Not So Bad (Pine Ridge Universe #24)

Chapter One Loretta

Loretta Anne Lane. Loretta Lane.

As I look at the outfit Matt ordered, I realize it won’t cover the bruises on my arms. Or my legs.

I also realize that part of my stupid infatuation with Matt was his name and how it fit with mine.

Loretta Lane. I’d told myself it sounded glamorous, like a classic movie star.

And when he said he wanted me to be a homemaker, baking bread, wearing pretty dresses, and having babies, I wanted those things, too.

I told myself that it would be the perfect American dream.

It would be something simple in a world that keeps feeling too complicated.

I have those things now. So why doesn’t it... feel good? Why does something that was supposed to be easy seem to get harder with each day? What am I doing wrong?

I ask myself this question a thousand times a day, more on days when he’s angry, and the voices whisper that none of this is my fault.

But he shouts down the voices, face inches from mine, hands squeezing my arms to hold me still, making it so I can’t turn away, ensuring that every hurled insult hits its mark.

Long hours. He comes home sullen and silent or raging and shouting about how he’s working ten-hour days to feed and clothe this family, and I’m not contributing. And when I say I could work, he shouts that I don’t think he’s going to make it, not going to provide for us.

You can’t win. You realize that? You never win with Matt, and marriage isn’t supposed to feel like a battle every day.

Today, he’s home early to get ready for the company Halloween Party. “Come on! Put it on, baby.” Matt is suddenly in the doorway, a beer in his hand and a leer on his face.

“I... It’s so skimpy.” Why? Why the hell would he want me to wear this to his work party when he spent last night telling me my stomach looked disgusting, shaming me for breastfeeding and getting saggy tits when the calories I’m burning haven’t even fixed my baby belly?

“I figure it’s time I show the guys what a perfect, pretty little wife I have at home.” He kisses my neck and squeezes my chest, looking disgusted when his hands come away wet. “Udders leaking,” he laughs it off and shrugs.

My breath remains a prisoner in my throat. We’re just going to laugh it off? Okay. Good. Tonight, he’s in a good mood.

Thank God.

“Go feed Arianna. My mom should be here by quarter of six.”

“Right. I will. What are you going as?” I’ve asked before, but I never got an answer.

He lightly slaps my ass. “My costume matches yours, baby. I’m gonna shower and shave before I put it on.” He tosses an orange and black bag from the costume store on the bed and heads to the bathroom.

I look at the plastic package spilling out of the bag.

The Big Bad Wolf.

Snarling, bloody teeth in a grotesque rubber mask. A shaggy suit that looks hot and itchy. Even though Halloween night is chilly in North Lake, the small city where we live, I know Matt is going to be sweaty. And irritable.

I hurry to feed Arianna, wondering how my little red dress with frilly cap sleeves and barely enough fabric to cover my butt is going to work with the evidence of Matt’s anger.

When I come out of the nursery almost an hour later, after nursing and showering, Matt looks me over. “You gotta get glasses or something, Loretta. You must bump into things five times a day.” He jerks his head at the bruises on my arms, and I don’t bother to correct him.

Does he truly not remember? I don’t know, but I know I don’t want to find out via a long, awkward discussion that will only make him angry.

“I have some dark stockings that’ll work with this,” I mutter and sidestep him.

I tell myself that all husbands and wives have rough patches.

That we’ve only been married two years, and it’s only been bad since Arianna came.

He’s cranky because she won’t sleep through the night.

Cranky because she had colic, even though it passed pretty quick.

Cranky because she’s been miserable and getting over an ear infection.

Just plain cranky.

Angry.

But he’ll be back to his old smiling, joking, vibrant self if I can make everything go smoothly. Tonight is Halloween, a night for daring and danger, for scary and fun-to-be-scared movies. Couples clinging to each other. Chocolate. Sexy little costumes. Risqué romance.

I swallow and slowly let my towel drop. Maybe this will be the start of something good. Starting over.

ARIANNA’S SHRILL CRY makes me gasp, and my harlot red lipstick skids across my lower lip, dropping into the sink. I rush from the little bathroom adjoining our bedroom and into the nursery.

Matt is cursing and hopping on one foot, punching the pastel tapestries of nursery rhyme characters that line her walls, putting holes in the plaster.

I grab Ari and clutch her to me, her panicked screams settling into half-asleep whimpers as I soothe her, my hand protectively on her back.

