The Fiercest Heart, page 3
The doctor who had been stitching her up stepped back to eye his work.
“I think that takes care of it,” he said. “Where’s your family? I’ll have the nurse tell them you’re ready to go home.”
Haley shook her head, slid off the gurney, paused a moment to steady herself, then headed toward the door.
“No, Miss Shore. You need to wait for your family,” the doctor said.
“I don’t have any,” she muttered, putting a hand to her rib cage as if to hold back the pain, and walked away. But she wasn’t leaving the hospital. Not until she’d seen Mack.
* * *
There was no one in the intensive care waiting room except the Brolins, who were taking turns going in to see their son.
When they looked up and saw Haley standing in the doorway, whatever anger they had left turned swiftly to shock. Her face was so swollen that, had she not still been wearing her graduation dress, they wouldn’t have recognized her.
Still, she was the last person they wanted to talk to.
“You have no business here,” Chloe Brolin said. “Go home, girl. Go home.”
Even though it hurt to breathe, Haley wouldn’t let them know how deeply she’d been wounded. She lifted her chin, defying them to deny her when she said, “I want to see Mack. I have to see him.”
“Well, you’re not going to, because he doesn’t want to see you. Ever,” Chloe snapped.
Haley reeled, the words shredding her soul.
“You’re lying,” she whispered.
“No. I’m not,” Chloe said. “You need to go home where you belong.”
Before Haley could stop them, tears suddenly welled and spilled down her cheeks.
“I don’t have a home,” she said. “The only place I ever belonged was with Mack.”
Haley stared at the Brolins, eyeing Tom and Chloe until, ashamed, they looked away, then her gaze slid to Mack’s sisters, Jenna and Carla.
“You people…what’s wrong with you people?” Haley whispered, then she turned around and walked away.
It took her an hour to walk home. By the time she got there, it was almost 2:00 a.m. She got the spare key from the birdhouse and let herself in the back door.
She couldn’t believe how this night had ended. This morning she’d been on top of the world, and less than twelve hours later, that world had been permanently shattered.
She paused in the kitchen, listening to the house. As she stood, she heard a slight pop as the water heater came on, followed by the hum of the refrigerator. There was a drip at the sink.
She shuddered and sighed.
Daddy never did turn the faucets far enough off.
The ache in her belly deepened. Daddy. He’d tried to kill her tonight. If it hadn’t been for the police, he might never have stopped beating her.
She took off her shoes and started through the house. There was a light on beneath her parents’ door as she passed it on her way down the hall. She didn’t bother to stop. There was nothing left to say to either of them. The fact that her brother was dead didn’t seem real, but she took no blame for it happening. He’d done it to himself, even after she’d begged him to stop.
When she got to her room, she stripped out of her dress and underwear, leaving everything in a pile in the floor as she went into the bathroom. A short while later, after having showered and washed the blood and glass from her hair, she dressed in an old pair of jeans and her softest T-shirt, then pulled a suitcase from the back of her closet.
Her face was expressionless as she began packing it with only the necessities, trying not to think of the things she was leaving behind: toys she’d saved from her childhood; her grandmother’s wedding dress, which had been bequeathed to her; all the things she’d been saving for her own home that were stored in her hope chest.
She didn’t remember, until she was looking for ID, that her diploma was most likely lying somewhere along the highway, with her purse. She would stop by Chief Bullard’s office in the morning to see if anyone had found it when they’d towed in the cars.
Finally there was no more room left in the bag or her small backpack. She sat down on the side of the bed, then stood again. She was in so much pain she knew she couldn’t sleep. She downed a couple of painkillers, got her checkbook and the passbook to her savings account and added them to the rest of the stuff in the backpack.
Just before she started to close the bag, she remembered Mack’s photo. She kept it taped to the back of her dresser mirror. She took it down, then removed a family photo from a frame on the wall and put Mack’s photo in it instead.
Her heart was broken. Mack might not want anything to do with her anymore, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love him. She put the newly framed photo inside her backpack and slung it over her shoulders, then wheeled the suitcase out of her room.
It made no sound on the carpeted hallway floor, and once she got to the kitchen, she picked it up and carried it the rest of the way out of the house. The last thing she wanted was to look at her parents again. As far as she was concerned, her entire family—not just Stewart—had died tonight.
Her car was still in the garage. It had been a present from her grandmother on her sixteenth birthday. The title was in her name, which was good, because she was taking it with her.
She tossed her things into the trunk, then backed out of the garage and drove away without once looking back.
* * *
When the bank opened at 9:00 a.m. the next morning, Haley was waiting at the door. She’d already been to the police department, and recovered her purse and diploma. Chief Bullard had been kind and gentle, asking if she wanted to press charges against her father, which she promptly refused.
She’d walked out of the department with a hand to her midsection. The more time passed, the stiffer and sorer she became. She knew what she looked like: as if she’d been through a wreck, which she had, and beaten to a pulp, which she also had. She felt shattered in every way that mattered, but she still had her pride.
She passed through the bank lobby without looking to her right or her left, and walked straight up to the first teller she saw.
