The Sheriff's Daughter

“You’re up early,” he greeted her with a quick kiss on the cheek, smelling of the musk aftershave she’d been buying him for years. His thick, dark hair was still damp.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Pouring his coffee, he turned, cup in hand, to frown at her. “Aren’t you feeling good? Cramps?”

She’d had her period the week before.

“I know about Chloe.”

His entire demeanor changed, stiffened. His shoulders closed in on his tall, lanky form. Cup in hand, he pulled out a chair at the table, not his usual one. One reserved for guests.

Sara catalogued his every move. Watched his long legs slide under the table, wincing as he sipped hot liquid, too much, too fast. Noticed his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. She watched herself watching.

“Who told you?”

The emotional weight dropped deeper into her stomach, making her queasy. Bringing on panic so intense she could hardly breathe.

So it was true. Her zealous, young son hadn’t been jumping to conclusions. Amazing how a life could fall apart without even making a sound.

And he wanted to know who had told her. “Does it matter?”

His gaze held hers for long seconds and then dropped. “I suppose not.”

He sipped. She watched. She had coffee, too, but she was pretty sure she’d choke on it.

“How long has it been going on?”

His face stiff, he stared at her. “Does it matter?” He repeated back to her.

“Yes, I think it does.”

When he glanced away, she knew she’d won. And lost everything. “A year.”

Jitters spread through her, just beneath her skin—and deeper. “As long as she’s been there?”

He acknowledged the statement with one tip of his head—as if this wasn’t all that big a deal to him. As if infidelity was just another little bump in the road—like stealing away, with false promises, her chances of ever bearing a child she could hold in her arms, nurse, raise.

And then, struck with horror, she realized something else.

“There’ve been others, haven’t there?” How stupid of her not to have considered that fact. How amazingly blind. She wanted to crawl into a hole.

“A few.”

Sara hadn’t figured there was enough left of her heart to be further crushed.

“They don’t mean anything, Sara.”

That made her angry. “Of course they do!” She raised her voice—something she almost never did. “They mean you’ve been unfaithful to me! To the vows we took. They mean you’re untrustworthy.” Didn’t he understand that loyalty and trust were all they had? And now they had nothing at all?

“They mean that I have needs you aren’t willing to meet.”

Sucking in a breath, she nodded. She’d heard about that before. Countless times. Couldn’t take it again—not right then.

Leave it to Brent to make this her fault. Just as it had been her fault that she hadn’t understood that when he said he wanted children later, he’d meant he didn’t want them—ever.

“I’ve never turned you away when you’ve asked for sex.”

“Who wants to have to ask?” His voice was quiet, his expression tired. “I want a woman who’s eager to be in my arms, Sara. One who enjoys my touch.”

“I enjoy it.”

“Sometimes,” he allowed. “And other times, you lie there and make the right moves and wait for it to be over.”

Didn’t every woman? When she was tired? Feeling taken for granted?

Is that how it had been for her the night of Ryan’s conception? Had she lain there, her thoughts and emotions separate from what they were doing to her body?

Sara shook her head, pulling her thoughts back from places she’d left behind long ago. She hadn’t considered that night for years. At least not for more than a second or two. Ryan’s visit was costing her greatly.

“If you were eager, Sara, you’d want to experiment.”

She stared at him, knowing she should speak up. Knowing there were things she needed to say. But she couldn’t bring them to mind, couldn’t focus. All she could do was hold back the tears.

“We’ve been married fifteen years. And in the same standard missionary position, with the same foreplay, for all of them. If you were doing more than your duty, feeling more, you’d need some variety, something to keep things fresh and new.”

“Why?” she suddenly spouted, not recognizing her own voice. “When apparently you’ve been getting fresh and new for years?”

His shoulders dropped more.

“I’m sorry,” she said, out of years of habit—and because she meant it. “That was beneath me.”

“Just think about what I’m saying for a minute,” Brent said, his voice soft, almost pleading, and Sara wondered if he actually wanted her blessing for his actions. Her approval. Maybe even a go-ahead to continue? “When’s the last time we made love?”

