Husband by Choice

“Yes.”

She pulled out her tablet. Turned it on.

The certification was legible, but small. Holding the tablet with her thumb over her identifying information, she carried it over to show Lila.

The woman lifted her glasses. Read.

“Thank you.”

Jenna returned the tablet to her purse.

“When you’re ready, you bring me the rest of that and whatever I see there will remain between you and me. You have my word on it.”

“It’s not you, Lila, I just...”

Holding up her hand, Lila stood. “When you’re ready,” she said. “Just remember that I am here. That’s all I ask. When you need me, you do whatever you have to do to find me.” The woman repeated what she’d said the night before.

Jenna nodded, more because it was expected of her than because she could foresee any circumstance where she might do as the woman asked.

“And when you have something to say, there is space, right here, between you and me, to put the truth, no questions asked.”

Emotion rose inside of her, tightening her throat. Jenna picked up her tie-dyed cloth bag and slipped away.

CHAPTER SIX

“DID YOU WORK TODAY?” Max returned to the living room after exchanging wet scrubs for a pair of red basketball shorts and a gray T-shirt with a faded FBI emblem. It was left over from a trip he and Jill had taken to Washington, D.C., a decade before. As he walked in, he found Chantel standing at the mantel over the fireplace, looking at pictures.

Mostly they were of Caleb, taken in the different stages of growing from newborn to two. The center photo was of him and Meri, taken on their wedding day.

In one corner was an old photograph of a much younger Meri with her parents and little brother.

And in the other, Max’s favorite photo of Jill—in a sundress, not a uniform, taken on the day he’d passed his residency. There’d been a party. And she’d been wholly his wife that day. For the entire day.

It had been nice.

“Yeah, I worked and then headed up here as soon as I was off shift,” Chantel said, her back to the photos now as she watched him.

“Shouldn’t you be getting back?”

She’d asked to come in.

“I’m off tomorrow.” She was watching him. Chantel ran her finger along the edge of the frame that held Jill’s photo. “You remember that night?” Chantel asked. She’d been at the party, too. Everyone who’d played a part in their lives had been there.

“Of course I remember.”

“I got drunk and told you I thought you were great.”

Actually what she had said was that no other guy added up to him and if Jill hadn’t snatched him first, she’d have done so. He’d just completed his residency. Had already had an invitation to share a well-established pediatric practice. Everyone was telling him how great he was that night.

“I’ve been embarrassed about that ever since,” Chantel said now, while Max felt the computer in the other room drawing him.

Meri was “out there” somewhere. Facing a second night without him. As he faced a second night without her. Their first two nights apart since they got married. Even the night she’d had Caleb, they’d been together. She’d spent the night in the hospital and he’d stayed with her.

“I didn’t want you to think that I was coming on to you while you were married to my best friend,” Chantel said, turning back to face him, her hands on her hips.

She was a pretty woman. Slender. Blonde. Brown eyes. A little tall for his tastes. A little hard around the edges. But still, damned attractive. Especially when she smiled. And let her hair down out of its ponytail as it was now.

She wasn’t smiling though. “I loved Jill,” she said. “I would never have done anything to hurt her.”

“I know that.”

“She was such a fool, you know?”

No, he didn’t know. Jill had been larger than life. A true warrior. Everyone thought she was amazing.

And the way her life had ended, saving the life of a fellow officer, she’d died as she’d lived—a heroine.

“She didn’t get what she had in you,” Chantel said now. “If I’d been lucky enough to find a guy as great as you, I’d damn sure have thought twice about strapping on the gun and going out to fight crime.”

“It’s what she was born to do. Why should she be less than herself just because she was married?”

Okay, so maybe he’d have liked it a hell of a lot better if Jill could have been happy with a desk job. Making detective and tracking criminals with a little bit of distance. Or teaching at the academy.

But it hadn’t been what she’d wanted. Wouldn’t have made her happy....

“You could have had any number of great guys,” he said now, remembering the flock of admirers that always seemed to be trailing behind the attractive cop.

