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“Ava’s in the guest room,” I said.
Mom walked down the hall, knocking on Ava’s door. I turned back to my cooking. By the time I had the meal plated and on the table, Ava and my mother emerged from the guest room. Ava looked a lot more composed than she had before. She wasn’t crying and her shoulders were straight.
Her hair was down, and it framed her face in a way I didn’t usually get to see. I remembered our erotic play in the office and how her body looked stretched out beneath mine. I knew the curve of her breasts and the slope of her backside.
I shook my head. It was not the time for such thoughts. She was vulnerable and shaken. I needed to be supportive, not seductive. The two women sat down to eat, and I joined them. There was no space for small talk, and neither of them were comfortable enough with the subject to discuss it in front of me.
It was an awkward meal, and when we were done, I stood up quickly. “You guys can go continue your conversation. I’ll clean up.”
They followed my suggestion without complaint, walking out to the porch. I watched them through the window, my mother and my…? What was Ava to me? She was obviously my secretary, but I felt like there was something more. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend; we weren’t husband and wife. And yet, there was some possessive component to what I was doing for her. I didn’t want anyone to mess with her because it made her scared and sad, but also because I thought of her asmine. No one should mess with something or someone that belonged to me. If that bastard came around again, I would make him pay.
Chapter 22
Ava
Talking with Mariah calmed me down. Just as I suspected, she knew all about abusive exes. She gave me advice and listened as I spoke. We wound our way through my entire relationship, right up to the end.
“It is strange that he’s become so possessive months after the end of the relationship,” Mariah said.
“It totally blindsided me,” I agreed. “I mean, where was all this affection when we were dating? He didn’t love me.”
“He still doesn’t,” Nate’s mom said. “It’s more about power and dominance than it is about love. He used to have you in his life to control, and now he doesn’t. He’s missing that piece.”
I frowned, unable to fit the entire puzzle together.
“When you were together, did he tell you how to do things? How to wash the dishes or how to dress, that type of thing?”
“All the time,” I exclaimed. “I could never do anything right. I thought that’s why he started cheating on me, because I didn’t live up to his standards.”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmured. “I’ve seen it before. For him, it is less about the specific things he wants you to do, although he might think that’s what it was about. But he really just wants to control you.”
I lowered my head down to my chest in exhaustion. Even talking about Marcus was draining. I wished that he would just go away and leave me alone. He had his chance, and he ruined it for both of us.
“There was a time when I would have been excited to receive flowers from him,” I admitted.
“Of course,” Mariah said. “These abusers are often very charming in the beginning.”
I was having a hard time thinking of Marcus as an abuser. Even after his unwanted texts and unwanted flowers, I didn’t want to consider myself a battered woman. He never hit me, so I suppose technically I wasn’t abused. That was a comforting thought, but one I didn’t share. Mariah seemed so sure of herself and her knowledge of my situation. I didn’t want to interrupt her wisdom with facts.
Suddenly, I thought about my own mother and wished that I could be with her instead. It wasn’t that Mariah was unhelpful. She was enormously helpful. She was the one person who was kind enough and experienced enough to show me the way. But she was so different from my own mom, and that just made me miss my family more.
I grew up in a small town in Virginia, and my parents expected me to go to community college and take a job as a dental assistant or a secretary in the elementary school. Mom was forever showing me “ladylike” career paths that might lead to a husband and children down the road. She was appalled when I decided to pursue journalism. To her mind, it wasn’t an appropriate calling for a single young woman.
I stood my ground, applying to college in Boston. When I was accepted, she basically disowned me. She threw me out and told me not to come back. It began what had apparently turned into a tradition. Although back then, I was able to move into the dorms, and I wasn’t actually homeless.
Still, it hurt. Even after all these years, my mother stuck to her guns. She didn’t contact me and I didn’t contact her. Talking to Mariah just made that wound a little more obvious. I wished for what Nate had: enough money never to worry about sleeping in his car, and a family that cared about him. Even his father, though I understood there was some bad blood there, cared enough to come around and try to talk to his son.
I didn’t want to dwell. Explaining my situation would only have made it more painful. I stuck to the current dilemma and allowed Mariah to think all my tears were just because of Marcus.
“Are you staying the night here?” I asked her. The sun was starting to lower, turning the horizon orange and red.
“No, sweetheart,” Mariah said, standing up. “In fact, I have to go. You’ll be safe with Nate.”
“But for how long?” I wondered.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mariah replied. “We’ll send someone around to collect all of your things, and we can move you to a different apartment.”
“What if he finds me there?” I demanded. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to feel safe on my own again. If Marcus could find me in one hideout, he could find the next. I was sure of it.
