job at the supermarket to help with the bills.
Every now and then, Jack would find a few bucks when things were dire. He’d say a big job had paid off. In her heart, Rhonda suspected Jack was gambling again but she never questioned him because his payoffs had always saved them.
Still, Jack’s temper seethed near the surface as he complained about his business and not having the freedom to live the way a man should. He seemed to be battling something.
Rhonda begged him to talk to her, but he refused and went off by himself, which made things worse because his rage seemed to be growing.
One ugly night, Jack, in drunken fury, raised his hand to Rhonda. She seized it.
“If you ever hit me, it’ll be the last time you see me and Brady.”
Jack stared right through her like she wasn’t even there.
Then one day she came home from a bad shift at work. That’s when she’d noticed Brady had a fresh bruise on his head. She asked about it at dinner.
“What happened, sweetie?”
Brady looked to Jack for the answer.
“He banged it on my workbench helping me.”
“Banged it on the bench? How the heck did that happen?”
“That’s how it happened. So drop it,” Jack sucked air through his teeth while gnawing on a chicken wing.
That night after Brady got into bed, Rhonda softly pressed him for more details.
“Brady, what really happened?”
“Mom, I was clumsy.”
“You’re not clumsy. Tell me what happened.”
“Dad said that I-Mom. I’m clumsy. I dropped a tool on Dad’s foot. Okay?”
Her blood bubbled.
“Did he hit you?”
Brady turned to the wall.
Rhonda marched from Brady’s room. Jack was on his sixth, or seventh, beer and still gnawing on chicken wings when she lit into him.
“Did you hit him?”
Jack glared at her while still chewing, his jaw muscles tightening.
“He dropped a drill on my foot. I hardly touched him.”
“You bastard!”
“Don’t make this a big deal, Rhonda,” Jack gnawed on his chicken bone. “I’m warning you.”
“You stupid coward.”
Jack ground into the chicken, sprang to his feet, swung at her head, missed, shifted his weight to swing again, and suddenly his eyes widened and he clawed at his throat.
He was choking.
Rhonda thudded his back, wrapped her arms around him, put her hands together and tried to press into his upper chest. Jack fell to his knees, collapsing on their living room floor, gasped for several minutes, then stopped breathing.
Right there.
With Brady watching.
Rhonda tried mouth-to-mouth and CPR while Brady called 911.
There was nothing they could’ve done, the doctors said later.
A chicken bone had become wedged in his throat.
Rhonda was suddenly a young widowed mother, trapped in a maelstrom of horrible emotions that lasted for months. So when the doctor had asked if Brady had ever had a head injury, she couldn’t tell him the whole truth because she believed it had been all her fault.
She feared that the doctor would call social services and- they could take Brady.
There had been a point in her life when she truly believed Jack was her salvation. But it was so long ago it seemed like a distant, dying star. Little by little as each day passed, Jack had become a hard man to love. In fact, all the love she’d ever had for him evaporated the day she buried him.
Brady was the only good thing to come out of her marriage.
The only good thing in her life.
And now, after all she’d been through, God has somehow seen fit to take Brady away from her. And now, as she tried to fight back tears, the line in her hand clicked and this woman at the insurance company was going to put her on hold-
“No! Damn it! Don’t put me on hold again you, stupid, stupid-!”
Rhonda slammed the phone down, drove her face into her hands in time to muffle her scream.
Helpless. She was utterly helpless.
Rhonda sat in her kitchen letting her anger ebb until she heard a noise.
What was that?
She stopped breathing to listen.
Chapter Twenty
I t sounded as if something had fallen over in the garage.
Rhonda waited and listened.
Nothing.
Strange.
Was she so stressed that her mind was playing tricks on her? Maybe it was the echo of her own sob.
No. She definitely heard something.
It came from the garage. Maybe it was Brady and his friends? She glanced at the clock. It was a bit early for him to be home from school just yet. Besides, he didn’t like going in the garage much.
Neither did she.
It was like a mausoleum. That’s where Jack spent a lot of time. A lot of his stuff was still out there. Stuff she had trouble selling, or giving away. She’d better go check because, if she didn’t, it would trouble her tonight.
She took the key from the peg.
It was a two-car garage connected to the house with a breezeway. Rhonda hardly used it. This is silly. She was probably hearing things, she told herself, sliding the key in the side door.
Dust motes swirled in the columns of late-afternoon sunlight shooting through the side window. Standing in the doorway, with her hand on the handle, Rhonda looked around.
Three broken lawn mowers that he used to cannibalize for parts lined one wall. Two ladders were suspended on hooks on the opposite wall. Extra sheets of drywall and scrap pieces of plywood stood in one corner. The tall refrigerator was in another corner. Brady’s wading pool, his old tricycle, and baby things cluttered one area. Old baby toys and broken lawn furniture. The barbeque.
Reminders of happier days.
It was odd.
She could feel a presence.
Jack’s workbench was still cluttered with old tools. Junk, really. And such a mess. She should just toss everything. Next to the bench stood the row of his old mismatched file cabinets where he kept God knows what. Landscaper stuff. Not the important papers. Those all went to the accountant and lawyers.
Nothing seemed out of place.
Maybe the neighbor’s cat got in through a vent? Or a squirrel? Hopefully not a mouse.
No. It was nothing.
Rhonda tightened her hold on the door handle and prepared to leave. As she took a last look around,
