No River Too Wide

What would her mother have thought of Lottie? Would she have seen traces of Harmony as a little girl? Lottie’s hair was going to be dark, like her father’s, but her face was shaped like her mother’s, and everybody said the resemblance between them was unmistakable.

Would Janine have seen that? Would it have pleased her? Although she had her father’s paler coloring, Harmony resembled her mother. Dark-haired Lottie might well look like her grandmother had as a baby. There were no photos, of course, and now Harmony would never be able to ask her.

For years, more than anything, she had wanted to help her mother escape. Janine could have come to Asheville with her and started a new life. But she had been too frightened. Harmony knew that at least part of her mother’s refusal had been a desire to protect her beloved daughter. Had Janine disappeared, Rex Stoddard would have turned the world on end searching for his wife. Janine belonged to him, and he would have done anything to find her. Janine had not wanted to lead him in Harmony’s direction.

But what else had played a part? Harmony really didn’t know. Was her mother afraid to be on her own? Had she lost the ability to make decisions for herself because she had been allowed to make so few? Had she begun to believe Rex’s degrading lectures about her incompetence, her lack of skills and talents, her inability to take care of herself? How could those things not play into Janine’s reluctance to abandon everything she knew, even as terrible as her life had become? Could a woman suffer brainwashing all those years and not carry the scars?

Getting away had been hard enough for Harmony, but through the years her hours at school had helped her develop strength and inner resources, fueled at least partly by the contempt she felt for her father. Her mother had encouraged her, too, building up her confidence whenever she could, making it clear that the problems at home had nothing to do with Harmony. At the first opportunity Janine had helped her daughter escape, despite knowing she would pay a heavy price when her husband found out.

Harmony had been so lucky to have Janine to help her, but who had stood up for Janine?

Nobody.

“I wanted to save her,” she told Lottie, brushing her daughter’s silky hair over one ear. “I wanted us to be a family, a real family....” Tears filled her eyes again. She was sure there were more in her future, floods of tears.

“You would have loved her,” she whispered.

Someone knocked on the door, and before she could answer, it opened. Rilla stood on the threshold, a strange expression on her face. “Harmony...”

“You couldn’t have found out anything yet.” Harmony hoped it was true. She wasn’t ready.

“I haven’t even called Brad. No, it’s something else.” She paused, as if she was trying to figure out how best to say what was on her mind.

“Just tell me.” Lottie pushed away and struggled to sit up, and Harmony adjusted her blouse and bra. Then she looked up, as ready as she was going to be.

“There’s a woman at the door. She says she’s here to talk to you about your mother. She wanted to know if she had the right house.”

Harmony could hear a buzzing in her ears. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths before she opened them again. “Who is she, did she say?”

“Do you have an aunt?”

The question seemed so strange that for a moment Harmony thought she’d heard wrong. “Aunt?”

“Does your mother have a sister?”

“No. Like I said, she has—had—no family.”

“She’s in the living room waiting.”

“She didn’t give you her name?”

“She refused. She doesn’t seem...comfortable? I think you ought to get out there right now.”

Harmony stood, moving Lottie to her hip. She was probably wet, possibly worse, after her nap, but changing her was the last thing on Harmony’s mind.

Rilla strode over and took the baby. “I’ll change her. You go. I’ll bring her to you when I’m finished.”

“Who do you think the woman is, Rilla? I can tell you have an idea. Is she a cop? Somebody from a newspaper who traced me here?”

Rilla shook her head, but Harmony wouldn’t let it go. She raised her voice. “Who?”

“I don’t want you to be disappointed if I’m wrong.” Rilla paused; then she turned her eyes to the baby for a moment, only looking up when Harmony refused to move.

“I’m not sure she’s planning to stay, so you need to get out there quickly.” Concern and something else shone in her eyes. “Harmony, I think she might be your mother.”

Chapter 4

From the audio journal of a forty-five-year-old woman, taped for the files of Moving On, an underground highway for abused women.

My parents shielded me from life’s darker side, and whatever their reasoning, they never encouraged me to be independent. I was their only child, and their role as parents meant everything to them. Looking back on my life, I see how ripened I was by grief to replace their love and guidance with more of the same. I was also primed to trust strong men who seemed to know what was best for me.

