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Janine looked up and saw her. “Need help?”
“No, you take this one. I’ll get mine.”
“Lottie’s okay in the bouncer while we drink it?”
“She’ll let us know if she’s not.” Harmony went back for the second cup, then joined her mother on the sofa. Before she sat back, she sprinkled Cheerios on the bouncer tray so Lottie could practice feeding herself.
“Just the way I like it,” Janine said, joining her against the cushions and turning so she could eye her daughter. “You didn’t forget.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything, Mom. I missed you so much.”
“I thought about you every day, but I...” Janine sipped a little tea before she finished. “The only thing I could be proud of was helping you get away.”
“Please tell me what happened. You said you were planning to leave yourself, only not so soon?”
Janine sipped and didn’t answer. Harmony hoped she was figuring out how to tell her story.
Finally she put the mug down on a side table. “I wanted to leave for years. Now it seems like forever, only that’s not true. There was a time...”
“When you...loved him?” Harmony had trouble getting the words out.
“I did. Even despite, well, everything.”
Harmony waited for her to go on, but Janine changed tack. “Then a time came when I knew if I stayed, he...” She shrugged.
“He would kill you.” It wasn’t a question.
Janine gave a short nod. “But it wasn’t just that. I realized I was shrinking. Literally. Because I was always hunched over, trying to protect myself. In other ways, too. Nobody knew me anymore. After you left, for a while your father got more and more possessive and paranoid.”
“I didn’t know he could get more of either.”
“It seemed to multiply every week. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without him, not pick up a library book or a quart of milk. My set of car keys went missing one day, and I never saw them again. And even leaving the house with him was rare. Strangers looked right through me when I did, like I wasn’t there.”
Harmony’s throat was raspy from unshed tears. “Nobody who ever really knew you would have looked through you.”
“I’m afraid your father made sure nobody had that chance.”
“You said you had to have a plan?”
“Women like me are most likely to die after they try to leave the men who abuse them.”
“I know it’s not perfect, but wouldn’t the police have protected you?”
Janine gave one emphatic shake of her head.
Harmony didn’t know why she’d asked. She’d seen too many stories herself about abused women who had been killed on the way to the courthouse to get restraining orders, or even inside the courthouse itself.
Janine said the rest in a rush, with more energy than she’d shown to this point. “One day I realized I could barely get out of bed in the mornings, that even being afraid of what he might do if the house wasn’t clean enough or the dinner perfect enough didn’t motivate me anymore. I knew I had to do something or else. The agency was having its New Year’s open house, and it was one of the few things your father still expected me to attend. It would have looked bad for him if I didn’t go. I met a woman there. She...she suspected. She told me to call her the first moment I could.”
“And she helped?”
“She knew how.” Janine didn’t go on.
“She’d done this before?”
“It took a while...to trust her. You can understand. I was putting my life in her hands. We decided on steps to follow. I was supposed to obey your father’s orders and act like whatever he told me was just meant to protect me from a cold, cruel world. To pretend I didn’t want to go out, that I was afraid of my own shadow, that I needed his guidance. Little by little.”
Harmony tried to remember how her mother had behaved when she was still living at home. Janine had made a point of not arguing with Rex, true, but sometimes she had found clever ways around his edicts. And despite everything she had still smiled, still laughed, still shown a certain joy in living that he hadn’t been able to extinguish.
There had been moments, days, even weeks, when their lives hadn’t seemed that much different from those of other families. Janine had known how to diffuse her father’s anger. Or make herself the brunt of it. But she had been actively involved in life. The spark inside her had never been extinguished.
“Did he go for it?” Harmony asked.
“It seemed to be working. He was still violent, erratic, but after a while he...well, he was different. I made mistakes and he didn’t always notice. At first I thought he believed I’d changed, that I had finally become the wife he wanted, and he was cutting me some slack. Then I realized he just didn’t seem to care that much. I wondered if he had figured out my acceptance of our life together was a lie, and he was just waiting for me to prove it.”
“Do you still think he knew?”