“I guess.”

“You seeing anyone?” he asked. Because he wanted to ask her to take him seriously and help him find Meri’s ex-husband. He was growing more and more certain that Steve was somehow behind this.

“I was seeing someone. A captain of another squad. It didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. And I didn’t come here to talk about my love life,” she said, moving away from the mantel. “I came to see what I could do to help you,” she said. “I heard the concern in your voice last night, Max. And while, officially, I’m pretty convinced that Meri left of her own accord and is fine, I’m also your friend. I’ve got the next couple of days off, and I wanted to make a personal appearance at the station here, which I did tonight, to talk to the guys and see what I could find out about where Meredith might be. You know...in case you want to talk to her, to maybe patch things up....”

It was a wonderful, selfless thing to do. A friend thing to do.

“I just...you called and asked for help and...it’s what Jill would want me to do, to help you. It’s...she made me promise, the night before you two married, that if anything ever happened to her, and you needed help, I’d be there. I just wanted to, you know, clear the air, first, in case you—” she tipped her head from side to side “—got the wrong idea about that...night.” With her thumb she gestured to the photos behind them.

He might have wondered a time or two about Chantel’s interest in him...but everyone knew that he and Jill had a good marriage. And Chantel was Jill’s very best friend. From grade school. It was understood that he and Chantel would grow to have a genuine fondness for each other. Hell, they’d spent every holiday of his marriage to Jill together.

And hadn’t spoken more than half a dozen times since his first wife’s death.

“You’re fine,” he said now, crossing his arms as he stood there in his bare feet eager to get to the business at hand. “No wrong ideas about that night. So what did you find out?”

“Nothing,” she said. “They aren’t looking for her. They hadn’t yet opened a missing person’s case when her van was spotted and they didn’t need to do so once they found her note. There was nothing suspicious, nothing that warranted expenditure of already limited manpower. Let’s face it, Max, an abductor isn’t going to stand around and wait while she writes a note.”

“He would if he was her ex-husband forcing her to write it.”

“I know. You mentioned that concern last night and in light of the fact that he’s an ex-cop, and that he was abusive to Meredith, I got someone to pull the parking lot surveillance tape where she ditched her van. Meredith was alone, Max. She pulled in. Parked. Sat in the car and wrote the note and then got out. There was no one there, forcing her to do anything.”

“Just because you didn’t see anyone doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”

“What are you saying?”

“I know my wife. If she was going to leave me, she’d tell me to my face.” Kindly, no less. Meri was not only hot as hell, incredibly sexy, the mother of his child and the love of his life, she was also the nicest person he’d ever known.

“She did leave you.” There was no pity on Chantel’s face. But her concerned expression held more than just a cop’s distanced compassion. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

And he knew differently. Appearances could be deceiving.

“Meredith’s ex-husband was a fiend,” he said softly, as though Caleb might hear and understand what Max was saying. “He brutalized her, not only physically, but mentally, too. And got away with it because of the power his position gave him. I wish I knew more about him, but I gather he had a pretty impressive record with the Las Vegas police. I know he was older than she. Her family, both parents and a brother, were killed in a car accident when Meri was a kid. She was alone in the world. She grew up in a foster home. Met Steve through her foster parents. She married him at eighteen, and the first time he hit her was less than a year later. She stayed with him nine years.”

He’d have felt disloyal, telling Meri’s secrets, if Chantel had been just a friend. But she was a cop. And would help him find Meri.

Chantel and Max had spent four Christmases together. He trusted her. And had told Meri all about her.

“It took Steve less than three months to find her the first time she left. He was still a Las Vegas detective at that time. She got away almost immediately and managed to elude him almost a year that second time.”

Chantel’s eyes narrowed. “And you think this is the third time?”

He shook his head. “The third time was in Arizona. Five years ago.”

“This guy’s determined.” She sounded serious. All cop. And Max took his first easy breath in more than twenty-four hours.