She tried to remember. Picturing them in bed. At night. On Sunday mornings. The last time they’d been in a hotel together.

“You can’t remember.”

Her mind scrambling, she stared at him.

“Can you?”

Sara shook her head.

“I can,” he surprised her by saying. “It was two months ago. On a Saturday morning. You’d had a bad dream and cuddled up behind me. I actually thought you were finally making a move on me and before I realized that you were still half asleep, I’d already gotten your attention and you finished what you’d inadvertently started.”

She remembered. Not the dream—that was long gone. But how she’d felt, needing comfort. Needing to be held. And having to have sex instead.

She’d taken comfort from the fact that making love was something that she and Brent shared that no one else had a part in; that it was something that he gave only to her, and she to him.

She hadn’t needed it often. But she’d valued the connection.

“How do I know you haven’t given me some kind of infection or disease?”

“I always use a condom,” he said, as if that made the fact that he’d been screwing his assistant while sleeping with Sara, too, okay.

It wasn’t. Right now it felt as if nothing would ever be okay again.

Finding it harder and harder to breathe, Sara considered her options. And she couldn’t find any.

“I’m filing for divorce.”

He set his cup down. “You can’t be serious.”

Maybe not. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough. But… “I am.” She waited for fear to make her take it back. To apologize. Or compromise. And it didn’t.

It sent fresh shards of panic through her, however, mingling with the despair. She couldn’t see beyond the hopelessness. But something inside her wouldn’t let her lie down, either.

She’d been a victim for such a long time. She just couldn’t do it anymore.

Brent sat forward, taking both her hands between his, holding them on her lap. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sara. We’re partners. We’re good together. We’ve built a great life.”

Drawing a strange kind of strength from the warmth of his hands, Sara listened to him. She recognized the words—they were the way she’d have described their relationship, too. A week ago.

“We’ve got a beautiful house,” she said slowly, as though waking from a deep sleep. “A healthy bank account. And a routine that works.”

When they weren’t eating out, she did the cooking. He did the dishes. She went to the grocery store and did the laundry; he looked after the cars and paid the bills. They took turns putting things back in place after the housekeeper had been in to clean. And they moved gracefully around each other in the bathroom every morning and night.

“Yes,” he said, sounding relieved.

And the things she’d been feeling since she’d found out about his adultery didn’t change at all. She might have been blind for a lot of years, but she wasn’t anymore.

“That’s an arrangement, not a relationship.”

“You’re just tired. Overwrought. I’m sorry you found out about Chloe, but this doesn’t change anything, Sara. Things are just as they were last week and the week before. You weren’t unhappy then.”

Wasn’t she? She hadn’t asked.

“You certainly weren’t thinking we needed to divorce.”

He was right. She’d never even considered the possibility. Despite the fact that she’d wanted children more than anything and he’d led her to believe he did, too, until it was too late for her to do much about it. Regardless of how unsexy he made her feel with his dissatisfaction.

Until two days ago, she’d been existing.

Her entire world had changed in the past forty-eight hours. She didn’t know how that could happen; how an inner self that had been complacent and exactly the same for more than twenty years could suddenly wear a completely different face. She just knew she wasn’t the same person she’d been when she’d run to answer the door two days before.

Funny how it seemed to be the unexpected instants in life that irrevocably changed things. Not the planned-for and worked-toward events.

“Are you going to stop seeing her?”

His hands dropped. So did his head. But when he looked up, she saw resolution in his eyes. “I will, if that’s what it takes to keep this together.”

What was “this,” exactly?

“For how long?”

Brent didn’t answer immediately. But she knew him well enough to know that he was attempting to be honest. “I can’t make any promises, Sara,” he finally said. “I’d like to tell you forever, but I just don’t know that. I guess it depends on how much you’re willing to do.”

“Me?”

“We could see a therapist. Work through your sexual issues and maybe…”

Sara stood, took her cup to the sink. “I’ve been through enough counseling sessions to write a book on the topic. Probably two,” she said. “I am what I am, Brent. A woman who doesn’t think sex is the be-all and end-all of life. I enjoy it when the timing is right. I can’t make the feelings come at random.”

