“I’ll be your safety.”
It’s easy to believe.He’seasy to believe. And believe in.
I wanted to say yes. Considering how long it’s been since I’ve been able to make all the decisions in my own life, I did what I wanted. I’ll just have to ignore the brain worm telling me I did wrong.
He invited me over to meet his parents last night. I only briefly stopped by, saying hello to both of them and Paige before I returned home and gave them time to catch up with Juliet. I know she’s missed them; she spoke of them often while we were out.
Instead of intruding on their time, I snuck home and fantasized about how tonight might go. Sleep brought dreams of Grady, and I woke up happy.
Until the real world barged through my thinly constructed walls and trampled over my fragile peace.
They’re not pursuing charges.
Two steps forward, one step back. Or is it one step forward, two steps back? Some days, it’s hard to tell.
Juliet is as upset as me when I share the news with her over coffee. Maggie, Grady’s mother, knocks on the back door during Juliet’s angry rant. I let her in with a sad smile for a hello.
“Is this a bad time? Grady hasn’t replaced the coffeepot, evidently. I’m not enough of a morning person to start the day without caffeine.”
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “I got some bad news, and Jules is letting the universe know she’s not happy about it.”
“Oh no, nothing too horrible, I hope,” she says.
“It’s very fucking horrible,” Juliet says. “Excuse my language, Maggie.”
“You’ve never had to censor yourself around me before,” she says. Maggie is a pretty woman, frail, probably from the cancer treatments, but still quite youthful looking. There are only slight signs of crow’s feet and graying at the temples of her stylish pixie cut. “Don’t you dare fucking start now.”
“I like you,” I tell her.
“Well, good. Then maybe you’ll take pity on me with a cup of coffee. And perhaps tell me what this trouble is. I might be able to help.”
Grady must get this part of his personality from Maggie, because, like him, I want to tell her the things I’ve hidden from others. All three of us take our mugs and move outside to drink it with the sea as our backdrop. I start from the beginning.
Or the beginning of Pierre and me, anyway.
While I don’t give her all the worst details or every horrible thing he did to me, I do relay the most important points. How he love-bombed me at the start and slowly let his monster show.
An hour and many tears later, we’re at the part of how I ended up in Stowaway.
“I don’t know why he stopped when he did. He must have realized how close I was,” I say. “Maybe it scared him. I can’t say. But he took his hands from my neck and walked outside. I was able to call 911.”
I saw death that night. A darkness settled upon my vision, quickly bleeding in around the edges. There was no light at the end of a tunnel, only Pierre’s face, red with rage, spittle flying as he yelled words I couldn’t hear. Everything went silent, quiet as a grave six feet deep. Whoever says peace comes at death, has never come close to it.
“She called me from the hospital,” Juliet says. “I was ready to get on the next flight from Milan, but she’s stubborn as hell.”
“I needed a place to hide out, not a hand to hold,” I say in weak defense.
“Sounds like you needed both, dear,” Maggie says, reaching over and patting my hand. “I’m glad you had Juliet to support you through it. And Irma would love that you’re here healing, though it must have been terrifying moving to a strange place with only a strange man as a neighbor.”
“Grady lost his scariness quickly,” I tell her.
“He’s a good man. Protective and proud.”
“He’s a pain in the ass,” Juliet says.
“That too,” Maggie agrees with a laugh.
After refilling our mugs, we talk more. Maggie is inquisitive in a motherly way. I never get the impression of judgment, just concern.For me.A woman she only just met. My own mother doesn’t show this much care for me.
