Page 101 of South of Nowhere

Shaw said, “He suffered from the disease of the literal.”

Lavelle laughed. “Ah, that’s good.” The smile faded. “Then little by little he worked his way in. He got me to quit my job. I was teaching. High school English. He kept asking me about the other faculty members. Questioning me about field trips, who came along with me. Did I really have to stay late? He’d show up at the school, surprising me. He kept saying I didn’t need to work. I could stay home, write my novels, we’d go to country clubs. Go to his firm’s events—he’s an investment advisor—meaning he coerces people into paying him to invest their money.” She sighed. “I could argue and fight…and win sometimes, but it was just exhausting. Easier to just surrender. I wanted to write anyway.” A nod toward her notebook.

“You’re not in grad school?”

“Ha, like he’d let me be around other men? He says that.” She wiped tears. “You know how terrible it is to be worshipped day and night?”

“Not a condition I’ve ever suffered from. Being worshipable.”

Another hollow laugh. “There. Funny! See. Humor. Ah, how I missed that.” She shook her head. “You know how bad it’s gotten? Last month we were having a nice dinner. John was behaving himself. No cross-examination about what I’d done all day. None of that. I thought maybe he’d changed. It was the old John. I thought maybe he was going to surprise me and tell me he was seeing a therapist.

“And you know what he does? Helps me clear the dishes and tells me to find a movie on Netflix and goes to the bathroom. I’m all hopeful…And when he comes out, his hands are bleeding! He cut his own palms with the steak knife I’d used at dinner—which he’d pocketed in a napkin when I wasn’t looking.”

“Defensive wounds.” Shaw understood.

“And just then the police show up. He’d called them from the bathroom, nine-one-one, and said I attacked him.” Lavelle shivered in rage. “He was all, ‘Oh, thank you for coming, Officers, but I’m all right. It’s okay now. She’s calmed down.’ He didn’t want to press charges. After they left he said now I was on record as being an abuser. And when he quote ‘punished’ me next time, he could always claim it was self-defense.”

“And he did?”

“Oh, yes. Every month or so. My sister-in-law sent flowers for my birthday. He was convinced it was some man who’d talked her into doing it for him. I got alcohol sprayed in my eyes for that. Sometimes it would be boiling water. A fall down the stairs…And every time I packed to leave, I’d find him on the phone with my mother or sister-in-law, saying he’d be in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by for a visit. And looking at me with this expression that said, ‘They’re next.’ How can one person be…the embodiment of evil, like that? Sounds like a terrible cliché, but it’s true.”

“A sociopath.”

“I saw an online therapist for a while—until he found out. That’s what she diagnosed. Sociopathic narcissist. I probably knew who he was sooner than I admitted to myself. But, the thing is, Colter, we want somebody in our lives so much. So desperately. And we open up the spiked gates and wave them cheerfully inside.”

One of the reasons his very career existed.

“So. Me. Dead to the world. People like him need somebody to possess. I thought he’d move on, find somebody else. Oh, I felt bad about that. But I needed to survive.” A cock of her head and a wistful smile. “It’s not going to work, though, is it?”

“A hundred years ago, maybe. But the world’s different now. Mobiles, facial recognition, social media, pictures and videos everywhere. And your video selfie of the car? There’s a sound-analysis program that can tell you hit the gasbeforeyou put the car in gear.And, there’d be a manhunt. And responders do not like wasting time on people who don’t need rescuing.”

“Unlike you…”

Shaw didn’t smile. He added, “And now, after trying to trick him? Nothing’s going to stop him from coming after you.”

Her face resigned, she said, “Well, it was a good few hours I had, thinking maybe I’d made it to Fraeland.”

As she dabbed at her eyes, he was thinking of one reward job he’d had—in which a young woman had vanished and her parents offered him six figures to find their daughter.

He did.

But too late.

The abusive boyfriend she’d run away from had found her first.

Shaw would always remember the couple’s face as he broke the news.

Lavelle nodded around the cave. “You think I’m in danger here?”

“No. He’s the sort who can’t imagine someone would trash a fifty-thousand-dollar car and run off to a dank cave just to escape from him. He thinks you’re in the woods trying to find your way out. I have some things to take care of. Sit tight here for the night. You’ve got food and water and battery power. You have a phone?”

“A burner. He doesn’t know.”

“Take my number.” He recited it and she punched it into the mobile. “You’re up high enough so that if the levee does go, you won’t be flooded out. I’ll be back in the morning.”

He glanced at her notebooks.

“Work on your novel. I know a few writers. They’d give anything for a few days with no interruptions. Even in an abandoned mine shaft.”

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