“No, I don’t.” Janine bit her lip. “Because if he had figured out I was going to leave him...” She didn’t have to finish.
“Then what? Frustrations at work, maybe? Something else going on?”
Janine turned both palms up, as if to say Who knows?
Harmony thought this replay of the past had gone as far as it could. What her father felt about anything, or what had gone on in his life outside the home, was of no interest to her. Rex Stoddard might think he was the center of the universe, but that wasn’t a universe she wanted to inhabit again. She changed direction. “Before, when we were outside, you said he didn’t come home the night of the fire. But you don’t know where he was?”
“It had happened before, some kind of game he played for years, leaving town without notice. He had all kinds of ways of checking on me while he was gone. Sometimes he would line up repair men to conduct roof inspections or clean out our septic tank. Then they were required to report what they found by phone immediately. The first question Rex always asked was ‘And my wife was there to show you around?’ I heard their answers, so I knew.”
“I never realized.”
“Sometimes he was watching the house, testing me. Sometimes he was really out of town, but he didn’t tell me ahead of time in case I used the opportunity to leave. This time I don’t know what happened. But I knew I might not get a chance like it again. And even if I wasn’t prepared completely?” She swallowed hard, audibly, as if the fear was still there waiting to choke her. “I was ready enough,” she finished.
“What about the fire? Did you set it to make escaping easier?”
Janine looked shocked. “Oh, no.”
“Then what happened?”
“It was stupid. Impulsive. As I was leaving, I burned all the photos on the downstairs table. I took them out of their frames, and I burned them. Whenever he finally came home, I wanted him to know how I really felt about our life together.”
Harmony stared at her. “Wow, he loved those photos.”
“You called that table the zoo, remember? You said we were like caged animals on display.”
Harmony did remember. She had despised every attempt to portray them as the all-American family. The photos in the entryway. The four of them sharing hymnals in the same pew every Sunday. Cheering together from the bleachers the year Buddy had been a linebacker on the high school football team.
Then going home together after the team lost and listening to her father criticize every play her brother had made.
“How did the fire start if you didn’t start it on purpose?”
“I can only guess. I’d left earlier and was already at the edge of the woods when I remembered Buddy’s scrapbook. I went back, and on the way to the stairs I saw those photos and...I just snapped. I burned them in your father’s favorite ashtray.”
Harmony remembered talking to friends at school whose parents smoked. She had been the only one who’d wished her father would smoke more and suffer the consequences.
“I went upstairs,” Janine continued, “but it took me some time to find the scrapbook. When I came out of Buddy’s room, the stairs were on fire. Your father took up the runner just a few weeks ago and refinished the steps by himself. The house still smelled like varnish. Maybe whatever he used?” She shrugged.
“But how did you get past the fire?”
“I was wearing my heavy coat because I knew I might need it later. I took it off and used it to beat back the flames so I could make it outside before the whole place went up. Then I didn’t look back. I was gone, really gone, well before the tank exploded.”
“Nobody saw the fire? Nobody reported it?”
“It was the middle of the night, and you know how far away the neighbors are. I don’t think anyone realized the house was on fire until the explosion. Then probably everyone within twenty miles knew.”
Lottie, tired of bouncing and ready for dinner, finally began to whimper. Harmony went into the kitchen to retrieve cereal and organic pears she had prepared that morning—which now seemed like years ago. By the time she returned, Janine had lifted the baby out of her chair and was walking the length of the small living room, murmuring softly.
“She likes you,” Harmony said. “She’s going to love having you here.”
“I can’t stay. I wouldn’t have come at all, but I was afraid you might hear about the fire and be absolutely beside yourself.”
“You could have called.”
“No, I thought you needed to see me, to be sure it wasn’t some sort of hoax.”
“I think you needed to see us.”
Janine fell silent.
“Dad hasn’t traced me here yet,” Harmony said. “And I’ve been gone for years.”
“Your dad never had as much motivation as he does now. Now he’s going to be looking for both of us, and looking hard.”
“That’s part of why you didn’t leave before, isn’t it? Because you were afraid he would double his efforts to search for me as a way to find you.”