Had the Abuser been anything but kind and charming before we married, I think I would have been smart enough to back away. When we met I still believed I was worthy of a good man, a man like my father who would treasure and protect me. This man was knowledgeable and able to help me settle my parents’ estate, and he seemed to be all the things I wanted. Best of all, he stepped forward to help make the decisions that faced me. He helped me sell the house I had grown up in, helped me drop out of school without penalty so I had an opportunity to heal.

Now, of course, I know this was the beginning of a campaign to strip me of all my connections. My family was gone. Then my home. Finally my college friends. The investments he recommended were long-term, and while sound enough, yielded nothing for my immediate use. By then, of course, that hardly mattered. The Abuser adored me. He wanted me to be his wife. He would support me whenever I decided to finish my degree in early childhood education. We would have the kind of marriage I had witnessed up close.

We would be happy.

* * *

Janine hurried down the farmhouse path toward the road. She hoped leaving the house without waiting to see Harmony wouldn’t scare her. She had promised to tell Bea whatever occurred here, but she hadn’t factored in a lack of cell coverage inside the house. The disposable phone Moving On had given her wasn’t state-of-the-art, and she had nearly used up the minutes that had come with it.

The sun was going down behind mountains, something she wasn’t used to after a lifetime in Kansas. When she was a young teen, her parents had taken her on a camping trip to Colorado, and they had spent two blessed weeks cooking out, hiking and swimming in crystal-clear lakes. She had thought of that trip so many times over the years, sinking back into the memories when her reality was particularly bleak, lulling herself to sleep at night with dreams of a happier time.

The Blue Ridge Mountains were nothing like the Rockies. She wasn’t sure why her daughter had stayed in Asheville when the family who had invited Harmony to live with them had moved to California. Perhaps Harmony hadn’t been able to afford another move, or perhaps she had made so many connections she’d felt secure on her own. But Janine guessed that the natural beauty had affected her decision. The majesty of it, a more approachable majesty than the Rockies, would have appealed to a young woman from the plains almost as much as settling somewhere far from Topeka, a city that would be blighted forever by her childhood memories.

The air under a canopy of hardwoods was turning chilly, and Janine shivered inside somebody else’s jacket. Her body temperature dropped too easily now, probably as a result of the weight she had lost. Losing so much had been easy. She had always been thin, but in the past year her appetite had simply vanished. Her secret would never be marketed in diet books. During meals with Rex she had silently replayed her decision to find a way out of the prison he’d created. Fear of what lay ahead, as well as the consequences if he found her, had made it nearly impossible to eat.

Rex had noticed, of course, but he had seemed pleased. The shadow she had become was the wife he had wanted all along.

As she rounded a curve she wasn’t surprised to find Bea lounging against a tree casually observing the driveway. Tall, wiry, threatening enough that her male colleagues called her Grandma Grouchy, Bea was older than Janine, but even in her sixties she exuded a raw power that Janine found a bit intimidating. Bea was a grandmother, but she was more likely to teach hunting and fishing to her grandsons than to play dress-up with her granddaughters.

“You okay?” she asked when Janine got closer. “This the right house?”

Janine eased Buddy’s backpack into a more comfortable position. “I haven’t seen her yet, but Harmony’s here.”

“You okay, Jan?”

Janine gave a short nod. “The phone didn’t work inside, and I didn’t want you to worry.”

“You want me to wait?”

“You go on and settle in for the night. If this doesn’t go well...” Janine swallowed, because the rest of the sentence stuck in her throat.

“It’s going to be fine.”

“I’ll find a way into town, and I’ll call the hotline from there.”

“Just call me direct. I’m going to stay nearby and wait while you have that reunion. Things don’t go well tonight, you just give me a buzz, and I’ll come back. I don’t hear, though, we’ll need to be on our way in the morning early. So you have to let me know where to pick you up then.”

Janine realized she was crying. Bea didn’t seem surprised, and her voice softened a little.

