pushed them out of mind, and
then suddenly, there they were. All of them. Walking into the
restaurant and looking so happy. They were laughing and poking fun
at each other. M-my father had his arm around Victoria, and he was
teasing Jack. Cynthia just looked so…so goddamned content with
everything. Like she had the perfect husband and the perfect life
and the perfect family.”

Zoey heaved in a shuddery breath. “And
that’s exactly what they are. The perfect family. The gorgeous
parents with their gorgeous kids.” Her lower lip trembled.
“Victoria and Jack have everything I ever wanted. Everything. The
solid family, the loving parents, the doting mother and present
father. And there I was, the ugly duckling who’d never fitted into
any family. Whose father gave up on her and mother hated her.”

A tear spilled over and slipped down her
cheek. “I felt like something—someone—was ripping me apart from the
inside. As if the gorgeous life I’d created for myself with you was
suddenly nothing more than a sham. An excuse to pretend I grew up
okay.”

She looked at him with such pain in her
eyes, Theo felt a corresponding ache in his gut.

“
I’d always believed if
one day I found the perfect guy and got married, I could be really
happy, you know? We’d have children and I’d be the doting mum, and
you’d be the ideal dad, and we’d live happily ever after. And I did
find the perfect man. But…but we weren’t so perfect when they
walked into that restaurant. We weren’t talking, I was exhausted
from work, and you were all but ignoring me. It all just collapsed
in a pile. All my dreams, all my fantasies. Just like that, they
were suddenly out of my reach. Everything I’d worked so hard to
create with you seemed like a bad charade.”

Theo hadn’t been ignoring her. He’d made
that perfectly clear, but he bit his tongue, This wasn’t the time
to argue the point. “We hiccupped. That’s all. We weren’t
collapsing. We were going through a bad time.”

“
I can see that—now. But
then, all I knew was we weren’t talking, and things were shit. Then
suddenly
they
were a few feet away. The perfect family. The
one that was almost mine, but not quite.” She slumped against him.
“I lost it.”

“
Lost what?”

“
Everything. Hope for the
future. Confidence in us. My happiness. It’s like the waiter took
it all away when he cleared the dishes.”

A nasty throb took up residence in the
inside of Theo’s skull. “You gave up on us?”

Zoey shrugged helplessly. “I-I think so. I
didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back…” She nodded. “I
did. I gave up on us. As I watched my father express his affection
for all of them, I started seeing you in him.”

Uh… What? “Me?”

“
You’re so open about your
feelings, Theo. So easy with holding or touching me, kissing me in
public, telling me you love me. He was like that too. So obviously
proud of his family. H-he was proud of me too, once. He used to
carry me on his hip and call me his precious child. His beautiful
daughter. He made me feel like a princess every day—until he wasn’t
there anymore. One day I was the light of his life and the next
he’d just, I don’t know, extinguished that flame. I was nothing to
him. Nothing.”

Another tear slid down her cheek. “The next
time I felt that good about myself was when I met you. When you
looked at me like the sun rose in my smile. When you tucked me
against your side and said I was the most beautiful woman in the
world. When you told me every day you loved me. But…but you stopped
looking at me like that. Stopped touching me or calling me
beautiful. Just like my father did.”

Ice slid through Theo’s belly.

“
I was my father’s
princess, and he gave up on me. That night I realized you’d given
up on me too.”

Theo’s jaw dropped. He felt like he’d been
sucker-punched. It took a good few seconds before he found breath
enough to fill his lungs. Speech came a while later. And even then,
he couldn’t quite put a sentence together. “Christ.”

“
They all gave up on me.
All the men who came into my life. All
her
husbands. They
treated me like their daughter while they were married to my mother
and forgot me the second she moved on.”

“
I’m not one of them,
babe,” he said hoarsely. “I would never, ever give up on
you.”

“
Her boyfriends did it
too.”

“
Jesus, Zo. Get a little
perspective. I love you. I am fucking head-over-heels, crazy in
love with you. Always have been, always will be. A little extended
silent treatment or nasty fighting isn’t going to change that. It
may make me not like you for a while, but I’ll always fucking love
you.” Too keyed up to sit any longer, Theo jumped to his feet,
pacing from one length of the couch to the other. “You’re my wife.”
He smacked his chest. “Mine. I married you, which means I’m in it
for the long haul. Forever. I’m not abandoning you or forgetting
you or letting you get away. You’re stuck with me ’til the day I
die, babe, whether you want me or not.”

“
Men leave me, Theo. It’s
what they do.”

“
Wrong.” Zoey had twisted
everything up in her head. “In the case of all of those father
figures, your mother left them. They weren’t given a choice in the
matter.”

“
They could have come
after me. They could have made an effort. They didn’t.
He
didn’t.”

“
I can’t talk for the
others, but your dad did his best by you. He gave it everything he
had.”

“
Apparently not, since he
never saw me when I was a kid.”

“
He tried.” Theo raked a
hand through his hair. “Jesus Christ, he tried. The effort got him
thrown in jail.”

Zoey stilled. “Pardon?”

Shit.

Theo had just dived into shark-infested
waters. Waters he’d sworn to Richard he’d never mention to
Zoey.

“
Theo, what did you
say?”

He bit his cheek hard as war raged in his
belly. Zoey should know the truth. She deserved to know the truth.
Being kept in the dark was eating her alive.

She sat up straight. “Do you know something
you’re not telling me?”

Motherfucker.

How could he not tell her? Zoey’s theories
about her father had shaped the woman she’d become. They’d screwed
up her perceptions of love and relationships and family loyalty.
And now they were screwing up their marriage. She deserved to know
what really happened.