“I want to withdraw my savings,” she said, and put her passbook on the counter. “I’ll take fifteen hundred dollars in cash, and the rest in traveler’s checks.”
Stars Crossing was a small town. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. They knew her brother had died in a wreck last night, and that Mack Brolin’s athletic career had come to an end in the same wreck. And they also knew the only common denominator between them was the girl at the window.
They also knew that her father had been arrested for assaulting her, and that her mother wished her dead.
The teller’s heart ached for Haley, but there was nothing to be said.
“Do you want that fifteen hundred dollars in big bills?” she asked.
Haley thought about it for a moment, then said, “All of it in hundreds except for four hundred dollars. I’ll take that in twenties.”
“I’ll have to get an okay to—”
Haley stiffened, and then her voice rose. “An okay for what? It’s my money! I’ve spent the past seven summers of my life working for it. It’s in my name, and my name only, and I’m of age. You don’t need anyone’s permission except mine to hand it over.”
The bank president heard the commotion and hurried to the window to put out the fire.
“Do as she asks,” he told the teller, and then gently laid a hand on Haley’s shoulder. “We’re so sorry for your loss,” he said softly. Haley nodded.
Twenty minutes later, she was in her car and heading out of Stars Crossing.
She never looked back.
CHAPTER 3
Dallas, Texas
Ten years later: November
“Easy now, Mr. Wyatt… Let me move your leg for you, okay?”
“’Kay, Ha-ley. I kee for-geh you in sharge.”
Haley grinned at the elderly gentleman on her exercise table, proud of how far he’d come since the stroke he’d suffered six months earlier. His first trip to therapy he’d been unable to speak, and the entire right side of his body had been paralyzed. Now he smiled and spoke, albeit a little slowly and not always with perfect clarity, and he was making good progress on regaining mobility, however limited.
Her entire life revolved around her patients, and when she wasn’t at the physical therapy facility where she was employed, she was usually making house calls.
She rarely thought about her life before Dallas, and when she did, it was only briefly. Even now, after ten long years, the pain of what she’d lost was brutally real.
A short while later, a timer went off and Haley eased Mr. Wyatt’s withered leg down slowly, then helped him sit up.
“That’s it for today. How do you feel?”
“Re-dy ta dans.”
“Dance? Wow! Then I’d better warn Millie to shine up her dancing shoes.”
The old man laughed. Millie lived at the same nursing home as he did, and he’d informed Haley months ago that Millie was his girl.
Haley marveled that at their age they were still optimistic enough to want a romance. She’d decided long ago that relationships weren’t worth the effort it took to keep them alive and thrown herself into her job instead.
She helped Mr. Wyatt into his wheelchair, then pushed him back to the lobby, where a driver was waiting to take him back to the nursing home.
“Here you go,” she said. “Do your exercises like I showed you. Stay out of trouble, and I’ll see you again in about a week, okay?”
The old man grinned and winked, and then he was gone.
Haley glanced at the clock as she turned back around, and then frowned. Where had the afternoon gone? It was already quitting time.
She moved to the employee lounge, clocked out, gathered up her things and then, with a casual wave to another employee on her way out, she was gone.
Haley had decided years ago that Dallas traffic at five o’clock in the afternoon was, most surely, the road to the ninth gate of hell.
By the time she pulled up to her apartment building and parked, it was dark. She paused inside the car long enough to ensure that the path to the apartment building appeared safe, and then she got out.
The air was cold and felt damp, like it might snow. She pulled her coat collar up around her neck as she started toward the front door—her long legs making short work of the distance.
Once inside, she nodded to the security guard.
“Hi, Marsh…how’s it going?”
Marshall French, a widower from Austin, had retired twice, but at sixty-seven, had been bored staying at home and had taken this job for something to do. He admired this tall, elegant woman with green eyes and thick, dark hair, but he didn’t know anything more about her now than he had the day he’d taken this job two years earlier.
“Fine, just fine,” he said, then handed her her mail. “Have a nice evening.”
“You too,” Haley said, then put the mail under her arm and walked into the elevator without looking back.
She chose the seventh floor, then leaned against the elevator wall as the car began to move silently upward. Once the door opened, she took a right and within ten steps was at her door. She thrust her key in the lock almost without looking and, once inside, turned and locked the door behind her—turning all three locks before she even took off her coat.
She never felt safe. Not since the night when the world had abandoned her. Even though she had no reason to fear living alone, she did. The three locks were her security blanket, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit it.
It was the sound of those three metallic clicks that signaled safe haven for Haley. She hung her coat in the hall closet, dumped her bag and keys on the table, then scanned her assortment of mail.
There were a half dozen envelopes and a couple of magazines—Taste of Home and her favorite, Southern Living. She tossed everything on the kitchen counter as she passed through on her way to her room. She did nothing at home until she’d shed her scrubs and showered. It was a mental “putting aside” of her professional self so she could relax.
Afterward, dressed in old sweats and a long-sleeved tee, Haley was leafing through the rest of the mail as she poured Coke into a glass full of ice when she noticed the postmark on a legal-size envelope.
Stars Crossing, Kentucky.
