Chapter Eight
Isit on the sofa next to Dawn, who looks more comfortable in her own clothes.
She smiles at the three girls sitting on the floor playing with a tower of Jenga blocks.
Riggs has taken David out on an ATV to check the external cameras, but I don’t know how they’ll get to them with all the trees and vines acting as sentries.
I told him he might want to install some new ones, but he seemed dead set on thoroughly checking the existing cameras first, and I can’t blame him for that.
“They play well together,” Dawn says softly, breaking me out of my thoughts.
“They do. I’m glad.” I look at her. “Were you worried?”
“I don’t know, maybe a little. She doesn’t get to interact with children her own age much.”
“What about at school?”
“You know what that place is like, Calliope. I don’t want to say kids are cruel because no child is born that way. They’re just saying what they’ve seen and heard their parents say.”
“And what are they saying?” I snap, feeling protective of Hannah.
“Just stuff about me that’s not worth repeating.”
I stare at her until she sighs and rubs her hand over her face.
“I can’t say some of it wasn’t true. I was young and wild and thought I could get away with pretty much anything because I was pretty. I wasn’t mean or cruel, and I sure as hell didn’t think I was better than anyone, but I did think I was better than small-town living. I guess the joke’s on me.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I flirted with a stranger. He was much older than me, but he was so handsome and charismatic.” She swallows, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “We, met in the one honky-tonk bar my small town had. I was feeling reckless and wanting to blow off steam before I jumped on a Greyhound and headed for the city to show my parents I could make something of myself. I was such a fucking cliché. Hell, I still am.”
“Nothing wrong with having dreams, Dawn.”
“No, as long as you have a healthy dose of common sense to go along with it. I clearly didn’t.
I must have drunk more than I realized because I woke up in a strange motel room, sore in places I had no right to be sore in.
Eight weeks later, two pink lines confirmed the worst, and I was forced to return home to my deeply devout Christian parents.
They offered me a choice—marry the man who got me pregnant or sleep on the streets. ”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, well, my parents were never very good at practicing what they preached. They cherry-picked the parts of the Bible that worked for them and ignored the rest.”
“Isn’t that always the fucking way?”
I swallow, thinking about a young Dawn dancing in a bar, her whole life ahead of her.
I don’t doubt for a second that he was drawn to her youth and vitality.
Older men take younger women for a variety of reasons—they’re easier to manipulate and bend to their will.
They don’t have the life experience to recognize that it’s happening.
They take them because a young, beautiful woman on an older man’s arm becomes a status symbol, a sign of the man’s virility or something equally as gross.
They take them so they can try to absorb all that youth and vitality for themselves.
And most of the time, they do, draining it from the woman they coveted, discarding her when she is nothing more than a shell of the person she could have been, before moving on to the next one.
Knowing his type, I doubt alcohol consumption had anything to do with Dawn’s choices that night. Her choices stopped being her own the second he likely dropped something in her glass and took her back to a cheap motel when she was too fucked-up to consent.
“How did you track him down?”
“I didn’t. I had no idea who he was. We lived a few hours south of here, and I couldn’t even remember his name.
Imagine my surprise when he turned up on my parents’ doorstep a couple of weeks after I found out I was pregnant.
He said he’d felt compelled to check on me.
I was so desperate to get away from my parents that I didn’t see the red flags for what they were.
I never hesitated when he told me he’d marry me and take me away—not that my parents really gave me a choice to begin with. ”
Convenient that he turned up just after she found out she was expecting. It’s almost like he knocked her up on purpose and kept tabs on her. I just don’t understand why. He obviously never liked kids, so I wonder what it was about Dawn that made him risk it.
“I moved here to be with him and the rest…well, you know. The parents of the other kids see me as some harlot or slut who baby-trapped him into being my sugar daddy when it couldn’t be further from the truth. They see the marks, the ones he’s not careful about, but nobody says anything.”
“They never do.”
She looks at me. “He used to talk, well, rant about you. About what you did to your dad, about the ranch, the house, this town dying. He said everything was your fault. And all I remember thinking was what it might be like to have that much power over someone. There were days that if I didn’t have Hannah, I’d have traded places with you in a heartbeat. ”
I reach over and squeeze her hand. “I won’t tell you that you don’t know what you’re talking about because prison is prison. Nobody wants that. But I know what it’s like to be in your shoes, and I’d have chosen prison every time over the alternative.”
