Chapter 3
TO PROTECT HER
It was a mistake of epic proportions to stop at a diner in Lake George before heading to Canada.
She’d gotten a hotel here last night, drove around and past Ridgeway Orchards and remembered the one year in her childhood that wasn’t so horrible.
Picking apples, getting baked goods at the cafe on Ford’s parents’ property. Meeting his siblings and having that one loyal friend she’d lacked for years.
He’d protected her that school year from being bullied.
He wanted to protect her from getting it at home, but she’d never let on.
Ford knew. He saw it. She kept her mouth shut, knowing that her mother was going to pick up and move again like she always did.
It was why she never opened up and let anyone get close.
Ford was the one person she wanted to let in, and it gutted her to see the hurt she was causing him, even back then, when they were just kids.
She’d been in self-preservation mode for years.
The minute she could get out of her mother’s house, she had, but she’d struggled every day since.
For once in her life, she didn’t want to struggle.
Reenie didn’t want to have to plan months in advance an escape route if needed.
All that planning paid off a week ago.
What had Ford said? You can’t run your whole life.
It felt like it was all she’d done.
She was tired.
So freaking exhausted deep in her joints.
She pulled out of the parking lot and took a left-hand turn toward Warrensburg. It’d take ten minutes to get to his parents’ farm. She’d bet they’d pass his house on the way.
The radio was on, the music playing. “You and Me” by Lifehouse.
Why!? Why would this song come on? It was an oldies station, but still…
The first song that Ford asked her to dance to with him at one of the Friday night dances after the football game.
Maureen tried to forget most of her past, but the time with Ford was something she’d cherished like a beloved baby blanket to hand down for generations.
She thought coming here was a risk, but it was one she had to take on the off chance she could just get one look at him in person.
By the time she pulled through the gates of Ridgeway Orchard, she was bawling her eyes out.
She stopped to the side, not even making it to the parking lot of the family bakery and cafe.
The mountains in the distance reminded her of the natural beauty she’d always found here.
The peace and calm on this land when she needed a break.
Was it so horrible to want to find a slice of that again? Even for a short time?
Ford got out of his sheriff’s SUV and walked to her car.
She rolled the window down. “This was a mistake. I need to leave. Just let me go.”
“I can’t let you leave, Reenie. I just can’t.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked up. “I’ll never get you out of my mind having seen you again. Especially not like this.”
He needed closure. Maybe she did too.
It was the only way to leave this life of hers behind and start over.
How she was going to do it in a foreign country she’d only lived in for a few years and hadn’t been back to in fifteen years was anyone’s guess.
But nothing else was working out right in her life.
“I just don’t know what to do,” she said. “Where to go. Who to talk to. Who to even trust.”
“Me,” he said. He put his thumb and finger under her chin like he had when they were younger. When he wanted her attention on him. So that she could absorb the words he was saying. “You can trust me.”
When he released her chin, she nodded. She was drained, emotionally and physically.
Not just from the six days she’d spent driving from Florida, staying in hotels, buying supplies, lying low and checking the news for updates.
Today was the day and she had to get out. She knew it.
All hell could break loose soon enough.
But one hour wouldn’t make a difference. The call would be done later this afternoon.
Ford walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and folded his long frame into her tiny sedan.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Start with where you’re going and why.”
“Canada,” she said. “I have dual citizenship and a Canadian passport. Once I’m there, I’m safe. He can’t come after me. He can’t leave the country.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Oliver. That’s all you’re getting now. I don’t want you to look him up. I want nothing to trigger any notice of me in the system. He knows people in law enforcement. I’ve got until this afternoon before I’m alerted as missing.”
“You know this exactly?” he asked. “So someone is aware of what you’re doing, and if someone is, that means they can tell. They can let it be known to whoever is after you.”
She gulped. She had that fear, but they assured her it would not happen.
“I should be safe,” she said. “They do this a lot.”
“Who does what?” he asked.
His questions were calm and methodical. She was positive he was memorizing every detail she said like he always had in the past.
It came as no shock to see his career.
He was a protector at a young age. He could read a room and control a crowd.
He could tell when someone was hurt, sick, upset, or hiding something.
She’d never been able to hide much from him.
It’s probably why she was sitting here on his family’s property confessing.
Would she say it all?
No. No way.
Just like those that helped her didn’t know it all either.
They didn’t want it. It was better for everyone that way.
“You know what happened to me as a child,” she said. She still couldn’t bring herself to talk about the abuse at the hands of her mother and her mother’s boyfriends.
Never sexual. Her mother drew the line at that.
But she’d been a punching bag from her mother’s drunken and high rages.
The losers her mother hooked up with liked to join the party.
It was a miracle she wasn’t more messed up in the head than she was.
Considering what she did six days ago, she’d bet no one would say she was stable.
“You were abused,” he said. “I don’t know by who, but since it happened, your mother allowed it or was part of it.”
“Both,” Reenie said. “I left when I was eighteen. I promised myself I’d never get in that situation again.”
A sigh escaped, Ford’s deep brown eyes shut.
Oh, how she remembered those eyes for years.
So caring and concerned. Always watching out for her.
There was love behind them too. The youthful crush kind.
One that she never let herself experience. Or at least admit she felt.
Why bother when she knew she’d have to pick up and move again?
One school year was more than she’d thought she’d get with Ford. Longer than she’d had other places, especially when people started asking questions.
“But you were in an abusive relationship and are running from him now?” he asked. “Oliver?”
“Yes.” She pulled her sleeve up and showed him a scar. “He broke my arm about nine weeks ago. I had to have a pin put in it. That was one of a few things he’d done. Bruised ribs was another. You know, a trip on the stairs and slid down them hitting my side on the way.”
