No River Too Wide (18 page)

“You told me I was too young to write off my life,” Jan said to Adam.

“If I did, I apologize for being obnoxious.”

“It wasn’t obnoxious. It was helpful.”

He smiled. Taylor just glimpsed it, but she thought how kind a smile it was, as if Adam understood he was dealing with the walking wounded.

Taylor’s doubts about the self-defense class ended. If she had any doubts that spending more time with Adam Pryor was a good idea, well, they slunk back into her unconscious just a little further.

“Your car...” Jan had turned back to Taylor. “I’m sorry. It just died on me. Nothing I did to restart it worked.”

“Damn.” Taylor saw Jan wince. “Not damn—darn—
you,
Jan. Of course not. Darn the car. Darn me for believing my repair guy when he said he’d fixed the problem. It’s not your fault. It’s the car’s fault. I’m just so sorry you had to deal with it.”

“I thought—” Jan stopped.

Taylor could only imagine what she had thought. That Taylor would blame her, because wasn’t Jan always wrong? That Taylor would be furious, because, well, that one was obvious. That Taylor might even ask her to leave since she had failed to live up to her part of their bargain. Taylor wanted to hug the other woman, but something told her not to.

“You probably thought you did something to make it stall,” Taylor said instead, “but trust me, you didn’t. So what did you do with it? I wouldn’t blame you if you just left it on the side of the road.” She saw by Jan’s expression that she had hit that nail squarely on the head. In a flash she understood why. What else could Jan have done? After all, giving her license to a police officer who would jot it down for his records would set up a whole new round of problems.

“That was the perfect solution,” Taylor said. “Now I can call my mechanic and tell him to get himself to wherever you left it and haul it into the shop so he can find out what’s really wrong with it. At least he knows what’s
not
wrong with it. That’s a start.”

“While I was out I bought a new cell phone, but I couldn’t use it to call you. It’s not activated yet. And there were no phone booths along the way. What happened to phone booths, anyway?”

Taylor thought that was a perfect example of how isolated Jan had been. She had missed so much. “How far did you have to walk?” she asked.

“I stalled on the other side of town. I wrote down the name of the intersection. I managed to roll the car to something like a parking spot on the roadside.”

“Good grief, you’ve been walking and walking. Miles and miles. You must be exhausted. Go sit. Please.”

Maddie came scooting in from the hallway. “I’m ready for Adam to look at my homework!”

“Why don’t you two do that at the table?” Taylor said. “Jan’s going to commandeer the sofa while I get her tea.”

“You don’t have to—”

Taylor put her hand on Jan’s arm. “Of course I do. Let me, okay? Go sit.”

Adam and Maddie were already on their way to the table when Jan hobbled over to the sofa. Taylor was struck by how cozy it was somehow. Adam helping Maddie. Taylor making tea for Jan. All of them here, in her house, acting as if they were important in each other’s lives instead of nearly strangers.

She and Maddie had lived alone for so long. For the most part she had shouldered the burdens of Maddie’s physical problems by herself. But now those problems were fading into the past, and her life was filling up with people, as if, for the first time, it was a perfectly ordinary life.

She wanted to hold on to the moment, to savor it. There was nothing special here. What could be more normal? So why did she feel so happy, so suddenly and completely blessed?

“I’ll take you to find your car once your mechanic’s on his way,” Adam said, turning to look over his shoulder, as if this had been an afterthought.

Taylor started to say no; then she wondered why. Adam wanted to help. She needed help. Wasn’t that the way the world worked?

“Great,” she said instead.

He smiled, not the kind, almost-gentle smile with which he’d favored Jan, but something warmer and more personal.

She smiled back.

* * *

Maddie had said the women were going out to dinner that night, and on the way to make sure her car was picked up, Taylor had mentioned going out with friends. Adam hadn’t been in the mood for surveillance, but he knew better than to let that stop him.

He also knew better than to use the SUV with Arizona tags. After he’d dropped her off at home, he rented another for a day and parked it on her street where he was least likely to be noticed. Somebody at the end of the block was having a party, and he took a spot between their house and Taylor’s. Then he waited.