At that point, she froze. Coke slopped over the top of the glass and onto the counter, bringing her back to reality. By the time she’d cleaned up the mess, she had braced herself to open the envelope.
All she knew was, whatever it said—whoever it was from—it couldn’t be good.
Your father is dead.
Haley staggered, then braced herself against the cabinets, shocked that she felt any kind of emotion at the news. What was left of her family had been dead to her for so long that she hardly ever thought about what had come before Dallas—except for Mack. No matter how hard she’d tried, he still haunted her dreams. Her response to this news had taken her completely by surprise. She pulled herself together and looked back at the letter.
His funeral service will be held Saturday, November 13, at 3:00 p.m., with a family/friends supper afterward at the First Baptist Church.
“That’s tomorrow. Pretty obvious I’m not wanted if they waited this long to let me know,” Haley muttered, then took a deep, shuddering breath, tossed the letter down on the counter and walked away. Her heart was racing, her thoughts tumbling from one scenario to another.
Why now—after all these years—would her mother even bother? Assuming it even was her mother who’d sent the impersonally typed and unsigned letter.
After her first year in Dallas, Haley had been the one to wave the white flag by sending her parents a quick note, telling them where she was and what she was doing. She stuffed it into an envelope and mailed it at the same time she mailed her weekly letter to Mack. He never answered, but for a while she’d thought her mother might. She waited for a reply for almost a month, then accepted the fact that no one cared and never wrote again. A year later she gave in to the inevitable and stopped writing to Mack, too.
A few minutes later Haley returned to the kitchen. The letter was still on the cabinet—like a bomb, waiting to detonate. If she went back, what wounds would she open? She’d spent years building a wall around her heart. She didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to hope—didn’t want to care—like that ever again.
“I’ll sleep on it,” she said aloud, then fixed herself some supper, did some chores, paid a few bills and finally did an hour of Pilates just because she was afraid to go to bed and close her eyes. She didn’t want to remember.
But maybe this would be the way to end the bitterness she still lived with. Maybe going back would be what she needed to move forward with her life, rather than the imposed lockdown in which she’d been existing.
It was after 10:00 p.m. when she finally went to bed, and, as usual, Mack Brolin came calling in her sleep.
* * *
Haley was standing beside an immense body of water. When she turned to get her bearings, she saw a large weeping willow, with low-hanging limbs that swept the ground. The place looked familiar, but it took her a few moments to realize it was where she and Mack used to go to make love.
As she watched, the branches parted and Mack stepped out, waving for her to come closer. She tried to move, but her legs wouldn’t work. He kept urging her—begging her to come—but she couldn’t seem to move. And then Mack’s image began to fade, which increased her anxiety even more. Just before he disappeared from sight, she heard him call out, “Go home.”
And then he was gone.
* * *
Haley woke up with a start, her heart pounding, her body bathed in sweat, even though the room was cool. She threw back the covers, then glanced at the clock as she sat up. Just before midnight. The dream had been weird, but it solidified her next move.
“What the hell could it hurt?” she asked herself, then got up, pausing in the hallway long enough to turn up the heat before heading for the kitchen.
Her steps were long, her stride purposeful—almost angry. She didn’t want this, but it was here just the same. She started the coffeepot, then headed to the extra bedroom, got a suitcase from the closet and returned to her room.
By the time the apartment was warm enough to be comfortable, she was already dressed and packed. She emailed her employer that she was going home for her father’s funeral, and to please reschedule her patients’ appointments or give them to someone else.
She filled her to-go cup with hot, black coffee, then made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, stuffed it into a Baggie and dropped it into her purse. If she didn’t dawdle, she just might get back to Stars Crossing in time to see her father buried. It wasn’t what she wanted to do—but there were lots of things in life that were unpleasant and still had to be done. This came under that heading.
Within minutes she was out the door and in the elevator. The night guard was asleep at the reception desk as she passed by. She didn’t bother to speak and just kept on walking. Thirty minutes later, she was on the crosstown expressway, pushing past the speed limit with a lump in her throat and a knot in her belly. She wasn’t sure if she was going back for the funeral or from a subconscious hope she would see Mack. Either way, the outcome was unlikely to be good.
* * *
Saturday dawned in Stars Crossing with a raw wind and a threat of rain. Not a good day for a funeral, although weather didn’t really mean much on such occasions. There was never a good day for a funeral.
Lena Shore stared at herself in the mirror, practicing expressions. Once she’d been a pretty girl, but disappointments and grief had taken that away. Now her expression was most often either dissatisfied or grim. The frown lines between her eyebrows and at the corners of her eyes had long ago become permanent and deep.
While she’d been bound to Judd Shore by their marriage and her lies, that part of her life was finally over, and she wasn’t going to pretend to herself that she was sad. Still, there was a certain cachet to being a widow, and she intended to use it to her best advantage. She smoothed her hands down the front of her dress, giving herself a mental pat on the back for giving in to impulse and buying this dress a couple of months ago. With Judd’s bad heart, this day had always been a possibility. She would never have admitted to herself that she was planning for his funeral, but when the opportunity had presented itself last week, she had done nothing to stop Judd’s fate.
