Lennox made another face of disgust.
“He was a drunk, and when he drank, he got violent.I’ve had every rib in my body broken, my pinky finger snapped at least three times.”I held up my left hand to show him the crooked little digit.“So many black eyes.For a few years, I thought I had tinnitus because I couldn’t get rid of this incessant ringing in my ears.It started after he knocked me hard into the wall, and I fell and hit my head on the coffee table.I woke up to him on top of me, and I had no pants on.”
“Naomi—” my name croaked out of him.
“I’m fine talking about it if you are okay hearing it.If not, I can stop.”
He bunched his empty fist on his thigh, and a muscle ticked at the corner of his jaw.“Go on.”
“Anyway.I miscarried a few times, then eventually, I got pregnant with Austin.It was a rough pregnancy and a difficult labor.He came out sunny side up, which is not ideal, and had to be in the NICU for a week because he was a little early and his lungs weren’t fully developed.Ephram roughed me up pretty badly when he got the hospital bill for that.”
“Your husband is dead, right?”
“Yes.”
I made sure of it.
“Good.”
“It wasn’t until he went after an eighteen-month-old Austin with a belt—while I was pregnant with Honor—that I found the courage to leave”
“How did you escape?”
I glanced out the front window and watched three gulls, their wings open wide, bobbing up and down on the gusts.I’d dreamed for far too long to be that free.And now I was.
“Ephram died,” I finally said, not looking at him.“Heart attack.”
“Well, that was convenient.”
Sliding my eyes sideways at him, all I did was nod.
“And your aunt welcomed you to the island?”
“With open arms.Gabrielle had already escaped her husband, but she was living in Spokane.She wanted to go to college.I came right to the island.Honor was born in the living room where we ate pizza and played games last night, then when Gabrielle moved here, the kids and I moved to the cottage in the woods.It has three bedrooms, and it’s small, but cozy and completely ours.”
“Why’d you give up the house?”
I shrugged.“I loved the cottage.There’s just something so magical and whimsical about it.Shake siding, a woodstove that keeps it toasty in the winter, and my bedroom is a loft with a great view of the vineyard.It’s the perfect safe space for me and my kids.”
“Naomi …”
I really liked the way he said my name.It was slightly breathless and almost like a sigh.My chest fluttered every time he did it.
At some point, we’d switched our hands, and now he was rubbing his thumb back and forth over my knuckles.I gasped when he tightened his grip and hauled me toward him and onto his lap.I sat sideways, my back against the driver’s side door.
“Do I get to know more of your story?”I asked, tentatively reaching up and tracing my finger across his scar.“Where is your birth mother?Your father?”
“Dead.And in prison.”
I frowned.“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry about my mother, not about my father.”
All I did was nod.
With a weary sigh, he kept his gaze focused out the front window.“I never could get a straight answer out of my dad about how my mom died.One time he told me it was a car accident.Another time he told me a stroke.Then he once said she killed herself.”
“Do … do you think he killed her?”