About six-thirty a dark red Subaru Forester pulled into Taylor’s driveway, and the driver honked. When Taylor, Maddie and Jan emerged, the driver slid out, along with a girl who seemed older than Maddie, certainly taller. The women walked around the car, and the driver, a willowy young woman with masses of curly dark hair, was gesturing, as if she was pointing out features. He suspected she was giving a tour of what was probably a brand-new car, at least to her.

Tour over, the women piled in, and in a moment they pulled into the street and started in the opposite direction. He waited, then discreetly followed them.

He didn’t have far to go. They parked in front of an Italian restaurant on Merrimon Avenue and got out. He made note of the name and watched them go inside. Then when there was nothing else to see, he pulled up the restaurant website on his phone and clicked on the menu. The prices were moderate in a city where many restaurants catered to tourists and wealthy retirees.

The woman calling herself Jan Seaton certainly wasn’t tossing money around. She was sharing a house with a young family, wearing well-worn clothing, driving Taylor’s car, then walking a long distance home after it stalled. And now she was eating in a restaurant almost anyone could afford.

They would probably be here for most of an hour. That meant that if he wanted to, he could drive back to the house and let himself in through the back door. Taylor had told him she was beefing up security. Now would be the time to search. While he could.

Of course, breaking into her house was illegal and ill-advised. He might find the information he sought, but what could he do with it? At best he would know he was on the right track—something he was fairly certain of, anyway. At worst he might end up in jail.

Did he want easy answers? They might cut his stay in Asheville short, but probably not. He would still need to watch what happened next, where Jan Seaton went if she did, and what excuse she gave for leaving. Breaking in and going through her things wasn’t worth the risk.

It probably wasn’t worth the guilt he would feel as he did it, either. He was beginning to develop a theory about Ms. Seaton. It was time to explore the possibilities and see if he was right. In the meantime, he needed to be cautious. He wasn’t there to cause anybody harm.

Hoping he could meet that standard, Adam backed out of the parking lot and went to look for his own dinner. He wasn’t surprised he suddenly had a yearning for eggplant Parmesan.

Chapter 15

From the audio journal of a forty-five-year-old woman, taped for the files of Moving On, an underground highway for abused women.

The Abuser was kind during my pregnancy. I carried precious cargo and could do no wrong. These were the best days of our marriage. While he still managed my life, I was so tired and depleted from constant nausea that having a strong husband seemed like a blessing.

For once he was happy to eat simple meals, to ignore cushions out of place on the sofa and soap scum in the shower stall. At night he rubbed my aching back, and in the morning he brought me crackers and warm tea to help with morning sickness.

I began to believe the abuse had ended, until the day I told him I wanted to name our son after my father. Foolishly I didn’t back down the moment he refused.

That night I learned that the son growing inside me belonged to the Abuser, not to me.

I should have heeded the lesson and made my escape plan. I will go to my grave regretting that I didn’t.

* * *

Had she been forced to predict the immediate future, Harmony would not have envisioned sending Lottie to spend a whole afternoon with one of her grandmothers. Yet here she was, handing over the baby, along with all Lottie’s snacks, drinks, diapers and multiple changes of clothing, for just that event. This was normal family life, something she had never expected to experience, but Jan had asked, and Rilla had volunteered to do the transportation because she was going into Asheville anyway to visit a friend.

Since Nate had invited Harmony on a picnic in the afternoon, and because she hadn’t felt that introducing Lottie at this point in their dating life was wise, she’d accepted her mother’s offer. Afterward she would pick up Lottie at Taylor’s. By then she would have been away from home most of the day, with almost no chance that anyone would have tailed her on every step of her date. They had all agreed the scenario seemed safe. After all, Taylor was her friend, and friends visited.

“I’ve packed half of everything she owns,” Harmony told Rilla as she settled her daughter into the car seat newly installed in Rilla’s car. “She’ll be fine if there’s a blizzard or a heat wave, and I put in enough diapers that my mother can change her every five minutes and still have diapers to spare.”

