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I remembered the day clearly. I had been in my room, and my old man was going about his usual late-night beatings downstairs. I had tried to shut out my mom’s cries, had tried to ignore the gamut of insults he was throwing at her, but in the end, it had been too much. I guess it was anger, maybe fear, but definitely a loathing towards how much power the man had over me and my mom. I remembered screaming at him from upstairs to stop. I remembered the anger on his face when he came up after me. I remembered the rage that had given his fists an extra bit of strength as he slammed them into me.
And I remembered being so pissed off and scared that I had fought back and pushed him down the stairs.
My old man died in a wheelchair from a heart attack. My mother disowned me, which I thought was a fucking hoot. When she died, I didn’t even attend the funeral. All things considered, I didn’t have a family. The people who called themselves my parents were only two idiots who brought me into this world, probably by mistake, and had left me with nothing when they left. The station was my home; the men and women who served in it my family. I had made my peace with that a long time ago.
I turned around just as Bobby made his way back around the truck, a look of concern mixed with what I could only assume was anger on his face. It was a foreign look to me, and immediately put me on edge.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s Andrea,” Bobby said.
I stood up quickly. I had hardly known Bobby’s little sister, but I had heard enough to make me take the look on his face a lot more seriously. Bobby had told me about her marriage, the abuse she was taking, and how, like my mother, she didn’t seem to want to do anything about it. I knew Dennis Canfield. We went to school together, and despite the good looks and charm, he was a Class A asshole.
“Is she alright?” I asked. My mind immediately went to hospital rooms and broken bones. I had warned Bobby about this several times, but I knew that if Andrea didn’t ask for help, didn’t want it, then there was very little he could do.
“She’s calling from the road,” Bobby said, still glaring at his phone as if he were watching her through it. “Says she’s coming home. That she’s leaving Dennis.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Good going, Andrea.”
Bobby pocketed his phone and looked past me, his eyes moving rapidly right and left while he contemplated the situation. “Yeah,” he said.
“Hey, man, that’s a good thing,” I said. “You want her out of that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Bobby said, shaking the stupor out of him. “I just didn’t expect it. She seemed so strung up on that asshole, I figured the only time she’d call me was to tell me she was in the hospital.”
“I get it,” I said. “But she isn’t.”
“No, she isn’t,” Bobby nodded.
“You’re supposed to be happy about this.”
Bobby looked at me, through me even, lost in his thoughts. “No, I am, really,” he assured me. “It’s just very much out of the blue. And in the middle of the night. I think she just packed her things and left.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, until he follows her.”
I smiled. “When he does, we’ll be here waiting,” I said. “I’ve put one wife beater into a wheelchair. I have no problems doing it again.”
Chapter 5: Andrea
He’s going to kill me. He’s going to find some way to catch up to me and kill me.
The thought wouldn’t leave my head. Even with my foot pushing down on the gas, knowing that Dennis would be too drunk to follow me tonight at least, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just a few cars behind me. I tried to calm myself down, sticking to the speed limit as best as I could. I didn’t need to be pulled over; not now, not while I was running.
My only wish was that I reach Mansfield before I ran out of courage. A few miles back, a part of me had wanted to turn around and go home. Deal with a drunkard and his beatings, go to sleep with bruises I could hopefully hide, and then head to work the next morning as if nothing had happened. It would be easier dealing with Dennis’s wrath now than later. If he put two and two together, if he came looking for me in Mansfield, he’d be in the mood for more than just a beating.
Bobby will protect me. I can count on Bobby.
Only, my brother didn’t really sound so convinced himself. I had stopped for gas when I called him, and his voice had sounded a little too anxious for my liking. I would have thought he’d be ecstatic about my leaving Dennis. Maybe even throw me a welcome home party or something. Instead, I got the stuttered reply of someone who wasn’t too sure if I was doing the right thing or not. Which worried me. A lot.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter and tried to fight the urge to look in the rearview mirror every five seconds. The voice inside my head was telling me that there was no way Dennis could catch up to me now. That I was too far gone for that to happen, and besides, it would take him hours before he could think straight. But he wasn’t stupid. He’d know the first place I’d go to would be Mansfield. It would only be a matter of time before he came looking for me.
He thinks you’re on bad terms with your family. He might not think
to follow you home.
Oh, who the fuck was I kidding?