Did he hit her?

He never has.

But the fact that I hear the question in my head does something to me.

I’ve always told myself that even though his anger causes him to lash out at me sometimes—even when it gets physical, it’s not abuse. Not really. Not like punching or kicking. Just grabbing. Shaking me so I’ll pay attention.

And he’s a good daddy, I would remind myself. He loves Ari. He’d never, ever hurt her.

But now, I don’t know, and I’m too afraid to ask.

As I hold my precious little girl, with her round cheeks and her very first tooth starting to show, I can’t lie to myself anymore. I can’t be afraid anymore. She needs me to protect her.

“Mom cancelled! She’s in the ER with Mike,” Matt spits.

“What happened?” I gasp. Mike is Matt’s younger brother, a sweet guy.

“The idiot broke his arm hanging cobwebs on the patio roof. Fell off the ladder and now needs surgery to put a pin in his arm! Mom is staying with him, so we’re screwed. He’s nineteen! It’s not like he needs her there. She swore she would babysit.”

Matt hits the crib with the flat of his palm and gives it a vicious kick, making it jump several inches.

That must be how he woke Ari, and she probably screamed because an adult shaking her crib and slamming into it must feel like an earthquake to her.

“Well... Maybe I can ask my parents to come over?” I ask, and I know it’s a stupid offer the second I said it.

“What? Your parents are going to drive down from Rochester by six? It’s already after five! This night is ruined—and it’s that dumb brat’s fault!”

At first, I think he means his younger brother, but then I notice the hateful glare directed squarely at me.

At the baby I’m holding.

“If we didn’t have her, we wouldn’t need a sitter, and we’d be back to how it used to be, football games every weekend, dinners out, no more waiting eight weeks to see if I can fucking sleep with my own goddamned wife!

” His voice rises to a roar, but inside my head, it’s very quiet.

“If it’s not ‘the doctor said to wait,’ it’s her damn crying all night! ”

The little voices that I hear, my own sense of self, my wisdom, my common sense... They’re not whispering now. They’re speaking. Softly, but loud enough to be heard over the din and panic setting in, penetrating my brain with a clarity I haven’t felt in weeks.

Clarity that I’m scared to feel, because staying is easier in some ways.

Take Ari and go. Take her and go. Get out of here. Go to somewhere Matt’s never heard of. Somewhere he won’t find you.

“It’s all right, babe,” I say, voice calm.

Some days that would make him yell, but tonight, I say it as I collect things in the nursery, moving like everything is okay.

“She’ll be part of my costume. Then we won’t need a sitter.

I’ll throw that old red and white picnic blanket over her carrier and say she’s my basket of goodies.

” I grab an armful of her clean laundry from the changing table and add it to the baby bag.

Load the baby bag. You still have that jumbo box of diapers and wipes in the trunk because you didn’t unload them last night, and Matt didn’t do it when he said he would.

Take the grocery money. Take the money you were saving for his birthday gift. Don’t worry about the rest. Once you’re away, and you know he’s not following you, you’ll call your parents. They’ll get you set up somewhere far, far away. Somewhere where he won’t come for Arianna.

I hold her more tightly to my chest.

Matt isn’t protesting for the moment, but he’s shooting poisonous looks at her, a loathing on his features that I’ve never noticed.

I want to ask how much he’s had to drink tonight, but I don’t.

“I’ll get her back to sleep by driving her around the block a few times.

If she wakes up while we’re at the party, I bet your co-workers will adore her.

They’ll pass her around all night, and we’ll have the greatest Halloween ever, lover.

” I kiss his cheek in passing and hurry to the kitchen.

Grab my purse from where it’s slung over the back of the chair.

Check to see that the little envelope of money I’ve been saving out of the household budget is still in the front pocket.

On the outside, I’m calm and confident, the perfect little Doris Day pin-up with my poise and my shiny blonde bell of sprayed hair over my red and white hooker outfit.

Inside, I’m listening for his footsteps, terrified he’ll grab my arm and ask what I’m doing. I’m afraid I’ll barf on Ari, and I’m trying not to scream, beg, or flinch.

Am I really going to run away? Am I really going to try to “hide out” in some town I think he’ll never have heard of?

Yes, because I have to protect my daughter, and I know he’ll assume I’m going straight to my parents’ house. He’ll head north, so I’ll head south towards the Pennsylvania border.