Hold on, Meri.

Help is on the way.

* * *

DAY THREE.

It is night again. Friday night. Carly went to bed two hours ago. I heard Latoya turn off the television in the living room an hour later and then her door shut, too. It’s just the three of us in this bungalow. The three of us and the darkness.

It occurred to me last night that since my folks were killed when I was twelve, I’ve never had a room to myself. Ever. There were foster homes shared with other foster kids. And then there was Steve. And later, the other shelters, they were dorm room–style. As was the one dorm I was in between shelter one and shelter two. Between two and three was a one-room apartment shared with a shelter sister, and between three and four, a two-bedroom apartment shared with four sisters. After four, it was the YWCA. I’d wised up by then. I knew not to room with shelter sisters. Steve always knew how to find me. He might not find the exact shelter house I was in, or if he had, hadn’t been stupid enough to breach them. Much easier to be patient and wait for me to be out on my own. But he’d find the home office instead. And watch it. I’d leave the shelter when I was ready, get an apartment and by then, he’d already know of and be following women who came and went from the home office. By my continued association, he’d eventually find me. Took a lot of time. A lot of tedious waiting and watching.

Apparently I was worth the effort to him.

I actually thought changing my habit, going back to my legal name—something he’d never suspect—moving into a YWCA instead of an apartment—had finally won me my freedom. Or rather, I wanted so badly to believe....

I feel kind of silly writing this down. I know all of this stuff. But if I don’t make it through this attempt to stand up to him rather than run, to face him head on and somehow threaten or trick him into leaving me alone, I’d like to think that my journey might be of some benefit to someone else who is a victim of domestic violence.

Today’s group counseling session got me thinking about that. I guess because there were so many of us who are new here—including my two bungalow mates. Carly—she’s twenty-seven and was abused and then stalked by her boyfriend—has been here for a couple of weeks. Latoya just arrived yesterday. She’s in her forties, escaping her husband of twenty-four years, and I’m pretty sure this is the first time she’s ever sought help. Her youngest just left for college.

Carly’s external bruises have healed. The left side of Latoya’s face is still too swollen for us to know what she really looks like.

In counseling today Sara told us that it’s not just the few of us in shelters who feel so isolated—so cast apart. It’s one in four of those hundreds of women dropping their kids off at school every day, getting their nails done or walking the aisles in the grocery store.

I know this stuff.

And yet, today, I could feel the shock of the facts reverberate all the way through me. It was as though I’d heard them for the first time.

Or rather, I felt them for the first time. And I knew I had to do what I could to help. I will make my life matter. Even if I am at the end of my life.

I will share this, my attempt to fight back, with my sisters. In this diary. And maybe...someday...if Caleb wants to know more about his mama, someone will make these writings available to him.

What a comfort that thought is to me. I am writing to help Caleb understand me someday. To understand the challenge I faced and the choice I made. I am not deserting you, Caleb. I am not walking out on you.

You are not being abandoned! You are so loved, my little man. More than you will probably ever know. I need you to know that if I don’t make it through this, I am okay with that. I will die at peace because I died for you and your daddy. I died protecting you from a fiend I should never have brought into your lives.

I undertake this job with the assurance that if I leave this earthly life, I will be watching over both of you from above. I will always be around, loving you, protecting you. I need you to know that....

Tears dropped onto the pages and Jenna knew she had to stop. But although it was late, she still had many hours of darkness to endure. Her housemates were both in their rooms for the night. And if allowing Meredith to pour out her deepest heart, and some tears along with it, would help her—Jenna—to make it through the days, then so be it.

She was only human.

And so, with eyes blurring the script, she wrote long into the night. Completely sober, yet scribbling drunken-seeming avowals of the undying love she might never be able to express again. She wrote because she couldn’t sleep. She wrote to keep her sanity.

She wrote because she missed her men so much she wasn’t sure that she could stay on top of the pain.

