Jared was just starting to doze off when Shelby’s phone rang.
She reached over and looked at the screen, then sat up quick and turned the light on. “Billy? What’s going on?”
He thought back and remembered she had a brother by that name. He didn’t have his hearing aid in and she was on his left so he couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of her phone. He turned and looked at her, then heard her brother’s voice, muffled but loud. Shelby was pale and sitting still, not saying a word, then finally said, “I’ll get back to you. I’m going to try to get there if I can. I’ll let you know.”
“Is everything okay?” he asked when she set her phone down on the bed.
“It’s my mother. Last week Billy called to say they thought she had a heart attack, but the hospital ended up releasing her a day later after tests were inconclusive. My brother Rodney just called Billy to say that they rushed my mother to the hospital again. She passed out in the kitchen after clutching her chest. I don’t know much more.”
“You can’t call your father?”
“He won’t talk to me. Won’t even answer my call. Billy is only a town away from them and my father didn’t bother to tell him either. We’d never know anything if one of our siblings in the house didn’t tell us. Even then, only Rodney seems to reach out.”
“Why? I don’t understand. Don’t you think it’s time you tell me about your family? You’ve said before that Ethan was a way to escape for you. What aren’t you saying?”
“It’s so hard to talk about. I’ve never said much to anyone, though it wasn’t that big of a secret back home. Not in our small community. Most knew and no one stepped in. Everyone minded their own business and looked the other way.”
He wasn’t sure he liked the way she was looking right now. Or shaking. He pulled her down and against him. “Just tell me. I need to know. I want to know.” How could he help her if he didn’t?
“We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. There were a lot of mouths to feed and my mother didn’t work. My father didn’t want her to work.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a foreman at a manufacturing plant last I knew. I’m sure he’s still there. Doesn’t really matter. He worked nights. He was big. Mean. Nasty. Possessive.”
He didn’t like where this was going. “Did he abuse your mother? You?”
“I guess that’s the word for it. He hit us. Whipped us with a belt. It wasn’t unheard of there. It wasn’t often, but it was enough. Enough to keep us in line.”
“Once is more than enough. Your mother never did anything?”
“No. She wasn’t that strong of a person. I don’t know if he ever hit her. I’m guessing he might have at one point when we were younger, but I don’t remember. She learned her place and made sure not to anger him. There were rules in the house and if you followed the rules you were good.”
“Rules? Like what?” he asked.
“Like not to make any noise when he was home. He worked nights, like I said. When he got out of work in the morning, he didn’t want to hear the kids talking, fighting or doing anything. He wanted to come home and have food on the table before he went to sleep. We were normally up and getting ready for school. I was the oldest. Then Billy. He and I ended up being examples for the rest of them.”
“Meaning you two were beaten more?” No, whipped she’d said, though he couldn’t bring himself to say that.
“I guess. It seemed there wasn’t much Billy and I could do right. It wasn’t just being quiet. It was doing our chores, being respectful to him and my mother. Not embarrassing him or my mother in the community by acting up in school. There were more, but those are the basic ones.”
“He was worried about his kids embarrassing him when he was home taking a belt to them?” He felt like he was going back in time. “Where did he hit you?”
She shrugged. “Our backs. Shoulders. Back of the legs is the worst.”
He couldn’t imagine. He was a big guy. He’d gone through a lot of pain, but as a kid, nothing. Nothing like that. Not even the physical part, but the emotional. It was no wonder she wanted to escape.
“Did Ethan know?”
“He did. We weren’t allowed cell phones, not that my father would have been able to afford them for everyone. I worked part-time and paid for a pre-paid one and hid it from him. I guess you could say I rebelled behind his back as much as I could. Billy did too. We were always told we were troublemakers.”
He found that hard to believe. There wasn’t anything about her that would make him think she was a troublemaker. Sure, she was stubborn and stood her ground, but there wasn’t anything wrong with that. “You were probably just being typical kids.”
“Billy and I thought so. But most kids didn’t get a belt across the back because they didn’t have food on the table when their father got home from work. My mother had been sick one morning and asked me to do it. I was trying to get the other kids ready for school, and myself. Time got away from me. It didn’t again. I didn’t go to school that day either.”
There was a rage in him that he didn’t know he could possess. Just the thought of that happening to her. Someone so tiny and so sweet. “So Ethan took you away from it?”
