man. They could have used what ran in his veins to cool those refrigerating machines. The mother wasn’t much of an improvement: a skinny, graceful matriarch with stiff-looking, mink-colored hair. Every time she smiled at Hannah, the strain showed on her face.
Hannah couldn’t really blame them for resenting her. Kenneth hadn’t told his parents he was married. Introducing them to his new wife was more an act of defiance than anything else. He seemed to relish telling them she was a waitress, rubbing their noses in that fact.
His parents wanted the marriage annulled. Hannah had become so fed up with Ken that she might have agreed to it, but she was pregnant. Kenneth Senior privately offered to pay her twenty-five thousand dollars to have an abortion. When she told Ken about it, his response was: “Hey, we could live off that money for years. Want to do it?”
“Are you serious?” Hannah whispered. She kept her voice down because they were in the guest room. Never mind that they were half a football field away from Kenneth’s parents’ room. She still felt compelled to whisper. “What the hell is wrong with you? I can’t believe what you’re saying.”
“I’m just not ready to have a kid. What makes you want one all of a sudden?”
“Because it gives me hope for something,” she said. “I have to tell you, Ken, in the last few months, I haven’t had much hope for us.” She sighed. “In fact, if you want to call it quits, I won’t give you an argument. I won’t even expect you to support the baby.”
His dark eyes narrowed at her. “What the fuck makes you think you can take my kid away from me? I’ll never let that happen.”
Hannah shook her head. “Two seconds ago, you were all ready to take your father’s money and have it aborted. You just said—”
“Listen.” He stabbed his finger at the center of her chest, punctuating each word. “If…you…have…this…kid… you’ll…never…take…him…away…from…me. Understand?”
She pushed his hand away. “You’re hurting me.”
He frowned at her. “Sorry. Just so you understand.”
Hannah stared at him. She had no way of knowing that it was the last time Kenneth would ever apologize for hurting her.
Like their son, Mr. and Mrs. Woodley did a total about-face once they realized that Hannah intended to keep the baby. As long as she was providing them with a grandson, Hannah was welcomed into the family. In fact, the Woodleys didn’t let her out of their sight. They bought her and Ken a beautiful, three-bedroom ranch house, then furnished it. Mrs. Woodley introduced Hannah to the country-club set. Ken went to work for his father.
She and Ken were miserable. One evening, she pointed out to him that it had been nearly three months since they’d made love. His response was, “Yeah? So?”
“Well, don’t you think it might make things better between us if we at least tried?”
Frowning, he gazed at her swollen belly. “If I wanted to fuck a cow, I’d go over to Nellinger’s Dairy and hump one of their heifers.”
Hannah probably should have run away then. But she didn’t want to have her baby at a free clinic. She moved into the guest room. Ken found himself some diversions. He had his yacht moved up to Green Bay. He’d go sailing off without her for entire weekends. She welcomed his absence. When he was home, he sometimes took his frustrations out on her. At first, the abuse was verbal: she couldn’t cook; he’d married way beneath him; she was a pig. When she became numb to his occasional tirades, he started throwing things: a plate of pasta that ended up on the dining-room wall; a clock radio, which just missed her head. Once, he hurled a cup of hot coffee at her. Hannah managed to avoid direct contact with the mug, but it smashed on the floor at her feet and scalded her legs. She had to drive herself to the hospital, where they treated the burns.
She was back there two weeks later to give birth to their son. The Woodleys were unbearably meddlesome over the baby, even picking out his name: Kenneth Muir Woodley III. Hannah called him Guy-Guy, or just Guy. She used to like the name Ken, but didn’t anymore.
She discovered that Ken had actually been exercising some restraint during those tirades before Guy was born. Now that she was no longer pregnant, Ken didn’t have to be so careful with her. He didn’t have to hold back. His outbursts were just infrequent enough that she couldn’t predict them. Kenneth took it out on her if the baby was crying too much, or if the house was messy or smelled of baby poop. Such offenses were grounds for a black eye or a swollen lip.
She begged him: “For God’s sake, Ken, don’t you think this Ike and Tina routine has run its course? We’re both miserable. You were a pretty nice guy back in Chicago. You were no prince, but at least you weren’t mean. I know you feel trapped here. So do I. If we broke up, things would be easier for you. I’ll give you the best visitation rights in the world if you let Guy and me go.”
She was trying to reason with a total cokehead. Apparently he got the stuff from someone at work. Ken must have been hooked on it back in Chicago, too. Maybe that was why he’d gone through her money so quickly.
One of the most stupid moves of her life—right up there with first going on a date with the son of a bitch— was confiding in his mother that they should consider intervention. Of course, Mrs. Woodley fell into denial about her son’s drug problem—the same way she’d failed to notice all the bruises on her daughter-in-law. Just to make sure her boy was on the straight and narrow, Mrs. Woodley asked Ken if there was any truth to what Hannah had told her.
Hannah ended up in the hospital that night. He’d blackened both her eyes and fractured her jaw. She took seven stitches in her chin where she’d hit the edge of a glass-top coffee table during the scuffle. She also had a broken arm. Ken told everyone that Hannah had been in a car accident. He even went so far as to total her car, so he could back up his story. Ken visited her at the hospital, pampering her with flowers, an expensive nightgown, all the comforts. A nanny was hired to look after Guy.
During her stay in the hospital, Hannah decided that she had to leave him. She told her doctor that the car accident story was a cover-up. “Ken did this to me,” she whispered to him, her mouth nearly immobile due to the wire around her jaw. “You know that, don’t you?”
Her doctor didn’t look surprised; merely annoyed. “I didn’t hear that,” he replied, shaking his head. “I can’t do anything about it.”
The Woodleys were major contributors to the hospital, and Ken’s mother was chairwoman of the Cantor Ball, an annual fundraiser for the Children’s Ward. Hannah couldn’t expect anyone in that hospital to help her. All legal avenues were blocked by the family as well. No local lawyer would represent her in a divorce. And no way was the family going to let her walk away with their grandson.
She began to hatch her escape plan while in the hospital, looking out the window of her private room. She would gaze down at the water, the bayside park with all the trees, and the happy families walking along those winding paths.
The doctor had her on soft foods because she couldn’t chew well. She remembered eating a lot of yogurt— too much. At the time, Hannah thought she’d never want to see another container of Yoplait. She could only imagine eating solid foods—and being free of Kenneth Muir Woodley, Junior.
Sitting on the bleachers, Hannah watched Guy play on the jungle gym. She set aside the peach yogurt and glanced at her wristwatch; only about ten minutes more before she had to hurry back to work.
In many ways, she still wasn’t free of Ken. He still haunted her. It wasn’t intentional, but she hadn’t been with another man since him. She was afraid of getting too close to anyone, afraid of getting hurt again.
Pam, the head of the day care center, blew a whistle. All the children started to gather together to file back into the building. Hannah smiled and waved at Guy, who jumped up and down excitedly and waved back. She watched him walk away with the other children. He was the only man in her life right now.
Hannah suddenly shuddered. She realized Guy wasn’t the only man in her life at the moment. There was another man, imposing on her, playing some sort of strange, deadly game. And Hannah had a feeling that he was just getting started.
