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Chapter One

 

Heather Tucker struggled with her fears as the Greyhound bus cut through a night fog. She’d already seen enough at twenty-one and maybe that’s why she had such anxiety, especially about accidents. The Greyhound was large enough to afford good protection in an accident, wasn’t it? Maybe she could concentrate on the hum of the engines and catch some sleep.

Shutting her eyes, she imagined her husband Kyle opening the door to the apartment the next morning. The last thing she did before she ran away was bring in the trash burning barrel from the patio and make sure every inch of the hellhole was covered with ashes. They were his ashes; the ashes he had created when he stood on the patio weeks before and burned all of her piano books because she dared to venture out to the Army base music rooms at Fort Knox. A handsome young soldier had the audacity to sit next to her on the piano bench just before Kyle showed up.

How does he always know where I am, all the time?

Before she could blink, Kyle had her by the back of her neck and forced her outside and to the car, throwing her in for the most harrowing ride of her life. As soon as they left the base, he ramped the Camaro up to one-hundred miles per hour.

“Stop going so fast! You’re scaring me!”

“You should be scared because you’re going to die today! We’re both going to die because I’m crashing this damn car into the first solid tree I find, so you better pray to that God you believe in!”

There was nothing to do but pray.

 

She bundled her thin frame into a corner at the bus terminal to wait for the next bus and tried to remember loving this man. She’d been fourteen years old and the new girl in town when she met him. Her first boyfriend had dumped her over the Christmas holidays without so much as an explanation, and only then did she notice that Kyle had been showing up wherever she happened to be at school.

One day he found her in her favorite place, the school library, and he sat down across from her with a book that could have been upside down for all the attention he paid to it.

“So your name is Heather, right?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“The Christmas play. I like your voice. And you play piano very nicely.”

Turning the page of her book like she was really reading it, she said, “Thank you,” and pretended to be engrossed in it.

“Do you like basketball?” he asked.

“Not especially.”

“Oh,” he said and looked down.

He was tall and lean enough to play basketball but she would think his hair was a little long for the basketball team look. Maybe she had insulted him, and that wasn’t her intent.

“Do you play?”

“Oh, no, not any more. I have a job after school so I can’t play. But I go to the games every chance I get. Football, basketball, baseball, all of them.”

“I’m in the band—”

“I know.” He answered too quick and blushed when she gazed at him full on instead of pretending to read.

He was already invested in her life, and she hadn’t realized it until that moment. She was a freshman and he was a junior with a job and a car, and a strong interest in her. She lapped up the attention like a Labrador in a water bowl after a run in the Florida heat.

 

The second bus picked up over an hour past the first dumping in this dingy terminal that made her skin crawl, and she was finally heading south again, clinging to a large canvas bag full of clothes and personal items she couldn’t afford to lose. She wouldn’t even try to sleep. A jumbo diet coke helped her keep that resolution, but didn’t keep her out of the cramped and smelly restroom on the bus. It was a tradeoff she could live with.

Her father was supposed to pick her up at the Fort Myers bus station, and all she could hope for was a ride home without an “I told you so” lecture. Yes, she married too young, but she put everything she had into the marriage and got nothing except bruises that would heal and heart-wounds that wouldn’t.

The Army hadn’t helped her husband be a better man. Sometimes she thought they had helped to create the monster that he was now. Kyle would come home from his field exercises to find an empty apartment filled with ashes. It was the perfect symbol of the state of their marriage. She had saved enough money to ship a few things home while he was gone. A dollar here and there left over from groceries, a few quarters over time from the Laundromat because she overstuffed the loads, and the money from her pawned wedding rings. There wasn’t much left, because Kyle always destroyed her things when he was angry. His possessions didn’t seem as handy when he wanted something to throw at her. Heather flinched when she imagined how furious he would be that his favorite punching bag got away.

She’d feel safe at her father’s house but she couldn’t stay there for long. Trading safety at the expense of her self-esteem was a bargain she could deal with for a short time. Dick Ireland’s six foot five commanding presence and the fact that he collected guns—working guns, not just replicas—would keep Kyle at bay. But would she have to dodge flying objects again as she had as a child? Or would it just be the slings and arrows in his words directed at her that she carried around like a fifty pound weight?

 

After a zero fanfare welcome, her father spoke. “Get your bags.”

“This is all I have,” she responded, dragging the canvas bag to the car trunk.

His jaw set and his steel blue eyes squinted as he rubbed his bald head. She had always wanted to ask if he thought that brought him luck, but he was the only one allowed the luxury of sarcasm in his house. The others had to toe the line. She’d survived her childhood by spending most of her time in her room with headphones on and a book in her hand. The headphones still let in some of his outbursts directed at her mother. She was too small to protect anyone.

That fact didn’t save her from the helpless feeling she internalized for the rest of her time spent under his roof.

 

He snapped her back to the present. “Let’s go then.”

Of course she would obey. He was always right and she was always wrong. Her whole life. She was looking at the reason she married Kyle and stayed with him. Because I am used to this.

The half hour ride home in her father’s car grew quiet. Feigning sleep did the trick, and then she did fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion. When the car stopped, she roused herself just enough to get out and stumble to her old room. Thank God Mrs. Ireland had saved the bed even after she turned it into a sewing room.

Heather was awakened by the shrill phone ring. Glancing at the alarm clock, she realized that she had slept five hours. It wasn’t enough—she wanted to sleep forever and forget reality—so she closed her eyes. Gentle knocking caused her to open her eyes again and groan some kind of acknowledgement. Her mother spoke softly through the door.

“Kyle is on the phone, Heather.”

“I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Well, what do I tell him?”

How about “Go to hell”? One day she’d be able to talk to her mother like that, but not today. “Tell him not to call here anymore, because I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Can you tell him that yourself?” her mother asked, her voice trembling.

God, I can’t become like my mother. I am not my mother. Help me to be strong.

“Just hang up the phone, then.”

“He’ll just call back. He’s been calling all morning.”

Heather realized she was shaking, but she had to resist her fears. Do it scared. That’s what she would tell herself from now on. She sat up in bed, swung her feet to the floor, and put one foot in front of the other until she stood in front of the nuisance phone. Picking up the receiver, she pictured Kyle on the other end, thinking that he had the upper hand and that he could get her back yet again. What would this make? The eighth time she had left him? She wasn’t going back.

The other times he hit her, he had been drunk or high. The last time, he was stone-cold sober. It wasn’t the substance abuse; it was him.

She gripped the receiver tighter as the memory of their last counseling session played in her mind. The chaplain looked her straight in the eye with Kyle present and said, "Get out now and never come back. He’s going to kill you if you don’t.”

Heather still didn’t leave right away. Kyle made sure she couldn’t.

But now, with the phone in her hand, she had the power. While her cowering mother looking on, she ripped the phone cord out of the wall.