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“Today is the ninth…” I thought back to last week. “Oh, that was last Tuesday and Wednesday. It was raining all that week,he couldn’t do any jobs. He was here with me almost the entire time, except once when we went to his parents’ house, and once when we went to church over the weekend.”
The cops looked at each other, then back at me. “He spent the whole time here with you?” One asked.
The boys chose that exact moment to start screaming at each other, but it dissolved into a fit of giggles. I opened the door a little wider. “I’ll give you two guesses about what kept us occupied.”
The cops looked relieved and accepted my story. The man holding the notepad flipped it closed and put it in his back pocket. “Thanks for your time, ma’am.”
“Is everything okay, officer?”
“Yes ma’am, everything is fine. We got a complaint of a broken restraining order in Texas, but if he was here with you…”
Restraining order? What the actual hell?
“Yes, and you can ask the pastor of Mountainside Baptist church. We went on Wednesday night for a kid’s play night, and Drew and the pastor spoke for some time.”
They nodded. “We will. Thanks again for your time, ma’am.” They turned and left, and I watched them get in their car and drive away towards Cullowhee and the little church that held Drew’s alibi.
Why on earth did Andrew have a restraining order?I paced, listening to the boys playing, trying to figure out what to do next. Reality seemed to slam into place.
I knew hardly anything about this man. I’d been living with him for over half a year and barely knew him, and he didn’t really talk.
I called the first person who popped into my head. Marcy Baker, as much as I didn’t prefer her company, seemed to have the scoop on everything going on around town. And I didn’twant to come right out and ask his parents, because I was sure they’d assume I knew already.
“Hey Marcy, it’s Maria. Do you have a minute?”
“As much as I’m gonna get with a three-year-old lunatic child. What’s up, Maria?”
I took a deep breath and forced the words out as bluntly as possible. “Do you know why Andrew would have a restraining order?”
A hesitation for a moment, and then a long sigh. “Yep,” she said. I heard a flick of a lighter and I held my breath while she lit up.
“Marcy. Any day now.”
“Sorry. It’s a long story. I don’t know all the details.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t told you about it.”
“You’re surprised that Andrew didn’ttalkto me?”
“Eh… fair enough. Okay, here’s what I know. A few years ago, four or five maybe? He was fuckin’ this girl.”
I rolled my eyes.Marcy, always so eloquent with her words.
“She lied and told him she was single, but she was actually married. Ruth? Ruby? I can’t remember…Sutton. Ruth Sutton. That was it. Anyway, he got her pregnant but they didn’t know until the baby came out and it wasn’t white. Her husband kicks her out of the house, tells her he wants nothing to do with her and the bastard kid, right?” She took another long pull on her cigarette and exhaled slowly.
My whole body felt numb. I didn’t answer.
“So Ruth moves in with Andy and he’s taking care of her and the kid, but after a few days, she disappears. Just vanishes. He has no idea where she’s gone, and she took the kid with her. A few weeks later, he gets a restraining order put on him from out west somewhere in Kansas, or Texas or something. Turnsout Ruth’s old man is Chief of Police, and she made up some tale about how he was hitting her. I think she was worried he was gonna try to get the kid, so she lied and said he had hurt her. And since her daddy was in charge, he went with it. Put a restraining order on him, sent him a letter warning him to stay away. How’d you find out about it all?”
“Cops showed up asking where he was last week.”
“Probably at home with you, considering all that rain. You workin’ on your third yet?”
“Thanks for the details, Marcy.” I hung up the phone, my tongue feeling like a foreign object in my mouth.
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel anything. I kept running through the story Marcy told me, trying to see things differently than how they looked. Maybe there was more to the story. Maybe, like Marcy had said, Ruth was a liar. Andrew had never shown any level of violence towards me or the boys whatsoever. I’d always felt safe with him. That had to be a lie.