“Why lie?”
“Because he never left me alone to tell the truth,” she said.
“When you had surgery you could have? You could have told anyone,” he said.
“I could have, but it would have done no good. I’d left him once to stay with a friend and he found me and I ended up back after he made threats to me and them.”
His lower lip disappeared behind his bottom teeth. “It’s not important now.”
“No,” she said. There was no reason to go into all the stupid things she believed and the fears she’d lived with.
That Oliver wasn’t even the first abusive relationship she’d been in.
“So you left and he’s looking for you? How can you be so sure? Coming from Florida you have to have been on the road for a few days.”
Reenie laughed. A forced one.
“Six days. I’ve been mentally planning a way to escape for about six months.
Saving money and buying prepaid credit cards.
I had some cash. Not enough money as I would have liked, but I couldn’t let this opportunity pass.
I’d purchased this car about four weeks ago once I had the funds and was storing it with the people helping me. ”
“Why not go underground to escape?” he asked.
“I didn’t want to change my name. I didn’t want to not live a normal life. But I also didn’t want to have them think I was in another country. Oliver doesn’t know my mother is Canadian. He doesn’t know I’ve got a passport, let alone dual citizenship.”
“And if he can’t leave the country, then he’s got a criminal record?”
“DUI. Possession and assault charges. I didn’t know those things until the first time I ended up in the ER.”
“What was the reason you were there then?”
“That was my ribs.”
His fingers were in a tight fist. “How many ER visits did you have?”
“Three in nine months. The second was my jaw. I thought my jaw was broken, but it wasn’t. Oliver doesn’t even know I went. A coworker took me.”
“Reenie. People had to know. It’s so obvious.”
“I know,” she said, gulping. “And you’re the only one who ever tried to help. A twelve-year-old kid. Do you know what it’s like to not be invisible but people treat you as such?”
It amazed her the number of people who just wanted to stay out of it.
“My family would have helped too,” he said.
“I was too young to know those things. To trust them or anyone.”
He turned to look at her. His eyes were deep and troubled. Anguish in them for sure. “I thought you trusted me.”
She shook her head. “As much as two kids can.”
His mouth opened, then closed. “Tell me what happened the night you left. Why you thought it was your chance.”
Words tumbled out to him as they always did. He had a way about him to get her to confess tiny bits of her life no one else knew. “I came home from work. Someone had broken into the house. It was a mess. Oliver had been there with his cousin for at least two hours talking and doing nothing.”
“They didn’t call the police?” he asked.
“No. I told them to and they said they didn’t want them involved. It made no sense to me, but I learned to not argue much. Oliver had been on good behavior for the past two months.”
“Because he broke your arm and had people watching him,” he snarled.
“True. He was ordering me around to clean everything up after I made dinner. He acted like the house was just a mess and it was my job to fix it.”
“Did you?” he asked.
“Normally I would have, but I didn’t. I had to leave things the way they were. I cooked dinner and slipped two of his sleeping pills inside his burger. He’d had a couple of beers too. It didn’t take long for him to be out.”
“Good for you,” he said.
“Not what you’d advise people to do. I know.
It’d go against everything you stand for, but I only hoped to get away.
When he fell asleep so quickly, I panicked over the beer he’d had.
But he was out cold. I was making noises to see if anything woke him.
Dropped my dinner plate on the floor as if we’d gotten into a fight. I cut myself.”
She showed him four slices that were healing on her arms.
“Jesus. Why?”
“Blood,” she said. “I wanted enough of it. I made sure it was on the kitchen floor, my clothing, the carpet. Anywhere I could leave a trace. A bloody handprint as if I was pushed down the stairs.”
His mouth opened. “You staged it?”
“I hadn’t planned on that but thought it could work. Left my bloody clothes in the back of the closet as if he might have tried to hide it. I knew him; he’d be throwing clothes back in places without looking. He’d have no idea they had my blood all over them.”
“So when you’re reported missing today, the police are going to show up and search? I’m sure he would have cleaned any traces of the break-in and blood by now.”
“I cleaned them,” she said. “He wouldn’t have known I’d done it, but if they look for blood with those lights, they will find it as if he was trying to hide something.”
He huffed out a breath. “Why do this if you were leaving? It’s only going to draw more attention as people search.”
“It was to give me time to get away. To cross far into Canada where no one would hear about what was happening in Florida. But I had some car issues that set me back a day and then I’ve been trying not to be too obvious that I was traveling alone.”
“I spotted it right away,” he said. “Not even knowing who you were, it was the way you were acting.”
A sad smile filled her face. “I came here to say goodbye. The one place in my life that I felt somewhat normal. I had you to thank for that. I let my guard down and am paying for it now.”
“No,” he said. “You’re not paying for anything. He’s going to pay, but you’re safe here. I promise you that.”
“Ford. You can’t watch over me all the time. I need to work and live and he’ll find me at some point.”
“Do you want to leave the US? Leave and never return? Forever? Because you’ll always be looking over your shoulder if you’re that fearful of him. I know I’m not getting the entire story. There is more to it, but I won’t push right now.”
There was no use lying.
She’d lied enough in her life. Taught herself how to talk her way out of any situation if she was forced to even open her mouth.
It was how she got away. Acted like everything was fine with Oliver when deep down she was lying through her teeth.
“No. I don’t want to leave.”
What she wanted was to stay here forever, locked away from the pain, grief and hardships of her life.
The same way she’d felt twenty years ago.
It wasn’t realistic back then and wasn’t now either.
That didn’t seem to stop her from listening to what Ford had to say.
“Then you’re not. You planned your escape. I’m going to give you your freedom.”