Chapter 3
Chapter Three
The moment Ally shut the back door behind them, she pressed both palms to the counter and let out a long, shaky breath.
What in God’s name had possessed her to invite the man to dinner?
Her pulse was still uneven, but not from fear, at least not entirely. The man was good-looking. Too good-looking. She’d seen the car and the man sitting in it more than once at her mother’s place. She’d noticed it behind her when they’d headed into town and knew that he’d followed her.
She’d felt the weight of his eyes on her even when she couldn’t spot him. When he’d shown up on the beach, pretending to photograph driftwood, she’d known it was him instantly.
He was obviously a private investigator. One of Ted’s men.
The old panic had threatened to rise, to tighten in her chest and cause her breath to shorten and to bring with it that familiar taste of dread. But something else had cut through it. Attraction. Which had angered and scared her.
Since Ted, she’d never felt that pull toward anyone. To be honest, she’d never thought it was possible after going through what she had. At one point, she’d just sworn off all men.
She’d heard the man and her daughter’s entire conversation.
Joe. Was that his real name?
While she’d listened and watched them, she figured that if Ted wanted to play games, fine. She’d learned to play them better by being one step ahead.
“Mama?” Charlotte’s voice pulled her back. The little girl stood in the doorway with her hair windblown and her camera held up as if she’d just taken a picture. “Was that nice man your friend? Is that why he’s coming for dinner?”
Ally forced a smile on her lips as she crouched down so she was eye level with Charlotte. “He’s… someone who’s going to help mama with a few things.”
Charlotte nodded solemnly, as if that explained everything. “He said his name was Joe. He didn’t get mad when I ran into him.”
She remembered the last visit Charlotte had with Ted, how the woman from the Forever Family Association, the non-profit organization the judge had picked to oversee Ted’s supervised parental visits every three months, had noted that Ted had snapped at Charlotte for bumping his drink on the table at a coffee shop where he’d taken her for their visit.
He’d yelled at her, which had made Charlotte cry and ask to go home.
After that report had hit the judge’s email, he’d pulled Ted in for an emergency hearing.
Ted had tried getting the FFA woman fired by claiming she’d verbally assaulted him and was pitting his daughter against him.
The judge threw that new complaint out almost immediately after speaking to the woman’s supervisor, who had happened to witness the exchange in the coffee shop.
“That’s good,” Ally said softly, tucking her daughter’s braid behind her. “You were very polite.”
Charlotte grinned, proud of herself, then yawned so wide it made Ally’s heart ache. “Can I watch Bluey before my nap?”
“One episode,” Ally agreed. “Then upstairs.”
Charlotte curled up on the sofa with her blanket and a sippy cup full of water, and the cartoon’s bright voices filled the room. Ally paced the kitchen.
This was madness. She should call her lawyer. Or maybe Max.
Max would lose his mind if she told him what she’d done. He’d tell her exactly what her attorney had said for years: Don’t engage. Don’t feed the lion.
But she was tired of living like prey.
Maybe if the man, Joe, saw for himself that she wasn’t hiding anything, that she was stable, safe, and providing for her daughter, he’d file his little report and move on. Ted would have nothing left to twist. Nothing left to fight her on.
Who was she fooling? Ted would always find something to fight her on. Deep down she knew that she’d never be rid of the man.
She checked the clock. There were seven hours until five o’clock. That was enough time to pull herself together and think of something to make that was nice. Something that said I’m fine. I’m normal. I have control of my life and my daughter’s.
She yanked open the fridge and took stock. There were a couple fresh salmon fillets. She knew she had some fresh herbs, which her brother’d had delivered before she’d arrived. There were lemons and a bunch of asparagus that was still crisp.
It was a perfect meal.
With that out of the way, she headed in to watch television with her daughter. Charlotte had fallen asleep before the end of the episode, so she carried her up the stairs and tucked her into the bed. Then she crawled in beside her.
Instead of sleeping, however, she watched Charlotte as she slumbered.
She was selfishly thankful that her daughter took almost a hundred percent after her. As she ran her eyes over her, she couldn’t pick out one trait of Ted’s in her features.