He looked over at her. “I’m not asking you to.”

“What are you asking?” Arms folded, she leaned back against the counter.

“I don’t know.” He swore. “That you lighten up a bit, I guess. Be willing to experiment a little.”

Breathing wasn’t easy. The tightness in Sara’s chest had grown into a physical pain. She felt inadequate—in so many ways.

“Wild and crazy is not fun for me, Brent. It’s frightening.”

He stood, too, pushing his chair back to the table. He rinsed his cup. Put it in the dishwasher, and then took her shoulders between his hands.

“We’ll work this out, Sara,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “I’ll end things with Chloe and we’ll go from there. Okay?”

She almost nodded. Wanted to nod. Her instincts told her to nod.

She asked a question instead.

“Do you love me, Brent?”

“Of course I do.” His gaze dropped to her lips.

“Are you in love with me?”

Letting go of her, he ran a hand through his inch-long hair—still the California blond it had always been. “I don’t even know what that means,” he said, obviously frustrated with her. “It’s a pretty phrase some woman made up, I’d guess. I’m a good provider, Sara. Our bills are paid on time. We live in a nice house in a fine neighborhood. We can afford to vacation where and when we want and eat out every night of the week if we choose to. I clean up after myself and am always here when I say I will be. I don’t know what else you want from me.”

She wanted him to think she was enough just as she was. She wanted him to be trustworthy. To be loyal to her. She wanted him to be sufficiently in love with her that he couldn’t look at another woman.

She wanted from him the things she gave to him.

He grabbed her hand again and as she studied their interlocked fingers, her skin started to burn. Those fingers had touched her intimately. Been inside her.

And inside other women, too.

“I want a divorce.”

WHILE BRENT PLAYED GOLF, Sara packed every suitcase they had, as well as a few moving boxes they’d kept in the garage, loaded as much as she could into the back of their dark blue Ford Expedition and rented a furnished apartment near OSU, just off High Street. She’d go back to New Albany on Sunday to get the rest of the stuff she’d packed. And see about finding a more permanent residence—probably in a little better area. She’d been complacent for most of her adult life, but suddenly she couldn’t move fast enough. Couldn’t even recognize herself.

It was almost as though, if she slowed down, she’d fall.

In her new place she hung her clothes and unpacked bathroom essentials. Leaving everything else, she went to the nearest mall to walk around, be among people, find enough diversion to keep her from sinking into hell beneath the weight of her thoughts.

She thought about calling her father.

Or going to work.

Instead, she bought a beautiful teapot. It was fine bone china. Ivory with gold trim and exquisite little roses hand-painted across its belly.

The teapot reminded her of happy women. Of birds and beauty and things that were more powerful than money or marriages or even death. It brought tears to her eyes.

As soon as she had her purchase in hand, she left.

BACK IN HER TEMPORARY HOME, Sara tried the teapot in several locations, on the ledge inside the front door, the only door, in the middle of the dented, half-sized stove; on the back of the toilet; and ended with it on her nightstand, so she’d see it first thing when she woke up in the morning.

And then, at 8:42 p.m., according to the cell phone that was doubling as an alarm clock, she crawled into bed, pulled the cheap bedsheets up over her shoulders and cried until her ribs hurt so much she couldn’t move.

A SCREAM FROM UPSTAIRS woke him. Mark listened, trying to determine if he needed to get up and help. Call an ambulance.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what your mama said, this is my house and I’ll damn well leave my shit on the floor and anything else I want to…”

Mark pulled a down pillow over his head. The newlyweds who’d moved into the apartment above him were at it again.

“Uncle Mark?”

Hell. He’d forgotten he had Jordon with him for the weekend.

“Yeah?” Sitting up, Mark flipped the switch he’d installed in the wall beside his cherry-wood headboard, to see his thirteen-year-old nephew, wearing basketball shorts and nothing else, standing in his bedroom doorway.

“Shouldn’t you do something?” Jordon gestured to the ceiling. “Call someone?”

