Page 54 of Lethal Weakness

“I know.”

“You should have told someone!”

I shrug. “Who could I tell? We were already married at that point, and my situation was the same as it is now. His family owned me. I had a newborn baby without any place to go, no job, no childcare. I was stuck.”

“You could have told me,” he says under his breath. “If I had known you then, I would have gotten you out.”

He’s so serious, I have to believe it, but the past is in the past. There’s no changing it now.

“Yeah, where were you three and a half years ago?” I tease, trying to lighten the mood.

“The Middle East, probably.”

Our eyes clash, but I know it would be wasted breath to ask him any follow-up questions. So, I don’t.

“Tell me something else. About when you were a kid,” I say instead.

He finally joins me back on the steps, breathing deeply as he thinks. He takes his hat in his hands, rubbing his thumb absently over the middle where a team emblem would go… Except now that I look closely, I can see that it might’ve been there once, but it’s gone and faded instead.

“I grew up outside of Boston. We moved to South Dakota when I was 11.”

“Oh, wow. Why?”

He shakes his head, shutting down that question, and I sigh.

“That one isn’t really a secret. Just not something I like to talk about.”

“Okay,” I relent, respecting his boundaries.

Just because I’m an open book doesn’t mean he has to be.

“The Boston Red Sox were my favorite team growing up. When I was still a naive kid, I thought I’d play in the MLB one day,” he admits listlessly.

“I’ve never been to a professional baseball game.”

“You’d love it. It’s easy to follow. The crowd roars. You’d fit right in. Avery would love it too,” he says confidently, making me smile.

“When’s the last time you went to a game?”

“Long time ago.”

The way he says it makes me think he really means a lifetime ago.

We sit in comfortable silence for a while because I’m stuck in limbo. I don’t want to go inside and pretend everything is okay. All I want to do is count down the minutes until I can get Avery.

Jack seems to understand that, not bothering to try to sway me from this spot.

Every time I get the notion that it might be safe enough for me to skip town with my daughter, something like this happens and reminds me that I’m fighting a losing battle.

Years ago when I started my plan to leave Turner, I was determined to be gone and settled into my new life by the time Avery started preschool. Now we’re months away from her turning four, and I’m still trapped.

There are no schools in Twinflower, and I can’t afford to live or send her to school in Noddingbell. And I definitely don’t want a single handout from her grandparents.

All I wanted for Avery was a decent home, a good school, and a place where she would make so many friends that she didn’t miss her lack of family.

That dream seems out of reach at this point.

My phone alarm rings, and Jack looks at me as I silence it. “I knew if I didn’t set an alarm that I would be constantly checking the time.”