How had something so perfect come out of something so… terrible?
The night that Charlotte was conceived had been filled with shouting. Ted had come home from work angry, angrier than she’d ever seen him. He’d been looking for any reason to blow up at her and he’d found plenty.
She hadn’t cooked the right meal that night and had cooked it too early, so that it was cold. Then, it had been too spicy and his drink had too many ice cubes in it. Yes, that really was one reason he’d yelled at her.
Looking back on her life, she wondered how she’d ever believed she’d eventually get good enough that one day he wouldn’t complain about her.
She would never forget the way Ted’s eyes had scanned the room before they had gone black with rage.
She’d said something, something small, something that shouldn’t have mattered, and he’d snapped. The slap had come first. Then the shove. Then… after he’d started using his fist and his hands had wrapped around her throat, everything else blurred.
She remembered the sting of the tile against her cheek, the taste of iron in her mouth, the helpless sound she’d made as he’d ripped her clothes from her body, and, when it was over... the shame that she’d felt.
He’d never once thought about it again. Never talked about it or apologized. He’d stopped buying her flowers after the first half a dozen times he’d touched her like that.
That was another thing that she blamed herself for. She’d known that if she pressed him about the abuse, he’d grow agitated.
“What do you want from me? I said I was sorry.”
That was his standard statement. It didn’t matter to him that it wasn’t true.
But no matter how she tried to broach the subject, that too always ended up in a fight. So she’d stopped trying and he’d stopped apologizing and giving her flowers afterwards.
When she’d learned that she was pregnant, she’d spent months wondering if she could ever love a child that came from that kind of violence. That came from him.
But then Charlotte had come into the world, tiny, pink, and furious, and somehow, at that moment, everything had turned into joy. Into light. Into the reason Ally had found the strength to walk away.
She was too restless to sleep, so she rolled out of bed without waking her daughter and headed downstairs. She opened up her secondhand laptop and continued applying for local jobs.
The thought of leaving Charlotte alone every day at a daycare scared her.
She was scheduled to start school after the winter break.
But if Ally got a job before then, she’d have to attend a local daycare Faye had told her about.
She was supposed to meet the small group tomorrow at the Brew-Ha-Ha for story time.
Nate and Faye both convinced her that, even if she didn’t get a job right away, it would be good to have Charlotte start going to the group to make friends.
The only time she’d spent away from her daughter was when she’d worked in Portland and had left her in the very capable hands of her mother. Or when Charlotte had been on court-ordered visits with Ted.
By the time Charlotte came down the stairs an hour later, happy and wide awake, she had applied for three jobs in town. Two were at local restaurants. The other one, which she was really excited for, was at the coast guard training facility just outside of town.
They were looking for an office assistant. Someone who could file, type, print, and organize. She could do all those things. Had done them before in a couple of jobs that she’d had in school.
Sure, they were asking for a degree, but she only had a few more classes to finish before she got her associates. She wouldn’t let herself be discouraged. She filled out the application, figuring it couldn’t hurt.
Since it was gray outside, she made sandwiches for her and Charlotte for lunch, and they sat at the table playing a board game to pass the time.
When Charlotte asked for the tenth time if they could head to the top of the lighthouse, she gave in. It took her daughter five minutes to race her to the top. They stood up there for almost an hour while Charlotte snapped photos of the town, the ocean, and the light on her new camera.
Ally loved watching the world go by below them. She did note that the gray car that had followed her from Portland was no longer parked on the edge of the property.
At least there was that small benefit of inviting him to dinner.
She wasn’t worried about Joe. He had a job to do. She couldn’t blame him, not really. She knew that he’d been hired by Ted, probably to find dirt on her.
It was funny because there was none. She had never done anything bad her entire life, nothing that could be described as dirt. The worst thing she’d ever done in her twenty-eight years was marry Ted.
As five o’clock approached, she sat Charlotte in front of the television to watch cartoons while she made her way into the kitchen.
Cooking had always calmed her. Within minutes, the kitchen was filled with the familiar rhythm of chopping, searing, and sizzling. The sound of butter and garlic in the skillet almost drowned out the restless hum in her chest.