“
Theo, so help me God, if
you don’t tell me what you meant by that comment, I’m walking away
from you and never looking back.”

Yeah, of course she was. Because that was
the only method Zoey had ever learned for dealing with problems.
Well, it was time she learned another method. And time she knew the
truth. The whole truth.

He grimaced, hating that he was the one to
tell her. “He tried to see you. He filed for custody. He moved
mountains to get you to come live with him.”

Zoey rolled her eyes. “Bullshit.”

Theo heaved in a breath. Man, this was going
to screw with her head. “It’s true.” He dropped to the seat beside
her again and took her hand, knowing she was going to need
something to hold on to.

“
How come I know nothing
about it?”

“
Your mother made it go
away.”

“
What? How?”

“
She pressed charges
against your dad.”

“
Huh?” She shook her head
as though rejecting the truth. “For what?”

He wanted to close his eyes so he wouldn’t
have to see her reaction. “Sexual abuse of a minor.”

“
Excuse me?”

“
Child incestuous abuse,
to be specific.”

Zoey froze. Her lips didn’t move as she
asked, “Abuse of whom?”

Theo squeezed her hand. “You.”

Zoey’s world tilted to the side. It spun in
dizzying circles. Her vision turned hazy, dots filling the space
before her. Sound roared in her ears, and her breath seemed to have
vanished altogether.

Nothing seemed fixed to the ground.
Everything was a blur. Helplessness tore at her belly. The only
thing that felt relatively normal was the pressure on her hand. The
stable ongoing grip that seemed to hold her together when she felt
she might shatter in a million pieces.

“
Breathe, babe.” The words
penetrated the white noise. “You can do it. Just inhale
deep.”

Now there wasn’t just pressure on her hand.
There was pressure on her back too. Soothing pressure, as though
her troubles were being rubbed away.

The pressure felt good.

She inhaled deep, just like the voice
commanded.

“
See. It’s easy. Now
breathe out. Slow and calm.”

Zoey exhaled.

“
Great job. Keep going.
Keep breathing. I’m right here.” The pressure didn’t stop. “In to
the count of three… One, two, three. And out to the count of three…
One, two, three. Yeah, just like that.”

The calming voice talked her through it,
encouraging her to inhale when the very task seemed too taxing. Too
foreign.

God, her whole life seemed taxing. And
foreign.

Sexual abuse of a minor.

Incestuous abuse.

The fog began to clear. As did the dots. The
spinning slowed to a jerky rotation, leaving Zoey feeling
nauseous.

Only the pressure remained now. The constant
support of her hand and soothing of her back.

“
Tell me,” she rasped
through a throat that felt as if it had swelled closed.

Theo sighed.

She gripped the hand that held hers. “Tell
me everything.”

“
The day after your father
filed for custody, your mother went to the police. She made a
report stating that your dad had been sexually abusing you for
months.”

“
Wh…wh…w…?”

“
She listed it as the main
reason for filing for divorce.”

“
But…”

“
But…it wasn’t true?” Theo
asked.

She nodded, then shook her head. “No. It
wasn’t true. Of course it wasn’t true.”

Her father was guilty of breaking her heart
and destroying her faith in men. He was guilty of deserting her,
giving up on her and being a crap father. But sexually abusing her?
Um, yeah. No!

No, no, no and no. That was complete and
utter bullshit.

“
Your mother made it sound
pretty convincing.”

“
How?”

“
She weaved some elaborate
tale of him taking you camping every few months—giving him ample
opportunity alone with you.”

A strangled gasp escaped her lips.

Dear God.
The camping trips. She
hadn’t given them a thought in…years. Decades.

Theo squeezed her hand. “You okay?”

She shook her head. “I’d forgotten all about
those trips.”

“
Camping?”

A nod this time. “We’d go three or for times
a year. Just the two of us. Different places every trip.” The
thought of those excursions filled her with unmitigated joy. “There
was a river at one and horses at another. Oh, and a cat who’d just
had kittens in the bush near our tent in a third.” She closed her
eyes and heard the soft mewling that had drawn her out of her tent
to investigate. She still remembered the angry hiss of the
protective mother as Zoey had gotten too close.

She’d taken them endless scraps of leftover
food that weekend.

“
He bought us this cool
tent. It was enormous, with three different compartments. A bedroom
for each of us and a living room to relax in. He’d set my sleeping
bag up in my ‘room’, but I’d move it to his, because I couldn’t
bear the idea of sleeping so far away when I finally had my daddy
all to myself.”

Once again, she felt like that little girl.
Felt the awe of having two long days and nights all alone with the
dad she adored. The father who made her happy. The daddy who took
her away from her cold, distant mother and treated her to weekends
of endless fun and joy.

A pang of pleasure slammed into her chest,
followed closely by one of misery. “They were the happiest times,
Hughesy. I loved those camping trips more than I loved anything
else growing up. I…I can’t believe I forgot all about them.”

The idea that her father might have sexually
abused her on those idyllic trips was insane.

Zoey had thrived in the freedom of being
outdoors and away from her mother’s rules. She’d been thrilled that
her dad never forced her to shower and encouraged her to play in
the mud and the dirt and the grime.

She’d laughed and smiled from the minute
they’d leave to the minute they’d return.

Returning home was never easy. It would take
less than a minute for her mother to wipe the pleasure away by
complaining of the filth and the smell, and sending her to her
bathroom to clean up, immediately.

“
It was our special time,”
she whispered, awed by the memory. “That’s what we called it. Our
special time.”

Theo grimaced. “That’s exactly the phrase
your mother used when she laid charges against him. She painted
your ‘special time’ as an opportunity for your father to get you
alone and…”