“Personal,” she said, hesitating for only an instant before she answered.
“Mrs. Hunter isn't seeing anyone today, she's very busy. Perhaps you'd like to explain the nature of your business to me, or leave a note, and I'll see that she gets it.” The girl nodded and looked faintly disappointed. But she took the piece of paper the secretary handed to her, and wrote a quick note, which she handed back to the woman at the desk a few minutes later. The secretary flipped it open, glanced at it, and then back at the girl, and stood up, looking somewhat nervous. “Will you wait a moment, please, Miss … er … Turner.” The girl only nodded as the secretary disappeared, and handed the note to Jack less than a minute later. He looked at it and at the secretary with a look of fury.
“Where is she? What the hell is she doing here?” “She's at the reception desk, Mr. Hunter.” “Bring her in here.” His mind was racing as he tried to decide what to do, and all he could hope was that Maddy hadn't seen her. But she wouldn't recognize her anyway, so maybe it made no difference.
The girl was ushered in a moment later, and Jack stood looking at her. The look in his eyes was cold and hard, but the smile he wore when he greeted her spoke volumes. Maddy knew absolutely nothing about the girl.
Chapter 11
MADDY SLIPPED AWAY QUIETLY when she went for her meeting with Dr. Flowers. The only one who knew she was seeing her was Bill Alexander. And the doctor looked as grandmotherly and calm when Maddy walked in as she had the first day they'd met at the White House.
“How are you, my dear?” she said warmly. Maddy had explained her situation with Jack quickly and succinctly when she'd called before, but she hadn't had time to go into all the details.
“I learned a lot from you the other day,” Maddy said as soon as she sat down in one of the doctor's comfortable leather chairs. She had a cozy office that looked like she had bought everything in it at a garage sale. Nothing matched, chairs were worn, and all of the paintings looked like they'd been done by her children. But it was tidy, and warm, and Maddy felt suprisingly at home. “I am the product of an abusive home, my father beat my mother every weekend when he got drunk. And I married a man, at seventeen, who did the same thing to me,” she said in answer to Dr. Flowers's questions about her past.
“I'm sorry to hear that, my dear.” Dr. Flowers looked compassionate and concerned, but the grandmotherly tone was in sharp contrast to her eyes, which seemed to understand and see everything. “I know how painful that can be, not just physically, but the kind of scars it can leave. How long were you married?”
“Nine years. I didn't leave until he had broken my leg and both arms, and I'd had six abortions.”
“I'm assuming you divorced him.” The all-knowing eyes looked hard at Maddy.
Maddy nodded, looking thoughtful. Just talking about it brought back agonizing memories. She could see Bobby Joe in her mind's eye, just as he had looked the day she left him. “I ran away. We lived in Knoxville. Jack Hunter rescued me. He bought the television station where I worked, and offered me a job here. He came to pick me up in Knoxville with a limo. And as soon as I got here, I divorced my husband. Jack and I got married two years later, a year after my divorce was final.”
Dr. Flowers was interested in more than words, and she heard a great deal more than people told her. She had had a practice of abused women for forty years, and she knew all the signs, sometimes before her patients even recognized them. There was a long silence as she watched Maddy's eyes.
“Tell me about your current husband,” Dr. Flowers said quietly.
“Jack and I have been married for seven years, and he's been good to me. Very good to me. He established my career, and we live lavishly. We have a house, a plane, I have a great job, thanks to him, a farm in Virginia, that's actually his….” Her voice trailed off as Dr. Flowers watched her. She already knew the answers to the unspoken questions.
“Do you have children?”
“He has two sons by a former marriage, and he didn't want any more when we got married. We talked about it pretty thoroughly, and he decided … we decided that I should have my tubes tied.”
“Are you pleased with that decision, or do you regret it?”
It was an honest question, and it deserved an honest answer. “Sometimes. When I see babies … I wish I had one.” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears as she said it. “But Jack was right, I guess. We really don't have time for children.”
“Time has nothing to do with it,” Dr. Flowers said quietly. “It's a matter of desire, and need. Do you feel as though you need a baby, Maddy?”
“Sometimes I do. But it's too late now. I had the tubes cut as well as tied, to be sure. They can't reverse it.” Maddy's voice sounded sad.
“You could adopt, if your husband is willing. Would he be?”
“I don't know,” Maddy said in a choked voice. Their problems were so much more complicated than that. She had only explained it briefly to Dr. Flowers on the phone.
“About adopting a baby?” Dr. Flowers looked surprised by what Maddy had just told her. She didn't expect that.
“No, about my husband. And what you said the other day. It came on the heels of a conversation I'd just had with a co-worker. I … he thought … I think …” Tears rolled down her cheeks as she finally said it. “My husband is abusive to me. He doesn't beat me like my first husband did. He has never laid a hand on me, not literally. He shook me recently and he's … sexually … pretty rough on me sometimes, but I don't think he does it on purpose, he's just very passionate….” And then she stopped, and looked Dr. Flowers in the eye. She had to tell her. “I used to think he was rough, but he isn't … he's cruel, and abusive, and he hurts me. Intentionally, I think. He controls me. Constantly. He makes all my decisions for me. He calls me poor white trash, reminds me that I'm uneducated, and tells me that if he fired me, I'd go right down the tubes and no one would ever hire me. He never lets me forget that he saved me. He doesn't let me have friends, he isolates me. He makes me feel like dirt. He lies to me, and belittles me, and makes me feel rotten about myself. He humiliates me, and lately he frightens me. He's getting rougher in bed, and he threatens me. I never let myself look at it before, but he does just about everything you talked about the other day.” The tears continued to roll down her cheeks as she said it.
“And you let him,” Eugenia Flowers said quietly. “Because you think he's right and you deserve it. You think the ugly secret you carry around with you is that you're every bit as bad as he says, and if you don't do exactly what he says, everyone will know it.” Maddy nodded as she listened. It was a relief to hear the words, because it was exactly what she did think. “And now that you're aware of it, Maddy, what are you going to do about it? Do you want to stay with him?” It was an honest question, and she wasn't afraid to tell the truth, no matter how crazy it sounded.
“Sometimes. I love him. And I think he loves me. I keep thinking that if he understood what he's doing to me, he wouldn't do it. Maybe if I loved him more, or could help him understand how hurtful it is, he would stop doing it. I don't think he really wants to hurt me.”
“That's possible. But unlikely,” she said, looking right at Maddy. But she wasn't passing judgment on her. She was opening doors and windows for her. What she wanted to give her more than anything was perspective. “What if he wanted to hurt you, if you knew it was intentional? Would you still want to stay with him?”
“I don't know … maybe. I'm scared to leave him. What if he's right? What if I can't find a job, and no one ever wants me?” Dr. Flowers silently marveled that this exquisite creature could think that no one would ever love or employ her. But no one ever had loved her, not her first husband or her parents, or even Jack Hunter. Of that, Dr. Flowers was certain. Not through any fault of Maddy's. But she had chosen men who had wanted nothing more than to hurt her.