“It’s always like this, honey. I’ve seen it too many times before. You been through too much. You been scared practically every minute for years now. You’ll still be scared some, but at least that part will feel familiar. And it will ease.”

Janine wiped her cheeks with her palms.

“We did a good job for you,” Bea said, retrieving a tissue from a pocket and handing it over. “It’s not likely he’s gonna find you. And the house burning down, that was a stroke of good fortune.”

“No, I shouldn’t have burned those photos.”

“Might have been divine intervention. You just being able to squeeze through the first flames without damage to anything but that old coat of yours. That tank going up like some kind of atom bomb.” Bea smiled as Janine finished wiping her eyes. “And now nobody knows if you burned up or ran away or anything else. Including old Rex.”

“They’re looking through those ashes for no good reason. I know he wasn’t in the house.”

“Think of it as good practice for the fire department, forensical training.”

“But where is Rex? Why hasn’t he come forward?”

“This point in your life? You need to stop thinking about Rex, and start thinking about yourself and that girl of yours.”

Janine couldn’t imagine a life in which Rex was not the central figure. “I’ll always be looking behind me.”

“We’ll be keeping an eye out on your behalf, and we’ll get in touch right away if we hear anything you need to know. I’m as sure as I can be that the trail we left won’t lead him in your direction.”

Janine didn’t know what to do next, but as if she sensed that, Bea stepped forward and put her arms around her for a brief hug. “Now you get on back there and have that reunion. Call me if you need me tonight, but be ready to go at first light.”

A whole night with Harmony. If Harmony would have her.

Janine shivered, and not from the cold this time.

Bea started back toward the road, and Janine knew she had to return to the house. She was sorry she had left, because walking up the driveway the first time had been hard enough.

“Hello? Are you still here?”

Janine whirled at the sound of her daughter’s voice somewhere behind her. She started toward the sound, picking up speed as Harmony called again. “Hello!”

“I’m right here,” Janine managed. “I’m coming.”

She rounded the corner and saw her daughter’s familiar figure half loping toward her, the tall, slender body, the long blond hair flying out behind her. She forgot she had ever been frightened that Harmony would reject her. She forgot she’d had serious qualms about coming to Asheville, because now Rex might find their daughter. She could only think that this was her beloved child, whom she had feared she would never see again. And somehow they had been given this moment.

“Mom!” Harmony paused a moment as if making sure she was right. Then her face lit up. “Mom! It really is you!”

They were in each other’s arms in a moment. Janine was laughing, but she felt tears running down her cheeks, too. “Harmony. I thought...I thought—”

“I didn’t think I would ever see you again.” Harmony held her away but gripped Janine by the shoulders. “I thought you were dead!”

Janine had hoped Harmony wouldn’t learn about the fire, but the fear that she might hear of it had brought her to Asheville. In the end she had realized she had to prove, in person, she was still alive.

“I’m okay. I—” There was so much. Where did she start? Janine realized she was floundering.

“But the house burned to the ground,” Harmony said. “I just found the story on the internet. You weren’t there when it exploded?”

“I was... I mean I wasn’t. I was there when the fire started, but I got out.”

“Was Dad there?”

Janine couldn’t tell from Harmony’s tone what she hoped the answer might be. “No, he was... I don’t know where your father was. Is. I don’t know a thing except that I used... Well, he didn’t come home that night. I—I’d already made plans to leave him, but not quite this soon. Things weren’t quite in—” She stopped.

“You’d made plans?”

“Is there somewhere we can talk? I can’t stay more than the night, but there’s so much—” Janine couldn’t seem to finish a sentence. She was drinking in her daughter’s lovely face.

“What do you mean, you’re not staying?” Harmony tightened her grip on her mother. “Of course you’re staying. Please don’t tell me you’re going back to Kansas.”

“No. No! It’s just—” Janine shivered.

“I’m sorry. You’re cold. We can go up to the house.” She shook her head. “No, we’ll go to my apartment because it’ll be quieter, but I have to get Lottie first.”

“Lottie? Is she...?” Janine’s voice trailed off. The question she’d been about to ask seemed inconceivable, but she knew so little about Harmony’s life. She knew there must be a baby, but not whether the child was a boy or a girl.