He’d been playing surrogate dad to his sister’s kid since Jordon was two and her husband, a firefighter, had lost his life in a warehouse fire. Mark took Jordon camping, drove to Cleveland to go to ball games, taught him how to fish. He just never brought him home to Columbus with him.

“They’ll stop soon enough,” he said now, wishing he’d done as Dana had suggested and stayed with Jordon in Cleveland while she went on an overnight trip with her new boyfriend on his cabin cruiser along the Ohio River.

He’d been afraid having the boy around while she was getting ready—maybe asking questions—would make her change her mind about going. Ken, a widowed doctor she’d met at the club where she worked, was the first guy his sister had dated since her husband’s death.

“You’re nothing but a pig and a jerk and I can’t believe I married you…”

Jordon glanced up again, his brow furrowed. “He might hit her.”

Possibly. But Mark didn’t think so. If this evening went true to form, Jordon was soon going to be hearing something else his sister didn’t want her adolescent son listening in on.

“Don’t you touch me, you…”

Yep, here it came. Mark jumped out of bed.

“How about some ice cream?” he asked, pulling on shorts and a T-shirt over the briefs he slept in.

“It’s almost midnight!”

“So?” he said to the boy. “I know a shop that’s open until one from May ’til September. You saying you don’t have room for a banana split?”

Jordon loved banana splits.

“Sure!” His nephew said, just as the sounds overhead started to change. “I’ve always got room for that.”

“Then get your rear next door and grab a shirt and some shoes.”

Moving out to the tiny space that served as a living room, Mark raised his voice, ostensibly to be heard from the spare bedroom next to his, avoiding the sight of the wrought-iron bars on the windows—a necessity in this neighborhood—as he grabbed his keys.

He had Jordon out of the apartment and onto the street before the going really got good upstairs. And he took the long way to the ice cream shop two blocks away. He figured he had at least an hour to kill.

“WHY DO YOU LIVE in that place?” Jordon asked, when his boat-shaped dessert dish was completely empty, as Mark nursed a cup of decaffeinated coffee, regardless of the eighty-degree temperature outside.

“I’m too lazy to move,” he answered the boy.

“You, lazy? Give me a break.”

“I’ve done a lot a work on the place,” Mark tried again, wondering how such short hair got so rumpled as he ran his hand through it. “What about that entertainment system? Can’t beat that, huh?”

“’Cept the room’s so small you get kinda dizzy watching such a large screen.”

Yeah, he hadn’t anticipated that consequence.

“It’s’cuz of that stupid sex offender stuff, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “It does make things a little difficult.”

“It’s not fair, Uncle Mark. You didn’t do anything.”

His family had never tried to hide from the horrible turn Mark’s life had taken that night at the lake, not far from Wright State University during his freshman year of college. He and Dana had told Jordon about Mark’s past as soon as they’d thought the boy was old enough to understand.

They’d thought that was preferable to him hearing about it somewhere else. From someone who maybe wasn’t in possession of all the facts.

“Yes, I did, son. There was forensic evidence to prove that I did.”

“You were at a party with a bunch of college kids.”

The place was empty except for the old guy working in the back room.

“I had way too much to drink.” Readjusting his long legs beneath the short, square table, Mark tried not to think about the bed he’d just left.

“And you haven’t had anything to drink since.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that I broke the law.”

“Yeah, and served your time.”

Though Jordon’s voice was changing, he still looked young for his age. Even with the too-long hair and baggy clothes.

“Some crimes you pay for for a lifetime.”

“The girl said she was twenty-one.”

“She was bruised.” He squinted against the harsh fluorescent lighting.

“There were two other guys with her, too.” Jordon’s hazel eyes—a family trait he shared with Dana and Mark—were wide and glinted with emotion. “They had to have hurt her. You wouldn’t have hurt her.”

“But I can’t remember what happened.” He’d tried everything from revisiting the scene to hypnosis, and still not one clear recollection of the latter part of that night came to him.

“You know you wouldn’t have hurt her.”