Janine didn’t deny it. “He will. Which is why I have to leave in the morning.” She seemed to hesitate; then, as she handed Lottie to Harmony, her voice grew softer.
“He’ll think I’ve traveled west.”
“West? Why?”
“That was part of the plan. Things were in place.”
“You mean that’s what you planned? To go west?”
“No, but he’ll think that’s what I did.”
Harmony settled Lottie in her high chair and pulled a chair up beside her. She gave the baby a plastic spoon to play with as she fed her because she was in no mood to let Lottie fling food all over the living room.
The details of Janine’s escape niggled at her, but compared to her mother’s future, the past seemed unimportant.
“If he has good reason to think you’ve gone west, then you can stay here. Has he ever said anything to make you think he knows I’m in North Carolina?”
“It’s no good, honey. I can’t risk it. If he does find you, God forbid, I don’t think he’ll hurt you if I’m not with you. You’re settled here. He knows you have friends who could come forward to protect you. If he shows up you can even tell him the truth, that I was here but I wouldn’t tell you where I was headed. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it—”
“It’s not going to come to that, because you’re going to stay with me in Asheville. Or if you absolutely refuse, then I’m going with you. Wherever you go.”
“You can’t. The only good thing about you leaving home was that I didn’t have to be afraid for both of us anymore. I can’t live that way again, being afraid all the time that he’ll show up one day and harm us both, and maybe the baby, too.”
“Does he know about the baby?”
“He’s never said anything.”
Harmony thought that answer was as good as a no, because when her father was angry, everything came out. If he’d learned about Lottie, he would have flung the baby’s birth at her mother and blamed her for not raising Harmony to be chaste.
“This is North Carolina. Rex Stoddard has no friends here, no link to the community. We’ll talk to the sheriff and ask how we can best protect ourselves.”
“We might as well call your dad and give him our address. We can’t involve the authorities. They keep records. Records can be located.” Janine came to stand beside her daughter. “That’s what I mean, honey. Those kinds of slipups are too common when more than one person is involved.”
Harmony fed Lottie another spoonful of cereal, then swiveled to face her mother. “Hasn’t he run your life long enough? Are we going to spend the rest of our days letting Rex Stoddard make all our decisions? I’m kind of out of the habit, and frankly, I’m a lot happier. Even if I know he’s still a threat, I’m willing to take my chances.”
Janine’s exhaustion was showing, her mouth drooping, her eyes puffy. “I would give almost anything to change things, but not your safety.”
Harmony could feel her mother slipping away again, and she wasn’t willing to let her. “Then you and Lottie and I will take new names, get new documents. Somebody will help with that. We’ll move to a big city where everybody’s anonymous. You can take care of her while I work.”
“No, you aren’t going to give this up.” Janine lifted a hand to indicate everything around them. “I won’t allow that. There are ways we can stay in touch. Then, after time passes, maybe if things have improved or changed significantly, we can see each other again. Find a place to meet and plan carefully.”
“You’re just going to disappear, aren’t you? Like that.” Harmony snapped her fingers. “And you think that will make things okay? That now I won’t be worried every minute? That I won’t lose sleep at night picturing you just a step ahead of him? Or dead by his hand and me not knowing?”
“Honey, I—”
“No! You didn’t think this through. You’re back in my life, and no matter what you do or where you go, you can’t change what you’ve already done.” She handed a piece of whole wheat toast to Lottie and stood. “I knew what you were facing before. Do you think I ever forgot for one moment what you were going through every day back in Topeka? But I thought it was your choice, that you just didn’t have the strength to get out or maybe even the desire. Now I know you do.”
“I can’t stay here. You don’t have enough room. I know you don’t make enough money to support us both, and what hope do I have of finding a job way out here? You don’t need me for child care. I think you’ve managed that just fine. I have no place here, and it’s dangerous.”
“We’ll find a way.” Harmony nodded as she spoke. “Just tell me you’re willing to stop running. That we can stand together now, the way we used to. Tell me the mother I love, the one who raised me to be strong despite everything going on around me, is still in there. The mother who accidentally set our house on fire and still managed to escape. The one who traced me here and came to make sure I knew she was okay.”