“Lottie’s my daughter,” Harmony said, rescuing her. “Charlotte Louise, but she’s Lottie Lou or mostly just Lottie.”

“Who’s taking care of her?”

“Rilla has her. Rilla’s my employer. I live and work here as her assistant.”

“It’s so beautiful. The land. The house.”

“You look tired, Mom. Let me take that.” Harmony hooked a hand under the strap of the backpack and tested the weight. “It’s heavy.”

“Because I have Buddy’s scrapbook inside, but it’s, it’s...” She didn’t want to explain all the details of how she’d gotten away.

“Buddy’s scrapbook?” Harmony seemed surprised.

“It’s all I had left of him.”

Harmony slipped the backpack down Janine’s arm, and Janine gratefully relinquished it. With the loss of twenty pounds had come a significant loss of strength. And the last week had exhausted her.

“Lottie.” Janine managed a smile. “It’s beautiful. I bet she’s beautiful.”

Harmony slung the pack over one shoulder and began walking back the way she’d come. “How did you find me?”

What little energy Janine had was flagging dangerously. She touched her daughter’s hair and catalogued the obvious changes. Harmony had a gold stud in her nose and several piercings in each ear. Her hair was longer. “I need to sit. Can we talk when we’re settled?”

“I’m sorry. Of course. I’ll show you where my place is, and you can wait there. It’s no farther than the house. I’ll get Lottie and join you.” She hesitated. “You won’t leave? You’ll be there waiting?”

“I promise.”

They had reached the farmyard, and Harmony pointed to a building that looked like a garage, tucked not far from the house. “My apartment’s at the top, and the door is never locked. We’ll be right there to join you. I’ll make you hot tea.”

“With lots of milk and sugar?” Janine tried to smile, because whenever she and Harmony had been given the gift of time alone together, that was one of the ways they had celebrated.

“All you want.”

Janine started toward the apartment. Beyond it in a fenced pasture two horses grazed, one lifting a dark head to watch her. In the distance she saw what looked like a garden, although she couldn’t tell for sure because the sky had grown darker in the brief time she’d been here. The garage was painted the same dark spruce as the house, but the stairwell and the garage doors were painted a red so dark it was slowly turning black as twilight descended. Someone, maybe even her daughter, had planted a wide bed of black-eyed Susans and coneflowers along the side of the stairs.

She was so grateful Harmony had landed in this healing place, but she knew so little, not what had brought Harmony here, or how she had coped until she had a job and a place to live. Until now she hadn’t even known her grandchild’s name.

Instead of going upstairs, she sat on the bottom step and listened to the music of crickets as the sky quickly darkened. From the house she thought she heard the voices of children. How old was Lottie? Certainly not old enough to be one of them. Did Harmony help care for the others, too? So many questions, and even if they stayed up talking all night, so little time for answers.

The front door opened, and Harmony came out carrying a child with a blanket thrown around her against the chill of the descending night. As she watched, Harmony turned and spoke to a woman who was now standing in the doorway. Then she started toward her apartment.

Janine stood and waited for them to join her. When Harmony got close enough she pulled back the blanket, and Janine glimpsed her granddaughter for the first time. She immediately saw the resemblance.

“She looks like my baby pictures,” Janine said, reaching out to pull the blanket back a little more. “And she looks so much like you, although her hair’s darker.”

“Rilla warned me the woman waiting for me might be my mother. She said we looked so much alike. All of us. That’s how she knew.”

Janine didn’t ask to hold Lottie, but Lottie held out her arms to her grandmother, and without a word Harmony boosted her closer so Janine could see her better.

“Oh, you are such a beautiful baby,” Janine said, tears filling her eyes again. “And I guess after what I just said about her, that’s bragging, right?”

“She wants you to hold her.”

“May I?”

“Who better?”

Janine took the soft little bundle and placed her on one hip, tucking the blanket securely around her. “How old is she?”

“Nine months. Just.”

“I’ve wondered every single day since you told me you were pregnant.”

“I could have told you myself if I had been allowed to call.”

