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Her phone rang.
Charity swallowed past the lump in her throat as she stared at the device. She hadn’t spoken with her sister in months.
“Hello?”
“Cherry, you okay? You sound sick?” Charity fought back both a smile at the sound of her sister’s voice and a swell of revulsion at the nickname.
He had used it often. Sweetly at first, then more and more mockingly until—by the end—she had cringed every time he said it in that sickeningly tender, taunting way of his.
Cherry baby, you’re mine. All mine. My cherry little Cherry.
“Uh…I’m fine,” Charity said, beating back the memory of that voice. Of how he would call her…playfully stretching the nickname out over several syllables while he hunted for her. He had taken a sweet—somewhat silly—nickname, bestowed upon her by her loving family and he had weaponized it. Turned it into something ugly and repulsive.
“Look, Gracie’s birthday is coming up, and I want you here.”
Charity was well aware that her niece was turning six next month but had hoped she could get away with sending a gift and making a phone call.
“Faith, things are crazy here. My boss showed up unannounced and…”
“We’re having a party,” Faith interjected. “And she’s asked if you’ll be here.”
“The timing is—”
“I told her you would be here,” her sister interrupted again.
“My boss has been ill. I can’t simply up and leave without warning.”
“Charity, it’s been three years.” Her sister’s voice—gentle and laden with empathy—undid her. So much sympathy, love, and understanding.
But Faith didn’t understand, not really. None of them did.
“I won’t pretend to know why you’ve felt the need to uproot and move to the middle of nowhere. I thought after Blaine…you’d want to pick up where you left off with your career. Instead you put your life on hold to become a frikken housekeeper. I recognize that you needed the space, and we thought we were doing the right thing in giving it to you. But we shouldn’t have done that. You need us. You need your family. We should never have allowed you to grieve alone. Because you haven’t healed at all, have you? You can’t move past this. We all miss Blaine, Cherry. We all loved him as much as you did, and we’re all grieving his loss. But when you left, it felt like we lost you too.”
They thought that she grieved for him. Missed him, loved him…that man. Her husband, Blaine Thomas Davenport. The man who had beaten her, kicked her, raped her, abused her almost every day of their three-year marriage. The man who had tried to kill on her that last horrific night.
Her family thought he had been a good man, and they mourned his loss.
Watching them cry over him had proven impossible to do, and Charity had begged her attorney, the only person on this earth who knew her truth, to help her find a place to hide. To lick her wounds in private. Mr. Lanscombe had found this position for her…he’d practically had it created for her. He had known Miles’s family attorney and had called in a favor.
And Charity had fled.
Something that she should have done during those three long years of abuse. She hated herself for not leaving him. For making every excuse under the sun until she had run out of excuses and instead found herself acknowledging that she was weak, stupid, and powerless. It had been her lowest point. He had owned her after that.
Body and soul.
“Cherry?” She snapped back to the present at the sound of her sister’s voice and realized that her face was wet with tears. She stared blindly out of the kitchen window and was alarmed to see Miles coming up the path. He caught her gaze and his brow lowered, but she turned away and scrubbed the edge of her sleeve over her damp cheeks.
“Faith, I can’t come. I have responsibilities here,” she said, hoping her sister wouldn’t hear the betraying husk in her voice.
“Cherry, you have a family who loves you, please come home.”
A familiar refrain.
“I’ll consider it. If I…if I can find a way to…” Her voice tapered off when the backdoor opened, and she kept her face averted, not wanting Miles’s perceptive gaze to spot any trace of tears on her cheeks.
“Everybody would love to see you. Sandra and Paul will be there too. They’ve been so lost since…since it happened. It would be wonderful if they could spend time with you again.”
Charity knew that, and it was the main reason she did not want to go to her niece’s party. Sandra and Paul Davenport, her husband’s parents. She had stopped thinking of them as her parents-in-law around the same time she had comprehended that they knew about Blaine’s abuse of her.