“Honey—”
Harmony wouldn’t let her finish. She rested her arms on her mother’s shoulders. “Tell me that mother’s going to stay here and start a whole new life. You can change your name and the color of your hair, but please don’t let that mother escape again. Promise me you won’t.”
Chapter 6
Taylor Martin braked in the driveway of the Reynolds Farm and wished she could turn the car around and take Maddie home, where her daughter could pout and complain out of earshot. She was fairly certain that not having an audience wouldn’t actually stop Maddie—there was always a girlfriend at the end of the phone line to sympathize—but better a prepubescent peer than Taylor herself.
Instead, because Harmony was waiting for them, she came to a stop and waited for the girl to fall silent. She reminded herself that for most of Maddie’s existence, Taylor had only hoped for a normal life for her child, a life in which every move, every decision, wasn’t factored through the reality of epileptic seizures.
Now, following surgery that had transformed Maddie’s future, she had her wish. These days every move, every decision was instead factored through the normal reality of approaching adolescence. And at eleven, this was just the beginning.
“Are we finished?” she asked when the only remaining sound was the twilight serenade of crickets in the woods nearby and, from closer to the house, the grouchy bleating of a goat.
“We weren’t talking. I was talking, and you weren’t listening.”
“You’re wrong. I heard every word you said. I am not going to leave you at home alone in the evenings when your grandfather can’t stay with you. You are only eleven, and now that we’ve moved, we don’t know our neighbors well enough to ask them to intervene in an emergency. For now, you’re going to have to buck up and go to meetings and classes with me.”
“You don’t trust me.”
Taylor turned to face her daughter’s profile. “Are you going to spoil our fun tonight? Harmony doesn’t get many chances to get away without Lottie. I think she’s looking forward to having dinner together and watching a movie. I hope she won’t regret going with us.”
Maddie said something that wasn’t audible, which was probably a good thing. Then she muttered louder, “Can I have a hamburger? I eat them in Tennessee.”
Taylor tried not to smile. She had raised her daughter to be a vegetarian. Harmony was a vegetarian. Of course eating meat in front of them would be Maddie’s revenge.
“You can have anything you want. You know that. As long as you have vegetables with it.”
“French fries are a vegetable.”
“Healthy vegetables,” Taylor amended. “I know you eat meat when you’re at your father’s house, but he tells me he’s also big on salads and cooked veggies, and he limits fried foods to special treats.”
“I liked it better when the two of you weren’t speaking.”
Actually Maddie hadn’t liked that at all, since the discord between Jeremy Larsen and Taylor had been tough on everybody. But now that her parents were on better terms, it was easier for them to present a united front, along with Jeremy’s wife, Willow, who was an excellent stepmother and followed their lead.
“You could probably stay here and help Rilla with Lottie and the boys,” Taylor said. “I could pick you up again when I drop off Harmony tonight.”
“It’s kind of weird that you two are friends now.”
“Why? We’re both goddesses. We see each other a lot.”
Taylor and Harmony were both trustees of a house in the mountains near Asheville that had been left to a small group of women by Charlotte Hale, Taylor’s mother. Because Charlotte had particularly loved the story of Kuan Yin, a Buddhist goddess who had remained on earth anonymously after death to continue helping those who suffered, they had taken the name Goddesses Anonymous for their little group. Together they tried in whatever ways they could to follow the example of Kuan Yin and help other women who might need them.
Not that any of them really thought they lived up to Kuan Yin’s standard.
“Well, I think it’s weird because Harmony was friends with Grandma when you weren’t even speaking to her. You’re like...rivals.”
Taylor wondered why this had never come up before. She wondered if Maddie and her close friend Edna, daughter of Samantha, another of the goddesses, had been discussing it.
“Life is complicated,” Taylor said, and without looking she could imagine Maddie’s eyes rolling. “Here’s what you need to learn from everything that happened with Mom and me. We loved each other, but we let our differences get in the way. I held a grudge for years, almost to the end of her life, and I was wrong to do that. Very wrong. Your grandmother wanted badly for us to be close again, and when she couldn’t make that happen she kind of adopted Harmony, who needed her.”