Janine heard the note of disapproval, but she understood. “Right after you left, your father did everything but hire a detective to find you, Harmony. If you had called while he was there? He would have started searching all over again, beginning with the number you called from. That’s how I found you. The people who helped me get away also helped me trace the last number you used, and eventually they traced you here.”

“I was careful never to call when he was there.”

“You couldn’t know for certain. After you left he took to dropping in on me unannounced during the day, sometimes two or three times, to make sure I was doing what he told me to. I memorized that number, and I was able to delete it from our caller ID that last night we talked. But I might not always have been able to do that before he got to it.”

“Why didn’t you leave him right then? If things were getting worse? If it was possible for things to have gotten worse?”

Too much was at stake. Janine couldn’t hedge the truth. She saw the moon peeking over a stand of trees, between two mountaintops, and she watched it for a moment before she looked back at her daughter.

“Because if I had just walked out the door without a good plan, a foolproof plan, he would have killed me. He still might if he finds me, and that’s why I can’t stay longer than a night. Because if your father traces me here—and he still could, no matter how careful I’ve been—then he might hurt you and the baby, too.”

Chapter 5

Her hands were trembling. Harmony looked down at the spoon grasped in her right hand and watched it wave gently side to side. If she had needed proof she was shaken to the bone by her mother’s arrival, there it was. Of course, Janine’s surprise appearance was especially dramatic, considering that just moments before Harmony had believed she was dead.

In the living room Lottie was laughing as she and Janine played peekaboo. The sound was silvery and unfettered. Harmony loved to make her daughter laugh. She was never sure which of them was the most delighted afterward.

Gripping the spoon tighter, she stirred the milk and sugar she’d managed to get into each mug; then, better safe than sorry, she decided to carry them one at a time.

Despite good intentions, she didn’t move. Her mother was here, but only for the night. And once she left? While she hadn’t said so exactly, Janine had made it clear that once she moved on, she would have little or no contact with her daughter.

All because of the devil who had fathered her.

Harmony caught a glimpse of herself in the glass cabinet front, and for a moment she stared. Did she look anything like Rex Stoddard? She had never seen any outward resemblance, except her coloring. Buddy had looked more like him, a rounder face, one eye that drifted subtly despite two costly surgeries, a high forehead that, at least for Rex, had climbed slowly higher as he began to go bald.

Of course, her brother had died well before he had the chance to lose his hair.

She didn’t want to think about Buddy.

Looks were one thing, but more frightening, did she have any of her father inside her? She had been angry enough at the way he treated his wife and children that she had, as a girl, lain awake at night fantasizing ways to rid the world of Rex Stoddard. They had been childish thoughts, and she had never acted on them, but was that the way her father’s sickness had begun? Had he, too, lain awake at night plotting revenge and destruction?

Rex had never been able to forgive even the smallest slight. A gesture, an offhand remark, an opinion he didn’t share. Rex held on to those things forever and waited. When he finally had the opportunity to get even, he took full advantage of it.

Harmony knew that most of the time she wasn’t that way. She knew from living with her father just how damaging revenge was to the soul. She had witnessed demonstrations again and again, and each time she’d vowed never to be like him.

Sadly, though, in one way they were alike, because there was one person she would never be able to forgive and didn’t even want to try. She was grateful beyond measure that her mother had not died in the explosion that had leveled her childhood house, but a part of her was sorry her father hadn’t been locked inside and unable to escape.

Had he been, she and her mother could finally stop living in fear.

More laughter erupted from the living room, and she knew she had to stiffen her backbone and start a discussion about the future. She gripped the mug handle. Then she turned the corner of her tiny kitchenette and stood in the wide doorway as her mother whisked a blanket from her face and cried “Peekaboo!”

Janine was so thin. That was the first thing Harmony had noticed, followed by shock at how old she looked. She was only forty-five, but she looked at least ten years older, her skin sallow, her hair salted with gray and pulled back in an unflattering low ponytail. She walked like someone in pain, each foot placed carefully in front of the other, as if she wasn’t sure the ground wouldn’t rise to swallow it. Now she was smiling at her granddaughter, but even that smile seemed tentative, as if admitting she was happy might bring down disaster on all of them.