Page 4 of Finally Mine
“My sweet girl. Are you done? Is this the end?” Sara asked.
She nodded. “It’s over. He’s in jail.”
“Good.” Sara swore colorfully in Spanish and then promptly closed the book on her anger. “You’ll stay with me. I’ll make chicken noodle soup.”
“My bags are already at your house,” Gloria confessed with a ghost of a smile. Even after all these years of estrangement, Gloria had known she could go home. With Glenn gone, her mother would be safe.
“Mm-hmm,” Dr. Dunnigan harrumphed. “Now, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Parker, I’d like to continue examining my patient.”
Sara cupped Gloria’s face in her hands. “Welcome home,mjia. I’ll wait for you outside.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
A little of the cold in her soul faded. The sliver of fear dulled just a bit.
“Ooof,” the doctor tut-tutted when she looked at Gloria’s side where the gravel had abraded her skin. “It hurts now. But you’ll heal,” she predicted.
Gloria hoped the woman meant inside and out. Because right now, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever feel normal again. Hell, she didn’t even remember what normal was. What did her future look like? A girl who had barely graduated high school, never worked, and handed over any sense of self-respect to a monster. What kind of a place was there for her in this world?
In silence she bore the humiliation of the exam, so familiar, somehow again dehumanizing—being reduced to injuries that she wished she’d been strong enough to prevent.
Dr. Dunnigan’s fingers clicked away officially on her laptop, updating her records. “Pictures,” she said, peering over her reading glasses. She had always refused the doctor’s offer to document her injuries before. She’d never told Dr. Dunnigan that she had her own documentation, hidden away. Every bruise, every sprain, every broken bone. There had been days when she thought she’d never use it, never leave.
But she had.
“What am I going to do?” Her voice was hoarse as much from emotion as Glenn’s brutish hands.
“You’re not going to worry about making decisions today and for a while,” Dr. Dunnigan said briskly. She shut her laptop and opened a drawer to pull out a small digital camera. “You made the hardest decision today. Now it’s time to heal, rest, remember who you are without him.”
Was she anyone without him? Was poor little Gloria Parker anybody without the stigma of abuse? Did she even exist in this world anymore?
“I feel like a ghost,” she confessed softly.
Dr. Dunnigan helped her to her feet. “Feel real enough to me. Give yourself some time to heal, kiddo. Inside takes a lot longer than outside.”
Gloria lifted her chin so the doctor could record the garish handprints around her neck and closed her eyes when the motion made her dizzy.
The camera shutter clicked quietly.
“Today you’re not a victim. Today you’re a survivor.”
3
He felt his legs warm as the pavement blurred beneath his feet. His muscles hummed as he pushed harder. Benevolence, Maryland, his town since birth, clipped past as he outran his demons. Cozy houses sat on pretty green lawns that butted up against tree-lined streets.
It was April, and the rain that had plagued them for a week straight had abated, giving way to one perfect day of sunshine and eighty-degree weather. Aldo Moretta had ducked out of the office an hour early to take advantage of it with a run.
He raised a hand to the hugely pregnant Carol Ann who sat in her driveway in a lawn chair while her husband, Carl, a stick figure of a man, weeded the front flower bed. Carol Ann wiggled her fingers at him.
There were a lot of things Aldo couldn’t control. Which is why he took very good care of the things he could. Like his body. He’d fine-tuned himself into an athletic machine with a six-minute mile and a three-hundred-and-fifteen-pound overhead squat. He made himself strong and quick and ready. In four weeks’ time, he’d be calling on it all. His National Guard unit was deploying—his fourth time.
He turned the corner and fished the biscuit out of his pocket at the excited yaps coming from behind Peggy Sue Marsico’s three-foot-tall picket fence. Smiegel the Beagle wagged his white-tipped tail in a blur. He tossed the treat and watched Smiegel catch it mid-air in a super-dog, ears-out dive. He grinned as the dog pranced proudly through the ferns, prize between his teeth.
Next door to Peggy Sue’s beige and blue ranch was Lincoln Reed’s place. Once an old gas station, the fire chief had transformed it into a killer bachelor pad. Linc made it his mission in life to bachelor the hell out of every eligible woman in the tri-county area. He was a charming, friendly commitment-phobe.
Linc was a blast to hang out with. It was too bad that he and Aldo’s best friend, Luke, could barely tolerate the sight of each other.
“What’s up, Moretta?” Linc called out, raising a beer while spraying down his truck with the hose. “Want a beer?”