She straightened and saw that Rilla was trying not to laugh. “Okay, so I’m overcompensating. This may be the most normal thing in the world to you, but to me it seems completely abnormal. I just never thought...” She shook her head.

“You said she’s good with Lottie?”

“Lottie loves her.”

“And Taylor and Maddie will be there to help?”

“She loves them, too.”

“And you also packed the stroller, the Pack ’n Play, about a zillion toys?”

Harmony hadn’t known what to pack, so she had packed almost everything. “And her bouncy chair. It’s kind of a long time, that’s all. A whole afternoon. Not like when Davis takes her. He’s usually back in an hour, two tops.”

“He does seem to be coming more often, though.”

As a matter of fact, almost once a week. The last two times Davis hadn’t brought anybody else along, either. No snooty girlfriend. No judgmental mother. Just him, along with silly gifts for his baby daughter.

So what if the stuffed giraffe took up an entire corner of Harmony’s tiny apartment? Lottie loved it.

“We’d better get.” Rilla closed the side door and made shooing motions. “You get ready for your picnic. When do you think you’ll pick up Lottie, so I can tell your mother?”

Harmony settled details, then thanked her friend. Finally as the car pulled away she started up to her apartment to shower and change.

Twenty minutes later she was on the road. The picnic was at a farm outside the city belonging to friends of Nate’s, and by the time she arrived, the driveway leading up to the house was crowded with cars.

Farm,
she decided as she parked toward the road, was wishful thinking. This was a farmette maybe, or more accurately suburbia on steroids, with neighboring houses within spitting distance and a vaguely barnlike shed set against a narrow strip of woods in the back. She found the description sort of touching. A starter farm, a practice farm, and she could tell at a glance that the owners were struggling to make good use of every inch. The house was small, but someone had built an expansive deck at the side, which was now crowded with people. Since everything was close together, she noted a substantial vegetable garden, a small orchard and a fenced-in area with a chicken coop.

She was almost to the house when Nate came around the side and waved. She was glad to see him, as much because she had dreaded asking strangers to help her find him as because she liked the guy. His khakis and sport shirt were spotless, and his smile was warm. He hugged her briefly and chastely, like the gentleman he was, before he took her hand and led her to meet their hosts, Karen and Jeff, who were maybe a decade older with two adorable towheaded daughters in matching polka-dot dresses. Karen’s dress was a grown-up version, with a sweater that looked hand knit. Jeff, just recently out of the army, held himself stiffly but smiled easily.

Duty done, they started toward the tables set up behind the house. Nate had already commandeered a spot for them with bottles of lemonade, bright blue plastic plates and tableware. On the way he introduced her to half a dozen people. Everybody seemed to know him; everybody seemed to like him.
She
liked him, but despite being outdoors, she was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

Everything was picture-perfect. The tables had matching cloths with hand-stenciled flags and
e pluribus unum
embroidered around the edges. The potted flowers were red, white and blue, although only the colors tied them together. Each pot was carefully unique, red geraniums in one with blue-and-white lobelia, cherry-red impatiens in another accented with blue ageratum and white petunias. The pots themselves had been decoupaged with black-and-white photos of presidents and men in uniform. Each was ringed with patriotic slogans in shiny gold script.

“Umm...” Harmony wasn’t quite sure what to say. “It looks like somebody spent a fortune decorating the place, Nate. It’s so...so...” She shrugged and turned up her palms, as if she couldn’t think of a phrase with enough superlatives.

“Knowing Karen, she got everything on clearance or rescued it from the side of the road. She’s known for that.”

“Known?”

“She has a blog for military wives, or that’s how it started, anyway. You know, how to make healthy meals on a budget, how to turn military housing into a real home. Now that Jeff’s been discharged, it’s mostly arts-and-crafts stuff for people who don’t have much money. Gardening with nursery throwaways, making tablecloths out of old sheets. Probably everything you see today has already been featured online. Her girls are getting to be as famous as cover models because of the patterns Karen designs and sews for them.”