“Not really. Or I guess. I told him what was going on. He knew. But he wasn’t always so...strong. Not like you. He’d been abused when he was in the system. He understood what I was going through and we talked about getting me away. But he wanted to meet my parents. He never had any and he had these illusions of a family even though I told him it’d never happen.”
He bit his tongue on responding to that. How any guy would want to meet and become part of a family where the guy beat his kids was laughable. “Then how did you end up leaving?”
“I’d finished school the week before Ethan was going to come and meet me in person. I used to talk to him at night in my room when my sister was asleep. I’d be under the covers where she couldn’t see the light on my phone if she woke. I didn’t want to tell my father about Ethan, but I did. I told him I met someone. He called me every name in the book. I told him I’d never met Ethan in person, that I hadn’t done anything with him, but he didn’t believe me. He wouldn’t listen. He started to undo his belt and Billy came rushing in and stopped him. It wasn’t a good night for either of us. Billy was just a teen trying to protect me. My mother had gone in the other room like she always did, trying to pretend it wasn’t happening.”
He was shocked that she was just calmly talking about this. Like she was telling a story. There were no tears in her eyes. Nothing. It was like relaying the past and nothing more.
His hand started to run up and down her back. He’d never seen any scars there. But he was guessing they were more mental. More emotional. Yet not once had he ever caught sight of them.
“I’d told Ethan what happened before he came. I got the feeling he was going to change his mind and I couldn’t have him do that. I really felt something for him. He’d become this figure in my life that I cared for. That cared for me. We talked about getting married and I was shocked that he was going to change his mind over what I’d been telling him all along. I was heartbroken.”
Ethan was nothing more than a coward in his eyes, but he wouldn’t voice that out loud. It wouldn’t serve a purpose other than to make him feel better to curse and swear at the man that didn’t stand up for Shelby.
“What happened then? How did you know he was going to change his mind?”
“I didn’t really. It was just the tone of the texts were changing. But he did come and see me and he was happy when we met. I felt this attraction and pull toward him like I thought I would. I’m not sure if it’s because I wanted one to be there, or it really was there. After that night we met, when I lied and said I had to work when I didn’t so I could get out of the house, we decided to just leave. I went back home and when everyone was sleeping and my father was working, I packed as much stuff as I could in a bag and left a note.”
“You’ve never seen your parents again after that?” Could that be why she was disowned? For trying to escape an abusive father?
“I went back home a few days later. Ethan and I had eloped. I wanted to see my mother. I missed her. I just wanted her to know I was okay and to see my siblings. I’d gone back when I knew my father was at work. My mother was upset, but she understood. I gathered the rest of my stuff and left mine and Ethan’s phone numbers with her. I wanted to stay in touch.”
“Did you?”
“No. The next morning when my father came home, Gretchen, who was just barely in kindergarten, said I’d come back. He made my mother tell him what happened. What was going on. Then he called me on my phone and told me that I wasn’t to ever step foot in the house again. I was never to talk to any of my siblings again. I was dead to him and the family. He didn’t care if I was married or not, he’d make me pay if I did. Or he’d make my mother pay.”
“Your husband did nothing?” Jared asked.
He would have ripped Shelby’s father apart for the words alone. He might have killed him if he saw her father lay a hand on her. He knew he definitely wanted to meet her brother Billy, though, to thank him for standing up for his sister when no one else would. Not even the man she’d married.
“We were gone at that point. What was Ethan supposed to do? He said I’d never have to go back. That I was free from it. He’d never hurt me and he never did. We had a decent marriage. We found something in each other we both were looking for and it seemed to be enough back then.”
“Is that what you want now? Just enough?”
“No. I want more. It’s scary and it’s hard. I don’t want to depend on anyone. I was afraid back then. I met Ethan and he helped me get away from that life. When he died, I didn’t know how I was going to do it on my own. But you know what? I can and I do. I’m not my mother. I’m not weak and I know that if you left tomorrow, I’d be fine eventually. But it’d hurt. And I don’t want to hurt again.”
Now she was crying. Not when she was relaying the nightmare of her childhood, but when she was talking about a fear he’d leave her. “I don’t want you to ever hurt again. Not physically or emotionally.”
“I thought what I felt for Ethan was love. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Like I said, it was enough.”
“But it wasn’t true love. Because when you love someone you stand in front of them. You stand with them and behind them and you stand for them. That’s what I feel for you.”
She started to bawl and he wondered if he somehow made matters worse until she said, “That’s what I feel for you too.”