He did know that. Which was the only reason he could sleep at night. But he also knew he’d had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl at the same time that there were two other men having sex with her. Had they taken turns, watched each other? Had two of them touched her at once? The thought sickened him.

Stopped him in his tracks.

“I think you should move. You got the money.”

He did well for himself.

“There’s no law against it, is there?”

“No. I’d have to let the sheriff know, and reregister with my new address.”

“Then why not do it?”

Jordon was growing up, choosing to tackle mature issues. Mark decided to be honest with him.

“Because if I did, everyone in the new neighborhood would be notified about me being there. I’d likely have hate mail, things thrown at my house, signs put in my yard and people running scared with their little kids.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“It’s life.”

His life, anyway.

“I’m comfortable where I am, son. People know me.”

“It’s a ghetto.”

Not quite. But close.

“You could get gunned down taking out your trash.”

“We’ll stay in Cleveland next time your mom leaves town, okay?”

“I think you should move.”

Mark gave up trying to convince his nephew of things he had a hard time accepting himself.

CHAPTER FOUR

AMAZING, REALLY, how quick and easy it was to disassemble something that had taken fifteen years of hard work to build. Agree to split all assets in half, file papers, wait thirty days and the state of Ohio dissolves a union once destined to last a lifetime.

Sara hadn’t even been able to fully wrap her mind around the idea before the marriage was legally ended.

Providing male oversight on the last day of June, while the movers took her half of the household out of the home in which she’d hoped to raise children and grow old, her father gave her hand a squeeze.

She nodded.

And that was the end of any conversation they were going to have on the subject.

“When do you close on the new place?”

“A couple of weeks.” The new house had been vacant and the owners were letting her rent it until the paperwork was complete.

Retired sheriff John Lindsay stood up straight, staring out the front window toward the moving van. “Brent seen it yet?”

“No. Why should he?”

“Has he found a place?”

“Chloe has a place on a lake. He’s moving in with her for now.”

“She got kids?”

“Two.” Don’t let it show, she ordered herself. Don’t let it show and it won’t hurt nearly as long.

Her father’s nod said more than she wanted it to. He saw the irony in the situation. Her husband had refused to have babies with her—a woman who desperately wanted to have a chance for do-overs in that department—and yet he was willing to take on another man’s children for someone else.

She couldn’t stand his pity. All her life she’d had her father standing over her, watching her hurt. The pattern had to stop.

“Have you called him? Seen if he’s changed his mind?”

Sucking in air, Sara counted to ten, squeezing fingers to her thumb as she did so. “No.”

Two brawny, sweaty, unshaven young men were loading her dresser. Part of a set that was now split up.

“Don’t you think you should?”

Her father wanted what he thought was best for her, she reminded herself, while her mind screamed silently.

The man was unfaithful to me! An adulterer, dammit. More than once. For years. How could you want him to ever come near me again?

“He chose Chloe.”

“You’re better for him. He’s going to realize that.” But he’s not better for me.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. She’s going to be a high-powered attorney someday.”

A furniture pad went over the dresser.

“He has his own power. What he needs is a woman on his arm who knows how to make him look his best.”

As much as Sara cringed at the description, she knew that her father had just paid her his idea of the highest compliment. How he survived in today’s world, with his chauvinistic views, she had no idea.

“I guess he doesn’t think so.”

One nightstand was next.

“Did you split the mattress set, too?”

“No. I gave him the set in exchange for the bed frame. I didn’t want the mattress we shared, anyway.”

“What about the cars?”

“I got the Lexus.” Leaving Brent the Expedition. She’d had to give up the boat, too, but it was worth it. She had no use for a recreational vehicle she could neither get into nor out of the water by herself.

“Good for you.”

With a nod, her father was gone—outside, giving last-minute instructions to the crew he’d hired.

BY SIX THAT EVENING—the first of July, a new month, a new life—all boxes and belongings were off the truck. Just as the Two Man Movers van drove away, the pizza delivery guy pulled up. Paying him and taking the hot cardboard box, Sara climbed over cartons on the way to her new kitchen.