“Well?” Lael prompted impatiently, dragging Rhonda back to the present and to the real issue at hand.
She dropped her eyes once more. “I’m afraid,” she said softly.
“Afraid of what?”
Rhonda dreaded saying the words aloud, especially since she didn’t think her mother had ever been afraid of anything in her whole life. As far as Rhonda was concerned, Lael had always seemed as brave and daring as the brilliant greens, blues, and reds she was swiftly daubing onto the paper.
“Afraid of what?” Lael asked again.
“Of him,” Rhonda answered. “Of Dean. He threatened me. He told me that if I went through’ with the divorce, he’d see me in hell before he’d pay me a single dime of alimony or give me a property settlement.”
“Oh, hell,” Lael said. “The man’s just pissed because he got passed over for department head and then they shipped him off to that other campus, wherever that is.”
“The ASU West campus is on Thunderbird, Mom,” Rhonda returned quietly. “But he’s not bluffing. He means it. He won’t give me a dime.”
Lael Weaver Gastone was incensed. “If it’s the money, don’t worry about it. He’s bluffing. Jean Paul and I could always help out if it came to that, but it won’t. You’ll see. The courts will make him pay.”
But Rhonda was no longer looking at her mother. She had dropped her gaze once more. “It’s not just the money, Mom. I don’t care about that.” She took a deep breath. “I’m afraid he’ll kill me, Mom.” She paused and bit her lip. “He hits me sometimes,” she added almost in a whisper.
“He what?” Lael asked. “I can’t hear you if you don’t speak up.”
“He hits me,” Rhonda repeated raggedly. “Hard.” A single tear leaked from her eye and slipped down her cheek. “And he told me the other day when I was packing that he’d kill me if I go through with it—with getting a divorce.”
Slowly, without looking directly at her mother’s ace, Rhonda Weaver Norton unbuttoned the top three buttons of her cardigan sweater; then she slipped the soft knit material down over her shoulder. Under the sweater her bare shoulder and back were discolored by a mass of green-and-purple bruises. Lael gasped when she saw them.
“You let him do this to you?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
Blushing furiously, Rhonda pulled her sweater back up. “The first two times he promised he’d never do it again, so I dropped the charges. This time I haven’t... not yet.”
Lael tossed the piece of blue pastel in the general direction of her box, then slammed the lid shut. “And you’re not going to, either. Come on. We’ll to talk to Jean Paul. He’ll know what to do.”
He waited until midnight. Not that midnight had any special significance, other than the fact that it was the time of day he liked best—the time when he felt most at home.
He thought about what he was doing as a bridge—a ritual bridge—between the past and the future, between the women who had already died and the ones who soon would. Although he didn’t think of himself as particularly superstitious, he always performed the midnight ceremony in exactly the same way, starting with closing all the blinds. Only when they were all safely closed did he light the candle.
Once upon a time, he had used incense, but his damn fool of a landlady in Sacramento had reported him to the cops. She had turned him in because she thought he was smoking dope in her precious downstairs apartment. That was right after Lois Hart, and he was nervous as hell. When the young cop showed up on the doorstep and knocked on his door, he’d been so scared that he almost peed his pants. He’d managed to talk his way out of that one—barely—but he’d also learned his lesson. No more incense. From that day on, he’ used only candles.
