dinner, and she just lost it.”
“You can’t marry someone like that,” Annie said with a dark look at Tom, and he nodded. He totally agreed, and he was just as worried about Ted. He looked emotionally abused, and he had been. And now she had injured him physically too, not just his heart and his mind. It was frightening.
“She says she’ll commit suicide if I don’t,” Ted said grimly.
“Let her,” Annie said harshly, as Tom paid for the cab, and they took him upstairs. He looked like he was in shock. And Annie put a blanket around him as he lay down on his old bed in his room. The room was intact and always ready for him, although he seldom used it. But this was still their home. “She’s not going to kill herself, Ted,” Annie reassured him. “She’s just trying to control you,” but she already had.
“I don’t know what to do,” Ted said, as tears rolled down his cheeks. “I want to do the right thing. But I never wanted a kid. Not yet. And I don’t want to marry her. But I have no other choice.” Tom was standing in the doorway, devasted by the look on Annie’s face, and he felt desperately sorry for the boy.
“All you have to do is support the baby,” Annie said quietly, sitting on his bed. “You don’t have to marry Pattie if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t. She freaks me out.” There was good reason for that, as the episode that night had proved.
“I want to tell you something, Ted. That woman is psychotic,” Annie said, looking straight at him. “She’s an abuser, and she’s going to make what happened tonight your fault. That’s what abusers do. She’s going to tell you that you made her angry, and that you hurt her terribly by what you said, so it justifies her stabbing you. By tomorrow, she’ll paint herself as the victim, and you’ll be the bad guy. Mark my words, she won’t even apologize for what she did to you tonight. She’ll blame you. And nothing about this is your fault. You got her pregnant, which was stupid and careless of you, but you’re not the one abusing her. And she’s going to do everything she can to convince you it’s your fault. I want you to stay away from her. I think she’s dangerous for you.”
The enormous bandage on his hand illustrated her point. Ted thanked her then for her support, and he glanced at Tom with an embarrassed look. Annie lowered the lights, and put another blanket over him, and they left him alone for a while to rest, while she and Tom went out to the kitchen to get something to eat. They were both starving since they had never finished dinner, and she offered to make him an omelette or a sandwich. Tom thanked her but said he was too upset to even want food. They settled for ice cream instead, while they discussed what had happened. These were the things that terrified Annie now. The foolish things they did, believing that they were grown up. Katie’s trip to Tehran with Paul, and Ted involved with this lunatic who had stabbed him. It didn’t get much worse or more dangerous than that.
“You just can’t protect them forever though,” Tom reminded her, and she shook her head, disagreeing with him.
“Maybe not. But I have to at least try.”
“You still can’t stop them, and they still do what they want. Look at Katie, and Ted. My guess is that he’ll go back to this woman, out of guilt.” Annie was afraid that he was right. She could see that happening too.
They sat and talked for a long time after they finished their ice cream, and Tom finally stood up to go home. He kissed her before he left and told her to call him if she needed anything. She promised that she would and thanked him for his help. He looked profoundly upset. And so did she.
Annie heard Ted’s cell phone ring just after midnight, and she tiptoed into his room to turn it off. It had awakened him by then, and as she left the room, Annie could tell it was Pattie on the phone. She didn’t want to eavesdrop on him, but she could sense that the conversation had started just as she thought. Pattie was blaming him for pushing her over the edge. She was saying that the stab wound in his hand was his fault. Annie could hear him apologizing to her. Pattie had him completely spun around. And she suspected that Pattie was furious he had called his aunt. She would blame him for that too. Ted looked exhausted when Annie kissed him goodnight.
“Just get some sleep. Don’t think about any of it tonight. Why don’t you stay here for a while?” Annie suggested to him as she turned off the light.
“She wants me to come back,” he said in a beaten voice. She had said everything Annie had predicted she would. She was blaming him.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Don’t worry about it tonight.” He nodded and closed his eyes, grateful to be home. His eyes fluttered open for a moment, and he thanked her again. She kissed him on the forehead then and walked out of the room. It had been a long night, and she was sorry that Tom had gotten dragged into it too. He had been incredibly understanding about the whole thing and their disrupted dinner at La Grenouille.
In the morning, Ted was still asleep when Annie got up. She had an early meeting and had to leave. Kate was in her room, and Annie left the apartment quietly. She had left Ted a note telling him to take it easy and stay at the apartment all day. The last thing she wanted was for him to go back to Pattie. Who knew what she would do this time? Annie had asked him in the note to call her when he woke up.
He was in the kitchen, looking ghastly, when Kate walked in to get something to eat. She had no idea he had slept there, and she looked stunned when she saw the huge bandage on his hand. It was throbbing miserably by then. The pain medication had worn off.
“What happened to you?” she asked, staring at his hand with a worried look. “Did you get in a fight?” It was hard to imagine. He never had, even as a kid. She wondered if he’d been jumped by a mugger or something.
He nodded and looked at his sister with tired eyes. “Yeah, I did. With Pattie. I upset her, and she did something stupid. She didn’t mean to, but I pissed her off. It was really my fault.” She had convinced him of it the night before. Annie would have shuddered if she’d been there to hear what he just said. He had been the perfect abuse victim at Pattie’s hands. And he had no idea what had hit him. It was a classic case of abuse, and it was now all his fault, according to Pattie. And Ted believed her.
“What happened to your hand?” Katie asked as she sat down and looked at him. His eyes looked dead, and the circles under them were almost black.
“She stabbed me with a steak knife. I shouldn’t have made her mad.”
“Are you kidding?” Katie looked at him, shocked. “People piss me off all the time. I don’t stab them with a steak knife. Is she nuts?” Hers was the right reaction to have.
“She’s a very emotional person,” he explained, “and I upset her.”
“She sounds crazy to me. And dangerous. If I were you, I wouldn’t stick around.”
“We’re having a baby,” he said as Kate’s eyes opened wide. “In September. She wants to get married.”
“I’ll bet she does,” Kate commented. “You aren’t going to, I hope. She’s twelve years older than you are.”
“It’s a little late to think of that now,” he said, looking unhappy. And then he heard his cell phone ring and hurried back to his bedroom.
The next time Katie saw him, he was dressed and his hair was combed haphazardly, as best he could with his left hand, and he told her he was going back to his place for a while to get some things. She knew he was lying and he was going to see Pattie. She wanted to stop him but didn’t know how. She had the feeling that nothing would have. He was a man on a mission, a robot being controlled by someone else. He turned as he got to the front door and looked at his sister, as she stared at him.
“If Annie calls, tell her I’m asleep. I’ll be back soon.”
“I’m going to work,” Katie said to him in a voice full of pity. “Be careful,” she warned him, looking worried, and he nodded, and then left.
Once Ted got to Pattie’s, everything was all right. She held him and crooned to him. She treated him like a baby and cradled his injured hand. She told him that she forgave him for everything he had done the night before, and he thanked her and then burst into tears. He was still crying when she started to fondle him, and then he made love to her to make up for what he’d done. He missed all his classes and never went back to Annie’s that night. Pattie had won another round.
Chapter 17
Tom called Annie at her office two days after Pattie’s attack on Ted with the steak knife. He’d been working on a breaking story the day before, about a political scandal in Washington that had just been revealed, involving two senators, and he hadn’t had time to call her. Annie had learned by then that when Tom didn’t call her, it was for an important reason. He wasn’t dealing with domestic crises or unreliable contractors, he was reporting on major