* * *

WHEN MAX GOT home from work Friday night, Chantel was there. She’d spent the night in his home more times than he could count during his marriage to Jill. His and Jill’s spare room had been dubbed Chantel’s room. She’d kept a toothbrush and change of clothes there.

Her staying Thursday night had seemed a bit odd—and yet logical, too. There was no way he was going to send her out to find a hotel in Santa Raquel at midnight and it was even less acceptable to let her drive the three hours back to Las Sendas after spending the evening helping him try to track down Meri’s ex-husband. The guy had spent some time as an undercover cop. If he didn’t want to be found, finding him wasn’t going to be easy.

Chantel was offering him professional expertise on her own time. Because it was what Jill would have wanted.

She’d also cooked dinner for him and Caleb, as Max had discovered when he’d come into the house through the garage, his son on his hip, expecting to find a cold and deserted house, and finding, instead, a casserole in the oven and a plain-clothed cop poring over pages of reports on the laptop computer she’d set up at his kitchen table.

Meri would never have put a computer on the dinner table.

Dining came before business—always. Family before business—always. But now the business was finding Meri.

Which was why, at ten o’clock Friday night, he and Chantel were still sitting at the kitchen table.

She’d used her password-protected account to search crime databases and found seven Steve Smiths in the Las Vegas area who’d been charged with counts of domestic violence during the years Meri would have lived there.

And was trying to connect any of them to the Steve Smith on Meri’s Las Vegas marriage and divorce records.

There were one hundred and twenty Steve Smiths just in the North Las Vegas area.

“None of the seven charged Smiths match up,” she said as soon as he finally got Caleb asleep two hours past his bedtime.

It was the first they’d been able to speak freely since he’d arrived home. Caleb might not understand the significance of words, but he could very well remember them, and he wasn’t going to risk his son being adversely affected. Caleb was already showing signs of anxiety, just having Meri gone, without a bunch of adult-type talk involving police searches confusing him further. It wasn’t so much the words, Max knew, but the serious tone of their voices that would alarm him.

“Two are in jail. One is dead. Three are still married to their spouses and living and working in Las Vegas. And a seventh moved to Massachusetts and is remarried. None of them were cops. Do you have any idea how old Meri’s ex is?”

“Six years older than she, which would make him thirty-eight.”

“None of these guys are thirty-eight.”

Then they weren’t looking in the right place.

“Are you sure she pressed charges against him?”

Was he? He’d assumed she had. But had she actually said so? “She said that turning him in hadn’t helped,” he said, trying to remember her exact words. It wasn’t as though he and Meri sat around and discussed the abusive past that she was trying to leave behind.

She’d been through counseling. And said that her best course was just to move forward. If she ever hoped to have a normal life she had to move on from being a victim.

Or something like that. Those conversations had been more than four years ago. He’d taken away the pertinent facts and left the rest.

Chantel changed screens. Typed.

“I’m looking up restraining orders with any of her names on them.” He’d given her Meri’s aliases the night before. “If she filed something we can make an educated guess that the man she filed it against is Steve.” Chantel’s screen went blank before lists of green writing popped up. “I’m assuming she only had one abuser?”

“That’s correct.” No doubt in his mind about that one. “And she did file a restraining order,” he said, remembering. “More than four years ago.” Steve Smith had been a curse in Meri’s life. And a threat to his life with Meri from the very beginning.

One thing was certain, when they found the guy, he was going to pay.

Even if he wasn’t immediately responsible for Meri’s disappearance, and he hoped to God he wasn’t, he was most definitely peripherally to blame. If not for Steve’s years of abuse and later hunting her down like an animal, Meri wouldn’t suffer from such paralyzing paranoia.

“I’ve got it.” Highlighting a record, Chantel opened it up. Clicked to bring up an official looking document. “It was filed almost five years ago and was granted for one year,” she said slowly, reading. He tried to see by leaning over from where he was sitting, but couldn’t make out the fine print on the PDF form.

“Five years ago he was working as a P.I.”

He hadn’t known that.

