The Dark Light of Day (28 page)

The empty space in my life Jake once occupied would’ve only been made even bigger if he stayed.

I skipped the customary cake and coffee they were serving in the
meeting room after the funeral. Tess, Georgia’s babysitter and my
assistant at the garage had to get back to the shop to process a new shipment of parts, and I wasn’t about to expose Georgia to the wicked ton for the rest of the afternoon. I’d told her if she was good
at church I would take her over to the new playground at the elementary school.

That’s exactly what we did.

Tess had been a godsend since she moved to town from
Gainesville. She happily took Georgia at every chance she got so she could spend time with her, which allowed me more time to work on my photos.

It was nice having a friend around again. Someone I could trust with my daughter, anyway.

I lifted my squirming little girl from her car seat and set her on
the grass, her little legs moving at full speed before I even had a chance to put her on the ground. “Be careful, Georgia!” I shouted after her
as she made her way to the swings and pulled herself up on the
lowest
hanging one. She held onto the chains and kicked and kicked her
legs, but the swing didn’t move.

She was going nowhere fast.

The playground was crowded with children and their families. I worked my way through a sea of running and screaming little folk. I ducked under a stray soccer ball whizzing by my head. It took me twice as long to reach the swings as it took Georgia.

When I reached her, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Bethany Fletcher, Owen’s mother, was pushing Georgia on her swing. Georgia was squealing with glee. “
Higher...higher!
” she
shouted.

“Not too high,” I said, making my presence known.

Bethany gave me a courteous nod. “Hello, Abby.” Her smile slid
into a straight line. Bethany wore a light beige suit jacket with a
white
blouse and a matching knee length flowing skirt. Her signature
bright
red lips were no more. Now, they were just glossed over, neutral.
Her
once-severe bun had been replaced by soft dark waves falling
around her face and shoulders.

She looked almost human.

“What can I do for you, Bethany?” I asked. I kept my tone even. I didn’t need her using the anger or anxiety I felt in her presence against me.

Before she could answer me, Georgia interrupted. “Mama, the nice lady pushed me on the swing!”

“That’s great, baby!” That girl could make me smile through a plane crash. “Why don’t you try out the new slide, okay? Mama will watch you.”

“Okay!” She squealed. Bethany held the chains on her swing still so Georgia could jump off. She took off running toward her next adventure on the shiny red slide.

“Can we talk?” Bethany asked. She sounded hopeful and even a
bit kind, nothing at all like the Bethany who’d ordered my beating
four years earlier. Her voice was calm. There was no hatred radiating off of her. I’d only seen her in passing since the day she dropped all the major charges against me. Only the marijuana possession charge had been kept. I paid a three-hundred dollar fine and served six months
probation for that one. She could have easily dropped all the
charges,
but keeping one was her way of letting me know who pulled the
strings in Coral Pines.

I was all too aware.

I sighed and took a seat on the bench facing the jungle gym. If Bethany wanted to talk, Bethany was going to talk. My saying
yes
or
no
had never made a difference to her before.

She took a seat next to me. “I’ve been wanting to tell you
something for years now, and have never had the opportunity, and really didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t want to reach out because I didn’t want to scare you away.” She wrung her hands in her lap and
nervously continued, shifting her focus from her feet to where
Georgia
was playing. “It’s just…I’m so tired.” She took a deep sigh and finally turned to look me in the eye. “I’m so tired, Abby... of
everything.” Her bright green eyes that used to stare daggers into my own, were now softer and watery.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been cleaning up messes my entire life. Sweeping things
under the rug, justifying horrible behavior on a regular basis. Not just in my practice, but in my life, in my own family. Had I known you were pregnant, I would have tried to stop that, too.”

I had thought of that, and it was the reason I’d hid my
pregnancy for as long as I possibly could. Nobody knew until Georgia was already here.

I didn’t even list Georgia’s father’s name on the birth certificate.

“So, I’m done now. I’m not doing it anymore and haven’t for a
long time,” she announced, like it was something she’d been
thinking
about for a while. “I know you could never forgive Owen, and I
don’t
blame you. I can’t forgive him, either. Our relationship hasn’t been the same since this happened if that makes things any better.” She
looked up from her hands at my raised eyebrows, realizing how weak that sounded. “Of course it doesn’t.”

“What did you really come here for, Bethany?” Avoiding one
another for four years had been downright peaceful.

“I know I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve anything after the way I treated you, and you should know that I am so, so sorry for that, too. I don’t even recognize the person I am anymore, and it makes me sick to think of all the things I did to hurt people back then, what I did to hurt you.” She shook her head as if she was shaking the bad memories from her brain. “I want to get to know Georgia,” she said. “I’m willing to work for it, to gain your trust. I know you’ve never come right out and said who her father is, but I saw her with her babysitter in the grocery last week and got a really good look at her. She’s got those green Fletcher eyes, although they are a little brighter than everyone else’s.” She cleared her throat. “I would really like a chance to get to know her.”

I was shocked to hear that she wanted anything to do with Georgia, and my instinct to fight her off from four years ago bubbled at the surface.

Bethany did look tired though... hurt, even. The harshness of
four
years ago was gone and in her place was a woman whose sharp
edges had been softened and rounded down with time.

Shortly after the secret was out that I had given birth, Owen had come to the apartment demanding to see
his
daughter.

I‘d slammed the door in his face and called over to Frank’s office
in the adjoining shop. Thankfully, I’d caught him in a run of
sobriety, and he was in that day. Within seconds, I’d heard a scuffle outside,
and then a car pulling out of the gravel lot. Frank didn’t come over
to check in on me afterwards, he waited until he was back in his office before calling me on the phone to let me know the problem had been taken care of.

