“Who was holding it when you walked into it?” His voice was calm but she detected something disquieting below the surface.
She pushed him away and sat up.
“Ness?” He sat up with her. “Who did this to you?”
Her insides twisted and her stomach knotted and she couldn’t get any words out. She hadn’t wanted him to see, hadn’t wanted anyone to ever see the disfiguring scar that had kept her from wearing clothes that didn’t cover it, had kept her from getting naked those few times she’d almost let a guy get close. Why had she dropped her guard with Grady? Now that he saw, now that he knew, he’d be outta there.
Yeah, well, he was leaving anyway, she reminded herself.
“Vanessa, look at me.” He turned her face to his. “Tell me who did this to you. What’s this scar…?”
She wet her lips and took a breath.
“Just something I could have avoided if I’d been smarter and faster. It’s not a very interesting story.”
“Let’s say I’m interested.” When she didn’t respond, he reached over her to turn on the light on the bedside table.
“Don’t. Please don’t.”
He sank down next to her.
“All right. But from what I can feel, I’m guessing it’s not a surgical scar. It’s too ragged. Any doctor who cuts like this should be behind bars.”
“He is behind bars but he wasn’t a doctor.” Vanessa sighed. It was clear Grady wasn’t going to give up.
“Who was he?”
“My second husband.”
“Why would he do something like this to you?”
“Why?” She laughed, her voice harsh. “Because he was angry with me, and because he could.”
Grady ran his finger along the scar very gently. “You loved him?”
“I thought I did.”
“That boils down to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“You loved him, and he did this to you?”
“He was very angry because I told him I was leaving. He didn’t want me to. He picked up a knife, said that he’d make it so that no one would ever love me again, no one would want to make love to me again. He’d cut off both of them.” In a defensive motion, she raised her arms to cover her breasts.
He was so silent for so long she wasn’t sure he was still awake. Then he gathered her to his chest and stroked her back softly, but he still didn’t speak.
“Such a cliché, right?” She covered her face with her hands. “Woman wants to leave an abusive husband, he disfigures her.”
“How did you stop him from cutting the other one?”
“I kicked him straight up the middle, and he dropped the knife, and I ran outside, to a neighbor’s, and they called an ambulance and the police. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of blood-”
“Did you press charges?”
“I did. Yes, I did.” She twisted the end of the sheet into a point, first one way, then the other. How to tell him what that time had been like? Why even try? “And there was a trial. That was the worst part of it.”
“It couldn’t have been worse than the abuse.”
“Oh, yeah. His whole friggin’ family was there in the courtroom all day, every day. They whispered at me when I came in, and they whispered at me when I came out. They threatened me with everything you could imagine. The day he was sentenced, at Maggie’s insistence, I went back to Illinois with her. That night, they set my house on fire. Burned it to the ground. I lost everything I owned.”
“I’m guessing the police figured it out quickly enough.”
“Oh, sure. One of his brothers and one of his cousins were arrested and brought to trial, but there was no physical evidence and the jury didn’t convict them.”
“Where is he now? Your ex-husband?”
“He’s still in prison. He got seven years and he had to agree to anger management while he’s in prison.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Three years and a couple of months.”
“Any chance he’s out?”
She shook her head. “No. Someone would have contacted me. The district attorney promised me that if I’d testify, they’d make sure that I was notified before he was released.”
“And where did all this happen?”
“Back in Wisconsin.” She sighed. “Anyway, that’s why there’s that scar. And that’s why I didn’t want to turn on the light. I didn’t want you to see how ugly my body is.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She shook her head.
“Vanessa, there is nothing ugly about your body. If anything, yours is the most beautiful body I’ve ever seen up close and personal.”
“You’re just saying that because you think you’ll get lucky again.”
He cupped her face in his hands.
“I got lucky the day I walked into Hal Garrity’s backyard and stood on his deck and watched this beautiful woman float across it. She took my breath away,” he told her. “She takes my breath away every time I look at her.”
She felt as if something inside her cracked, then broke.
“Stop it.” She swatted at him, tears welling in her eyes.
The tears became a torrent. She had no words, only emotions, too many at one time for her to separate shame from the relief that he had not recoiled in disgust, or from the mind-numbing pain she felt every time she thought about the night that Gene had pushed her back against the kitchen table and sliced through her shirt into her flesh. It had been hard for her to admit even to herself that she’d left one bad marriage only to fall headfirst into another. She was embarrassed to remember what she had been like back then. It had been a long time since she’d talked about it, longer still since she’d cried for the woman she had once been.
“You must think I’m the stupidest woman in the world, to let someone do this to me,” she sobbed.
“I doubt very much that you let him do that, Ness. I don’t think abuse was what you were looking for when you married him.”
“But I took it, and I kept taking it.” She hiccuped. “I let it get worse. I should have walked that first time but…”
“But he promised he wouldn’t do it again, and you believed him because you loved him, right? You made excuses for him because you loved him.”
“I am such a cliché, aren’t I? Pathetic,” she wailed.
“What’s pathetic is a man who is so small that he has to hurt someone else in order to feel like a man.”
He gathered her up, blanket and all, and let her cry until there were no tears left to fall. When finally she stopped, he asked, “What’s his name?”
“Gene Medford.”
“Is that Eugene?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Just curious. He’s in prison in Wisconsin now?”
She nodded, then rested against him, sniffing and wishing she’d left that box of tissues on her nightstand instead of taking them into the bathroom on Saturday morning.
“Damn good thing that makeup woman used the waterproof mascara.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hands. “Otherwise, I can’t even begin to imagine what I’d look like. Bad enough the nose is red now but I could have raccoon eyes to go with it.”
Grady leaned back against the pillow and tucked the blanket around them both.
“Grady?” she whispered.
“Hmm?”
“It’s been one hell of a night, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah. It’s been one hell of a night.”
She lay against his chest, watching the shadows from the branches of the tree outside her window move across the floor until she closed her eyes, and, feeling safe for the first time in a very long time, fell asleep.
Grady lay awake in the dark, unable to get the image of a bleeding, terrified, wounded Vanessa out of his mind.
So many times as an agent, he’d seen the victims of vicious attacks not unlike the one Vanessa had survived. Husbands attacking wives, wives attacking husbands, their children, parents, siblings, best friends, strangers… there seemed to be no end to the number of ways in which to hurt someone.
He’d certainly seen injuries a hundred times worse than Vanessa’s. More than once, he’d seen women for whom the threat to cut off one or both breasts had been carried out. But this ate at him. How heartless could a man be that he’d do something so heinous to a woman who loved him? No one deserved to be treated like that.