* * *
She could feel herself slipping. Knew that panic was close. She’d called the school to confirm that Ethan was in class and okay before she’d called Tad, recognizing the ludicrousness of her actions even as she did it.
Devon Williams didn’t know Ethan, and wouldn’t have reason to hurt him if he did. Unless he found out that she’d given Marie her number in case she needed help. He could be after anyone who was trying to take his wife away from him.
She knew how the abusive mind worked.
Maybe he’d somehow come across her number on Marie’s phone, or learned that she’d been involved in bringing Danny’s case to the High Risk Team. Maybe he knew Tad was involved, too, and had seen the three of them together.
“What sounds good for lunch?” Tad’s voice felt so close, while she felt so far away.
Eating in general sounded unappealing at the moment. But it was time to eat. She’d been hungry an hour ago. Acting normal was the way to beat the panic.
She felt anything but normal.
“Salad,” she said, naming a new organic drive-through salad place on the way out of the downtown area, trying to think about what she’d order.
Ethan was fine. He’d been at lunch the first time she’d called. At recess the second. If she called a third time she was going to look like a lunatic.
She knew he was okay. But she was scared to death for Marie, afraid her sister in victimhood hadn’t been as lucky as she herself had.
And Danny... At least Ethan had been spared violence in his young life.
She’d done the right thing. And she’d done it well. Her son was safe. Jeff would be proud of her.
Thinking of her best friend, of how incredible she’d felt the first time she made a comment about her father and, instead of doubting her, he’d asked some very serious questions and then sat and cried with her as she found a way to answer them.
She’d been lucky. So lucky.
Devon Williams had been a victim of domestic violence, too. By his father. It happened that way so often, the abused growing up to abuse.
But not with her. She’d never even come close to experiencing the white-hot rage she’d seen seething from her father.
Jeff hadn’t turned into an abuser, either. He’d been gentle. Kind. Funny and emotionally strong.
“Ethan’s dad was abused as a kid,” she told Tad. She couldn’t give him the facts of her life, but there were some things she could say. Things her father had never known. Things he’d never associate with her so things he’d never mention as an identifier if he was looking for her. “In his first foster home,” she added, when her gut clenched anyway.
It had actually been his birth home. And his birth mother. She’d been a single mom. An addict. She’d already been at her wit’s end with his older brother, and then Jeff had come along...the son of her pimp, he’d always believed.
Ethan would be back in class by now. She couldn’t call to verify. Had no legitimate reason to call.
They’d phone her if there was a problem. Reaching into the pocket of her scrub top, she checked her cell. Just to be sure she hadn’t missed a call.
And tried Marie again, closing her eyes as she waited for a ring, willing the woman to pick up.
“Voice mail,” she said, dropping her phone back in her pocket.
“You mentioned Ethan’s dad being like Devon—”
“No!” she interrupted him, horrified at where his thoughts were taking him. Where her stilted conversation had led him. “He was nothing like Devon,” she said now, scrambling for safe words. “He was my best friend. The one you went to when the rest of the world was crashing in on you. He always made things seem a little less intense. I could tell him stuff I never told anyone else.”
All true. All untraceable.
And talking about Jeff, with Tad, calmed her in a whole new way.
“How’d he die?” She should’ve expected Tad’s question, especially after he’d told her how his mother and sister died. It still caught her off guard.
“He was in a car accident,” she improvised quickly. In reality, he’d been playing intramural football with a group of fraternity brothers. Had taken a slam to his left kidney. When they got him to the hospital, they found he only had one working kidney. And it had been ruptured.