“Steve had written to her via the last shelter she’d been in, using her newest assumed name. The letter was the basis for the order....”

He was trying desperately to remember things he’d only wanted to forget.

“Private investigators have to be fingerprinted to get a license to practice in Nevada,” she said. “So I ran a search, matching the Steve Smith named on Meri’s restraining order with a Steve Smith in the fingerprint database under the same address. It came up a positive match.”

“So he was a private investigator.” Not great news, but not the end of the world either. “I’m guessing Meri didn’t think that was nearly as frightening or noteworthy as him having been a cop. It was his police connections that scared her. And he had to do something when he left the force.”

“Do you know why he left?”

“Meri was certain he left so he could pursue her exclusively.”

Frustrated at his lack of knowledge, Max waited while Chantel continued to type and read. Steve Smith had been a ghost in their lives—one who’d left a lot of fear.

“The restraining order was reinstated in California when she moved here. It’s good for five years.”

He’d known it was good in California. He hadn’t known about the reinstatement part.

“Steve was a detective with the Las Vegas police for ten years.”

“I told you he was a cop.”

Chantel continued to read whatever private database she had access to. “I didn’t realize he was this decorated. The man would have contacts, Max. And there are a lot of loyal men on the force....”

He’d heard stories from Jill about how fellow officers overlooked claims of domestic violence against their own, understanding that a bit of aggression came with the territory.

Believing, too, that a man who risked his life every day to save others wouldn’t cross the line and hit a member of his own family.

If there were allegations, the force recommended counseling. They watched over him. Made sure there were support facilities available to him and to the members of his family.

“He retired from the force without a blemish. I find it hard to believe this is the same man that would behave as Meredith told you he had.”

Chantel knew police work. She knew Jill. She didn’t know Meri.

“Talking about Steve upset Meri,” he said with confidence while, inside, he was running scared as hell. “He hadn’t been around since she left Arizona and I was certain he’d moved on. He didn’t follow her to California. Either he got the message to leave her alone, met someone else and let Meri go, or was in jail. Didn’t much matter which it was as long as he stayed out of our lives.

“I assumed Meri didn’t know and didn’t want to know what he was doing. I honestly didn’t think he was still a threat, because of the order and because he’d gone so long without bothering her. In my mind, the problem wasn’t so much his showing up again, as it was the effect his years of abuse had had on her. I tried to play down her past to help her move on.”

“Restraining orders are enforceable in all states. And she could have filed for one in California, had her hearing, without him ever having to attend. He would’ve known that.”

Chantel continued to scroll. And he needed her to understand.

“When I first met Meri she was always looking over her shoulder. Not afraid of her shadow so much as being in constant preparation for a hit from behind. It was as if she didn’t think she was allowed to live a normal life and be happy.”

“Sounds like a woman used to keeping secrets.”

Her words seemed to be a direct threat to his marriage.

“I’m not saying that she’d betray your trust or anything, but that maybe keeping secrets had become a matter of survival to her.”

Chantel’s big brown eyes were filled with compassion.

Max focused on his own computer, where he was searching social networks for Steve Smith. There were lots of them.

Lots of Steve Smiths. Ordinary-looking guys with ordinary families. And jobs.

“I’m just... I guess what I’m trying to say is that someone like this, someone who’s had to hide to this extent...it’s understandable that you might not know her as well as you thought you did. In terms of you being so certain that she wouldn’t leave you.”

Chantel was talking about a woman she didn’t know. Making her sound like someone he didn’t know.

His job was to stay calm.

CHAPTER SEVEN

AT A COMPUTER in a private cubicle at the library in the main building of the Stand on Saturday, Jenna studied various domestic violence websites, reading about the abusive personality, fantasy bonds, dependent relationships. All things she knew about, but only from the victim perspective. She had to get into the mind-set, to imagine the feelings so deeply that she could predict reactions to stimulus. The goal was to figure out what stimulus to use on Steve to get the reaction she needed—him to choose to set her free.