Chapter Six #2
The minutes that passed were the longest Aurelie had ever endured.
In the silence, Jace’s hand still on her thigh, her thoughts went wild without anything to rein them in.
She wondered about what she would do if she had to leave Banberry; what Paige would think about how their helping out Analise had not ended their troubles; and that now Analise’s abusive ex was behind all the land purchases around Banberry.
She gave her father only a fleeting thought, but even that was enough to cause her pulse to race.
Most of all, though, she thought about the man sitting next to her, of what his hands would feel like on other parts of her body, what they were capable of.
Her leg began to tremble, but the weight of Jace’s hand, now farther up her thigh, calmed the tremor.
She wanted to look at him, but she knew that if she did, she would lose the last of her resolve to keep him at arm’s length.
When the front door opened, they both jumped. Owen stomped his feet on the outside mat, but it barely made a dent in the muck he brought in with him.
“Hey, Aury,” Owen said, the nickname sounding heavy in the otherwise quiet room.
Only her Montana friends called her that.
He leaned in to whisper, thankfully not noticing how close she and Jace were sitting.
At least Jace’s hand was off her leg now.
“You still down to babysit? I dropped the ball on a place to take Paige with all that’s going on, but if you can still cover Maddie, I’ll come up with something. ”
“Of course. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks.”
“Sweet, thanks.” He kissed her cheek, and she couldn’t help but smile since the word effusive didn’t apply to her best friend’s husband. “Brad’s on his way up. Where’s my lovely bride?” he asked.
“Checking on Maddie.”
“I’ll go find her and get thinking on a plan for tonight. Good to see you, man,” he added, shaking Jace’s hand. “I’ll be down to help with the porch when we’re done here. And we’re not taking off until Paige is done with work, so I’ll have the day for you.”
“You sure? If you have other chores…”
“Nah. This is fun, breaking down your old life to build a new one.”
Aurelie froze in her seat; what she wouldn’t give to do the same.
Owen jogged out of the room toward his wife, and the now-familiar pang tightened Aurelie’s chest again.
Owen and Paige returned together, Maddie, swaddled and half-asleep, in her mom’s arms. At the same time, the door opened, and Brad came in. The tightening seized hard, making it difficult for Aurelie to breathe.
“Hey, sis,” he whispered, knocking his boots on the side of the house, then stomping what he could off on the mat, like Owen had just done. “Sorry it took a sec. We were almost done with the west field.”
Paige sat on the couch beside the large oak dining table, another Owen original. Come to think of it, there wasn’t much in this home Owen had not made or improved, Paige included. Paige pulled her nightshirt up and tucked Maddie up underneath it.
“No worries,” she said. “These two are the ones who called this meeting, so talk to them.”
“No way, sis. You’re the boss in every situation; we all know that.”
Owen laughed, earning a scowl from Paige. His attempt to hide his smile was futile, as it scrunched up his eyes in the corners.
“Jace, tell them what you found,” Aurelie said, shifting the conversation to the matter at hand. At a minimum, it would give her some distance from the man she’d kissed and been thinking about nonstop the past two days.
Jace stood, walked over to where Brad and Owen were digging in the fridge. Owen took a long pull of milk from the carton, to an exasperated sigh from Paige, which he ignored.
“You two know there was someone who was gonna buy my property?”
Owen looked at Brad, then at his wife. They shook their heads.
Jace grimaced. Aurelie had had enough rum the night before that she’d forgotten about that part of the story.
“Okay, well, it turns out he’s the same one that’s been buying up these other properties around town, places that are in arrears or are struggling. I made some calls to my agent in LA, who has connections all over the country. She did some digging and found out who the mystery millionaire is.”
Owen looked up, tossed a few pieces of dry cereal in his mouth, one eyebrow raised at Jace.
“Have you heard of Isaac Puckman?” Owen and Brad shook their heads, but Paige looked at Aurelie with surprise registered in her eyes, heat pinkening her cheeks.
“Is that…?” she started.
“It is,” Aurelie confirmed.
“I thought he was…”
“Me, too.”
“It sounds like he bought off someone in power because he’s already out, meaning he’ll go public with the sales and start building any day now,” Jace added.