“And you don’t feel jealous?”
Taylor did look at Maddie now and saw that she was actually engaged in the conversation, interested. Her brown hair fell around her earnest little face. “I don’t. I feel humbled.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I wish I could do something for Harmony to pay her back for what she did for Mom, Maddie. Because she really helped your grandmother feel like she had a reason to live and a place in the world, something I didn’t do until it was almost too late.”
“But she died, anyway.”
“Yeah, she did. But she died knowing she’d made a difference. And thanks to Harmony, who helped me see what a mistake I was making, your grandmother died knowing how much I loved her, despite everything. And she got to spend time with you, which meant everything to her.”
“That is complicated.”
“Tell me about it.” Taylor started the car again and shifted into drive. “So no, I’m not jealous. Harmony was like a bridge where your grandmother and I could meet after too many years apart. She probably doesn’t realize how much she did for us both.”
“Why did Harmony need Grandma? Doesn’t she have family?”
Taylor knew that was Harmony’s story to tell and not hers. “She couldn’t be with them. I think there are problems there.”
“The kind you had with Grandma?”
“I don’t know the whole story.”
“And now that Grandma’s gone, Harmony’s all alone?” Maddie paused and thought that through. “No, I guess she has lots of people. All the goddesses, for sure.”
“So let’s go feed her and take her to a movie. What do you say?”
“That’s pretty lame after all she did for us.” Now Maddie sounded bored.
Taylor knew their moment of communication had ended. These days her daughter was as difficult to predict as the autumn weather, and often as stormy.
“It’s a start,” she said as she drove toward the house.
Taylor had expected to meet Harmony at the Reynoldses’ house, since that was where Lottie was supposed to spend the evening, but when they pulled into the farmyard she saw that all the lights were on in the garage apartment where Harmony lived.
“I guess she’s at her own place,” she said, and parked near the base of the stairs. “She’s probably getting Lottie’s things for Rilla.”
Outside the car Taylor took a moment to stretch. She was physically active, too active sometimes, and late this afternoon before enticing Maddie into the car she had taught a ninety-minute hot yoga class in a 105-degree studio. While she had carefully hydrated before and after, she realized she was still thirsty. On top of a full morning of consulting with the contractors who were turning an old building in the River Arts District into Evolution, a brand-new health and wellness studio, she was dragging.
“I would like living in the country,” Maddie said. “Daddy and Willow do. It’s so peaceful there, and nobody bothers you.”
Taylor lifted her hair off the back of her neck and wondered if she ought to cut it boy-short again if she was going to work this hard. “Nobody bothers us at home in Asheville, either.”
“But you could leave me alone in the country and not worry.”
“Get over it, kiddo. I wouldn’t leave you alone anywhere. Let’s go get Harmony.” Taylor started toward the steps, but the grumbling Maddie didn’t follow. Velvet, Harmony’s golden retriever and the mother of their own dog, Vanilla, came around the corner, and Maddie squatted to pet her.
“We’ll be down in a few minutes,” Taylor told her, and escaped.
Upstairs on the tiny porch she heard women’s voices from inside the apartment. Assuming that Rilla was helping Harmony get Lottie ready, she waited, but when Harmony opened the door and Taylor saw an older woman who strongly resembled her friend, she wondered if she had been wrong about their plans for the night.
“Taylor...” Harmony looked surprised, too; then she shook her head. “It’s later than I thought. I lost track of the time.” She hesitated, then stepped aside and let Taylor in.
“If something came up we can go another evening.” Taylor smiled at Harmony’s visitor, who was holding Lottie. Then before she could stop herself she asked, “You look familiar. Have we met?”
“I’m Jan,” the woman said, and returned Taylor’s smile with a strained one of her own.
Harmony was looking back and forth between the two women, as if she was trying to decide what to say. Finally she shrugged. “Mom, Taylor isn’t going to tell anybody you were here. You don’t have to worry.”