Jo had obviously known that his wife had died, but hadn’t said anything. Odd.
Alex didn’t notice that her mind had wandered. “Thank you,” he said, his voice subdued. “She was a great person. You would have liked her.” A wistful expression crossed his face. “But anyway,” he finally added, “she swore by the place. It’s organic, and the family still harvests by hand. Usually, the produce is gone within hours, but I set a little aside for you, in case you wanted to try some.” He smiled. “Besides, you’re a vegetarian, right? A vegetarian will appreciate these. I promise.”
She squinted up at him. “Why would you think I’m a vegetarian?”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“Oh,” he said, pushing his hands into his pockets. “My mistake.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve been accused of worse.”
“I doubt that.”
6
As Katie shopped, Alex fiddled around the register, watching her from the corner of his eye. He straightened the counter, checked on Josh, examined Kristen’s picture, and straightened the counter again, doing his best to seem busy.
She’d changed in recent weeks. She had the beginnings of a summer tan and her skin had a glowing freshness to it. She was also growing less skittish around him, today being a prime example. No, they hadn’t set the world on fire with their scintillating conversation, but it was a start, right?
But the start of what?
From the very beginning, he’d sensed she was in trouble, and his instinctive response had been to want to help. And of course she was pretty, despite the bad haircut and plain-Jane attire. But it was seeing the way Katie had comforted Kristen after Josh had fallen in the water that had really moved him. Even more affecting had been Kristen’s response to Katie. She had reached for Katie like a child reaching for her mother.
It had made his throat tighten, reminding him that as much as he missed having a wife, his children missed having a mother. He knew they were grieving, and he tried to make up for it as best he could, but it wasn’t until he saw Katie and Kristen together that he realized that sadness was only part of what they were experiencing. Their loneliness mirrored his own.
It troubled him that he hadn’t realized it before.
As for Katie, she was something of a mystery to him. There was a missing element somewhere, something that had been gnawing at him. He watched her, wondering who she really was and what had brought her to Southport.
She was standing near one of the refrigerator cases, something she’d never done before, studying the items behind the glass. She frowned, and as she was debating what to buy, he noticed the fingers of her right hand twisting around her left ring finger, toying with a ring that wasn’t there. The gesture triggered something both familiar and long forgotten.
It was a habit, a tic he’d noticed during his years at CID and sometimes observed with women whose faces were bruised and disfigured. They used to sit across from him, compulsively touching their rings, as though they were shackles that bound them to their husbands. Usually, they denied that their husband had hit them, and in the rare instances they admitted the truth, they usually insisted it wasn’t his fault; that they’d provoked him. They’d tell him that they’d burned dinner or hadn’t done the wash or that he’d been drinking. And always, always, these same women would swear that it was the first time it had ever happened, and tell him that they didn’t want to press charges because his career would be ruined. Everyone knew the army came down hard on abusive husbands.
Some were different, though — at least in the beginning — and insisted that they wanted to press charges. He would start the report and listen as they questioned why paperwork was more important than making an arrest. Than enforcing the law. He would write up the report anyway and read their own words back to them before asking them to sign it. It was then, sometimes, that their bravado would fail, and he’d catch a glimpse of the terrified woman beneath the angry surface. Many would end up not signing it, and even those who did would quickly change their minds when their husbands were brought in. Those cases went forward, no matter what the woman decided. But later, when a wife wouldn’t testify, little punishment was meted out. Alex came to understand that only those who pressed charges ever became truly free, because the life they were leading was a prison, even if most of them wouldn’t admit it.
Still, there was another way to escape the horror of their lives, though in all his years he’d come across only one who actually did it. He’d interviewed the woman once and she’d taken the usual route of denial and self-blame. But a couple of months later, he’d learned that she’d fled. Not to her family and not to her friends, but somewhere else, a place where even her husband couldn’t find her. Her husband, lost in his fury that his wife had left, had exploded after a long night of drinking and had bloodied an MP. He ended up in Leavenworth, and Alex remembered grinning in satisfaction when he’d heard the news. And when thinking of the man’s wife, he smiled, thinking,
Now, as he watched Katie toying with a ring that wasn’t there, he felt his old investigative instincts kick in. There’d been a husband, he thought; her husband was the missing element. Either she was still married or she wasn’t, but he had an undeniable hunch that Katie was still afraid of him.
The sky exploded while she was reaching for a box of crackers. Lightning flashed, and a few seconds later thunder crackled before finally settling into a loud, angry rumble. Josh dashed inside right before the downpour started, clutching his tackle box and fishing reel as he entered the store. His face was red and he was panting like a runner crossing the finish line.
“Hey, Dad.”
Alex looked up. “Catch anything?”
“Just the catfish again. The same one I catch every time.”
“I’ll see you in a little bit for lunch, okay?”
Josh vanished back into the storeroom and Alex heard him padding up the steps to the house.
Outside, the rain came down hard and the wind whipped sheets of water against the glass. Branches bent in the wind, bowing to a higher power. The dark sky flashed bright with lightning, and thunder boomed, loud enough to shake the windows. From across the store, Alex saw Katie flinch, her face a mask of surprise and terror, and he found himself wondering whether it was the same way her husband had once seen her.
The door of the store opened and a man rushed in, trailing water on the old wood flooring. He shook rivulets of rain from his sleeves and nodded at Alex before finally moving toward the grill.
Katie turned back to the shelf that held crackers. He didn’t have a big selection, just Saltines and Ritz, the only two that sold regularly, and she reached for the Ritz.
She selected her usual items as well and carried her basket to the register. When he finished ringing up and bagging her items, Alex tapped the bag he’d put on the counter earlier.
“Don’t forget the vegetables.”
She glanced at the total on the register. “Are you sure you rang them up?”
“Of course.”
“Because the total isn’t any more than it usually is.”
“I gave you the introductory price.”
She frowned, wondering whether to believe him, then finally reached into the bag. She pulled out a tomato and brought it to her nose.
“It smells good.”
“I had some last night. They’re great with a touch of salt, and the cucumbers don’t need anything.”