“Jesus,” Paige whispered. “It’s like what happened with your mom.” Aurelie nodded, relieved her friend understood the implication of the news. Paige beckoned her to the couch, patted the seat beside her.
“I’m so sorry I questioned your motives the other night. This is bad.”
“I know. But it’s okay. We just have to tell Sophie.”
Paige nodded. Owen and Brad stood still as stone in the kitchen until Owen shook his head.
“Now, wait a minute,” he said, putting his hand up. “Back up and fill us in. What the actual fuck is going on, and who the hell is Isaac Puckman?”
Jace started from the beginning with his inquiry into the sales, then Paige picked up with who Isaac was and why he was as dangerous for Sophie and Analise as he was for Banberry.
The two brothers-in-law listened intently to the story of Analise’s abuse, of Sophie finding her in a dilapidated shelter, and how that night led to Sophie buying land to build a proper shelter with space for a clinic, which was now almost complete.
Every sordid detail made Aurelie wish chronic incontinence on Isaac as well as whoever had shortened his sentence by 300 percent.
It also reaffirmed that she had to stay in Banberry and give her services to both the shelter and clinic. There were too many women like Analise who needed help, help that was scarce at best in a rural town like Banberry.
Brad called Sophie and left a message for her to call him as soon as she had a break in court.
He tossed the phone on the couch and ran his hands through his hair.
His cheeks were pulled taut by a tight jaw that seethed with anger.
Aurelie could tell he was reeling, wondering how the hell to protect his wife when her job consisted solely of putting abusers and worse behind bars.
She felt the same way he did, but Sophie knew what she was doing.
It was one of the reasons she was such a strong woman: Someone had to take on the burdens the battered and helpless women who came to her couldn’t carry alone.
“What happened to your mom?” Jace asked Aurelie. For some reason, it seemed natural that he was there, counted among her family as they discussed the fate of Banberry, but the question highlighted how little everyone in that room, save Paige, knew of her past.
She looked to Paige for strength. Her friend nodded.
Owen and Brad sat down on the two overstuffed chairs that flanked the couch, gazing at Aurelie expectantly.
Sharing the trauma from her youth was always difficult for Aurelie, but this was her family now, and the same thing might be happening to them.
“My father abused my mother my whole childhood until I was fifteen. He broke bones and left bruises, but otherwise only hurt her enough that it could be explained away as an accident.” Brad lowered his head, shook it, and put it in his hands.
Aurelie almost stopped right there, but Jace moved from the arm of the couch to the small empty space next to Aurelie and wrapped her hands in his, squeezed tightly.
No one seemed to notice that the person comforting her was a stranger.
“My brothers were younger and tried to intervene, but he’d slap them around as well.
Until one night, my dad knocked my mom unconscious, and my middle brother, Rami, came at him with a handgun he’d bought off the streets. He was only twelve.”
The room was silent, everyone leaning in to listen to Aurelie.
Talking about that night, about the events that followed, seemed at once like they’d just happened yesterday, the hurt was so fresh, and also like she was telling someone else’s story.
It was impossible to juxtapose that life with the one she led now, to reconcile both inside her memories.
“Anyway,” she continued, “Rami forced my dad to pack his things and leave, which he did, but he promised he would come for the house, for us, for my mom, and especially for Rami at some point.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Jace’s hand rubbed her lower back, calming the tremble in her muscles from the tension.
“He kept his promise. It took him ten years, but every day we lived in fear of what he would do to get back at us. Rami turned to the streets, to brothers who understood the fear and trained it. Emri, my youngest brother, followed him a couple years later. Then my mom got sick. I was able to make the payments on the home with my job, but one day, bulldozers showed up on our land. My father was still listed as an owner, even though the land and home had been in my mother’s family for three generations.
He threatened to sell the land out from under us if my mother didn’t take him back.
By then, only my mother and I knew she was sick, and my job wasn’t enough to care for both of us, not with her medicines and treatments.
Eventually, in order to take care of her and get her someplace safe, we relinquished it to him.
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through.
I just don’t want you to have to go through the same. ”