The morning after, there was a note from Frank on my desk
about a
new alarm system being installed in the apartment that very
afternoon, and a loaded .22 on my keyboard.

Owen never bothered me again, but with my .22 at the ready, I kinda wished he had.

“You want to bring my daughter around Owen?” I asked
Bethany. I tried to rein in the panic in my voice, but I know she’d heard it.

“No, no. It would just be me,” Bethany assured me. “I haven’t
told anyone about this—not even my husband. I’m not asking to
take her anywhere, either. Maybe, we could meet up at the park, just like
this, and I could play with her a little...get to know her.” She looked
like a woman who was desperate to form a relationship with someone—one that didn’t take everything she had to keep it from falling apart.

Bethany let out a long held sigh. “You know, I tried to have him put away, but Owen’s father wouldn’t have anything to do with the idea. Instead, I had Cole lock him in a cell for a few days to calm him
down after he’d had a fit. That’s what we called his behavior,
anyway. I
started recognizing the similarities between my son and my
husband. Jamie’s never been a gentle man.” Bethany’s eyes glazed over. “He is very much like my son. I think he’s just better at covering his tracks.” She crossed and uncrossed her legs.

I couldn’t figure out why she was telling me any of this.

“If I had to pinpoint a time when it all started to go wrong, I would say it was when Mason died.”

“Mason? Mason Dunn?” I asked.

What did Jakes’ brother have to do with the Fletchers?

“Yes. They grew up together, practically shared a crib. Marlena
was my oldest and dearest friend. I think when both Mason and
Marlena died, Owen started to lash out. He blamed everyone and anyone for Mason’s death, especially his brother Jake.”

“Why?” I asked. “It was an accident.”

“Yes, well. Jake was supposed to be with Mason that morning,
but he was still a teenager and probably didn’t want to be on a boat in the middle of the river at five a.m. on a Sunday. So in typical teenage
fashion, he didn’t show up at the docks. Mason went out alone.
Nobody knows what happened to capsize the boat. The waters were due to be rough, but nothing more than usual. Owen just assumes if
Jake had been there with him, then maybe Mason would still be
alive.”

“Or they both could’ve died,” I said. At least now, I knew why Owen and Jake had hated each other from the very beginning. That hatred hadn’t started with me. I’d just added to it.

“I know that. But Owen couldn’t see it that way. I felt so
helpless,
he was hurting so much. Instead of getting him help to work
through it, I justified his behavior. I enabled him. Instead of making him realize he was wrong, I made excuses.” She gave me a sad smile. “I helped to make him what he is.”

“Has he hurt anyone since me?” It was something I wondered
about almost every day.

When she nodded, I almost fell off the bench. I clutched my
stomach.
“The Preston girl. Stacy, I think her name was. Owen gave her a
black eye and roughed her up a bit. We also think he might have sunk the Prestons’ shrimp boat, but he denies it, and they have no proof.” She wiped her palms on her skirt. “Nothing compared to what he did to you, though.”

No. Nothing did.

She cleared her throat. “I know this doesn’t mean shit to you, Abby, but I think you are doing a great job as a mom, a much better job than I ever did.” Bethany's eyes had started to glaze over. Was
hell freezing over, or was Bethany Fletcher—formerly Satan’s right
hand
man—actually about to cry? And in front of me, no less. “Is Owen
her
father, Abby? I mean, I know you were living with Jake for a
while…”

It was time to tell someone about it.

I would never have dreamed in a million years it would be
Bethany Fletcher. But, she happened to be the one who was asking.

“When I first found out I was pregnant, I was sure she was
Owen’s,
but then she was born with bright blue eyes, and I thought for a
second
there was a chance…” I shook my head and laughed. “I was so
young. I didn’t know most babies born with blue eyes change color over time.
One day I was staring at my six month-old baby girl and her eyes
were
as green as the freaking Emerald City. That’s when I gave up all
hope that she was Jake’s.” It was difficult to admit out loud.

“Oh, Abby,” Bethany said. “That must have been hard for you.”

I nodded. “It still is.”

“Will you at least think about letting me get to know my grand-daughter, about giving me a chance?”

“I can’t promise you a yes or a no, but I can promise you I’ll
think about it,” I said. Bethany may have been ready to let go of the person she was, but I couldn’t forget so easily. That person caused me too
much pain to be given a do-over and a free pass to form a
relationship with my daughter.

“That’s all I’m asking.” She got off the bench to leave. “Thank
you.”
It was said so softly I could barely hear her over the parents calling
to their children from the benches next to us. “Thank you,” she
repeated and walked away.

Had I just agreed to think about letting the most evil woman I’ve ever known have a relationship with my daughter simply because she no longer looked like the devil and had spewed some sincere-sounding words?

Apparently, I had.

I sighed and looked over at Georgia, who was showing a little
brown haired boy how to position his feet in front of him before
sliding down the shiny new slide. “Hey Bethany?”

“Yes?” She turned around, her cheeks flushed red.

“You know what Owen did to me. You know how badly he hurt me. But what you haven’t said is
how
you know.”

Her face paled. “Abby…” She started, her voice shaky and
unsure. “Owen was in terrible shape afterwards.” He wasn’t the only one.
“He drove two towns over and called Cole. Cole called me. I’m so
sorry.”
She shook her head. “I helped Cole bring you home that night.”
Tears streamed down her face.

And then she was gone.

I TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT BETHANY
and her request
from that night, or her revelation that she had more to do with covering up Owen’s sick behavior than I had initially thought. But, I did tell her I would think about letting her get to know Georgia, and I meant it. I wouldn’t do it right away. I had other issues on my mind.