Chapter 4 #2
I called Mia Vance before shame could convince me a club attorney belonged to Ryder. She answered on the second ring with no greeting. “Eden, are you at the compound?”
“Why do you already know to ask me that?”
“Bear called. I don’t have details about the road yet.” Paper moved on her end. “Tell me what happened in your house.”
Mia had done legal work for the club for years.
She had also corrected me the first time I called her Ryder’s lawyer.
She represented people, not marriages, and she decided who her client was before anybody told her what loyalty required.
I held on to that while I tried to say the morning in the right order.
“A woman named Jess came to the door. She’s pregnant.
Ryder says the baby is his.” My voice failed on the last word, and I had to look at the dresser until I could go on.
“He says they’ve been together for months.
There’s a burner with messages on it. He transferred almost all of our joint savings two days ago.
He says the house belongs to the club and that Bear already thinks our marriage was failing. ”
Mia didn’t offer comfort I couldn’t use. “Do you have the burner?”
“It’s in my hand.”
“Keep it. Photograph the transfer details and every message. Don’t hand either phone to Ryder or to anybody wearing a cut. Has a doctor confirmed the pregnancy? Have you seen paperwork, an ultrasound, a clinic name, anything from outside that woman’s mouth or his?”
I sat down on the end of the bed. “No.”
“Then we don’t know it’s true, and I want you to leave that alone for now.
Don’t accuse anyone. Don’t ask her. Don’t give him a reason to tidy anything up.
It’s a thread and I’d rather it stay attached.
” She kept going before I could turn the idea over.
“Where are your identification, insurance cards, marriage certificate, tax returns, vehicle title, medication records, and the statements for your aunt’s money? ”
The list frightened me worse than sympathy would have. Mia thought I needed proof of my own life. “Some are in the office. The certificate is in the bedroom safe.”
“Can you open the safe?”
“I know the code.”
“Good. If that code stops working today, that’s information, and I want it inside the hour.”
“Collect the documents. Change the passwords on your own account, your email, your cloud storage, and the bank. Don’t move money out of the joint account, preserve the record, and send me the transfer information when you can.
” Another voice called her name and she ignored it. “Are you physically safe with Ryder?”
I thought of him standing in a doorway while I couldn’t breathe, and then of the locked drawer beside me, and every night I had slept near it without fear. “He won’t hit me.”
“That wasn’t the whole question.”
“I don’t know what he’s willing to do anymore.” Last night I had trusted that man with every soft part of my life. This morning I couldn’t promise my lawyer he would let me leave.
Mia breathed out through her nose. “Then go, if you can go safely. Don’t tell him where. If the compound roads are compromised, wait until Bear clears the gate, or call me and I’ll arrange transport. Text me every hour until you stop for the night.”
“I don’t know where I’m going.” Terre Haute was forty miles and I didn’t know one person in it.
“You don’t have to know that before you protect the things that let you choose later.”
I ended the call and went to the office.
Identification, insurance cards, prescription records, the marriage certificate out of the safe, the vehicle title, three years of tax returns, the equipment receipts in my name, and the notebook where I had tracked every order since the first one.
Everything else got photographed and left where it was, including the winter utility bills and the invoices for work I had paid to have done on a house Ryder said gave me no rights.
While the passwords changed, Leah called twice, June once, Tessa four times.
I sent all three the same message, that I was safe and needed time, and turned the ringer off.
Medication went in before clothes. Controller, both rescue inhalers, the spacer, the printed prescriptions, and the little nebulizer Ryder bought the winter I frightened him.
Then jeans, shirts, the shoes I can stand in for ten hours.
Then I put both hands on Aunt Beth’s cast-iron skillet and didn’t move for a while.
It’s the twelve-inch. It weighs what a toddler weighs, it has been seasoned by three women, and the underside of the handle is worn to a shine where all three of our hands have sat.
Leah has threatened to steal it at every dinner for four years.
Taking it meant forever and leaving it meant a night, and I couldn’t make that decision on a marriage less than a morning dead, so I set it back on the burner where it lives.
That was the first time all day I cried.
I dragged two suitcases and the document box out to the Civic and loaded the papers behind the driver’s seat.
The car had been serviced. The tank was full, the tires were up, and a sealed rescue-inhaler refill sat in the glove compartment beside a folded paper map and the vehicle records, clipped together in his handwriting.
Ryder hadn’t decided this morning to end our marriage.
He had arranged for me to drive away before he came into our bed the night before.