She squeezes my hand back before Jessica—David’s youngest sister—jumps to her feet and walks over.
“Can we play outside, Calliope?”
“Sure. We’ll come sit out on the deck and keep an eye on you, though.”
“I’m not a baby,” she huffs, all four-foot-two of sass aimed my way.
“I know, but I have a lot of plants and old buildings that attract all kinds of things like snakes and scorpions. I’d rather be there if you need me than in here, unable to hear you,” I explain.
She swallows, her eyes going wide at the mention of snakes. “Okay.”
I give her a wink before offering a hand to Dawn, who winces as I gently pull her to her feet.
“Snakes?”
“Well, there could be.” I smirk, making her chuckle.
“Smart move. I have a feeling that if we let them out of our sight for more than ten minutes, they’ll have plotted world domination.
“Gotta love women with ambition.”
She grins as we follow the girls out. We sit on the chairs while they chase each other around.
“I love how peaceful it is out here.”
“Yeah, me too. Though it’s been an adjustment since coming home.”
She’s quiet for a moment as she watches the girls play before she turns to look at me. “The day you smelled gasoline on me—”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I was getting ready to come over when he found me and told me he wanted me to drive him this way.
Told me to say I wanted a face cream or something.
I thought for a minute he knew, but it was really just a random coincidence.
I went along with it because if someone saw me out here and told him, it would give me a good excuse, you know? ”
She lets out a shaky breath, rubbing her hands on her legs.
“I dropped him on the other side of the ranch. I was going to come see you then, but he made me wait. If I wasn’t there when he came back…
Well, I waited. And when he came back, he was soaked and stunk of gasoline.
He had a really smug smile, which made me want to throw up.
He told me to drive him home, and I did, but I caught the smear of blood on the back of his hand. ”
I reach up and touch my temple, remembering the bump I got there, along with the one on the back of my head where I got hit.
“I took him home, then told him I had to run errands, and came back. When I saw your face, I knew he did that. If I hadn’t driven him out here—”
“He’d have taken the keys and driven himself. The only reason he had you bring him was so nobody recognized his truck.”
She sighs and nods, knowing I’m right. As the minutes slip by and a look of peace washes over her face, I relax.
She turns to look at me, her face calm, so her words surprise me. “He’ll come for me. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but he will come, Calliope. He’ll never let me be free. When he does get me, because nobody can live on guard forever—he’ll kill me.”
“Dawn—”
She reaches out and grabs my arm, her grip tight. “Do not let him get my daughter. Do whatever it takes, but promise me that you won’t let him take her.”
I swallow at the conviction in her voice, her utter certainty that she’ll die at his hands, and how she seems to have almost made peace with that now that her daughter is free.
“I’ll kill him before I let him lay a finger on her again,” I vow, and I mean it.
She nods, trusting me to keep my word.
“Besides, what are they going to do? Send you to jail for killing the man you already went to jail for killing?”
I jolt, my mouth dropping open. “You know?”
She smiles as she gazes over at Hannah, laughing as she ducks and weaves around Jemma—David’s other sister—who is trying to tag her.
“She has her father’s eyes. So do you.” She turns back to me. “Porter is your father, isn’t he? Who better to protect her than her big sister?”
I swallow the lump in my throat.
“I’m so sorry for what he did to you. I’m not sure I even understand how it was all possible, but I know it’s him.”
I blow out a shaky breath. “Yes.”
“That motherfucker.”
A startled laugh bursts out of me. “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”
“I don’t know how you do it. How do you live in the same town as him, knowing what he did to you? I’d want to kill him. I mean, I do for what he did to Hannah and me, but what he did to you was arguably worse, but…” Her voice drifts off at whatever expression she sees on my face. “Oh.”
I bite my lip, unable to look at her, worried about what I might give away, though I suspect it’s too late to worry about that.
“Do me a favor?”
I look at her and frown. “What’s that?”
“When the time comes, make it hurt.”