Tara Quinn - The First Wife

Jane stared at him. “So you do want to marry again someday?” She’d been worried about him. Worried he was going to waste his life on one-night stands. Which would have been fine if it made him happy, but it didn’t seem to. He tried too hard to stay busy—as though he was outrunning his dissatisfaction.

Brad’s mother had been killed in a car accident when he’d still been too young to remember her. And his father had passed away four years before, from a massive heart attack.

Aside from a few distant cousins, he was alone in the world.

“I want a family, sure,” he said. “But not unless I meet someone I know I can love forever.”

So maybe his constant dating was more than she’d realized. Maybe he was searching…

“Do you think that really happens?” Jane asked, curious—and also relieved to be talking about something besides her.

“I like to believe it can,” he said and then sent her a grin. “I’m certainly doing extensive research on the topic.”

That was more like the Brad she knew. “Well, spare me the details, but do tell if you find a definitive answer.”

And then, just like that, his face grew serious once again. “I’m more interested in finding answers for you, right now,” he said. “I’m concerned about you, Jane.”

“And I’m telling you there’s no reason to be. The phone call shocked me today. I need some time to get used to the idea of having been a bigamist’s wife. But I’m fine. Really.”

“Okay, but I want you to think about something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Durango’s number one profile characteristic of an abused woman.”

The list was posted in the main gathering room at the shelter. Jane knew it by heart.

And at the top:

She lives in denial.

Damn him.

BRAD WASN’T SURE why he was pushing so hard. The whole reason he and Jane were good together, the one thing that had allowed their unusual friendship to work, was the lack of expectation for more than either wanted to give.

They cared about each other, they were open to soul-deep confidences, to emotional intimacy, but they didn’t require it of each other. And they never got personal, physically.

Other than that time she’d had the flu and he’d taken care of her.

And the lump. Brad had been in the shower and found a lump in his prostate. He’d called Jane first, his doctor second. And a day later she’d treated him to drinks at their favorite neighborhood pub to toast his perfectly normal good health.

As he recalled, she’d laughingly left him to it that night when he’d spotted a red-haired beauty sitting alone at the bar….

With so much unsaid between them, they sat on their picnic blanket silently staring out over a land that didn’t really hint at all the danger that lurked in the world. Not that Brad spent a lot of time pondering life’s dangers. He knew the dangers would find them without their help.

What they needed to figure out was how to be happy regardless of the dangers.

Jane was eating a strawberry; juice dripped off her lower lip. Funny, he’d never noticed how full her lips were…

Maybe he should stick to figuring out how, on Monday, he was going to fight a client’s husband for the support she deserved after having put up with his emotional abuse for more than twenty years.

“You’re wrong, you know?”

“About what?”

“About me being abused.”

Brad met Jane’s gaze and saw that she meant it. So why didn’t he believe her?

“After the tennis incident…I wasn’t sure. The doctor made such a big deal of the direction of the blow. He said that James would’ve had to pull his elbow back into my nose to have broken it the way he did, not going forward for a shot as he claimed.”

“How did it seem to you?”

Jane’s pause unsettled him. He dealt with similar silences too often. With intelligent, strong women who’d been so emotionally broken down that they second-guessed themselves in spite of their abilities.

“I honestly couldn’t say.” He wished her words surprised him. “One minute I was standing there, the next minute I was on the ground in the most excruciating pain I’d ever known. My head was pounding so hard I couldn’t hear. Couldn’t see.”

“Did you tell the police you didn’t know what happened?”

“Not at the time. I was too out of it. I just went with what James told me had happened. But a few days later, after James and I went back to work, I kept thinking about how angry he’d been, and what the doctor had said. The doubts set in. James left for a graduate study trip and while he was gone I went to the Victim Witness office in town, just in case I was reading things wrong. Since their sole purpose is victim support, I figured they’d know if I needed help. I told them everything. They said that there was no evidence of abuse.”

“Even with what the police and doctor had said? Even with your doubts?”

“They said that my doubts were indicative of a problem in my marriage, but that as far as obtaining a protection order was concerned, I didn’t have enough evidence.”

Jane was fiddling with the lid of the strawberry container. Opening and closing it. Watching the movement. Not at all the head-up-and-shoulders-straight woman he knew.

“Maybe they were wrong.”

“I don’t think so, Brad. I think my doubts were a result of professionals who had to do their jobs or risk potential lawsuits. While I was at Victim Witness another woman came in. She was bruised and swollen and she’d been sitting in the outer office, waiting for the counselor to be done with me. She could hardly speak. She was crying, but one eye was so swollen the tears couldn’t escape.

“She had two little kids with her, younger than four. They huddled against her and even as scared as she was, she protected them fiercely.

“Seeing them was a life-changing moment for me. That was what abuse looked like. I couldn’t get that family out of my mind and from then on I quit feeling sorry for myself. I made the decision that I was going to spend my life helping women not to live like that. I started volunteering as a receptionist at that office the very next week.”

Jane had never told him how she got her start with the women they helped. He’d never asked, assuming that she’d somehow fallen into it through her work—as he had.

“James and I had some bad fights after that,” she added, her voice soft and distant. “And not once did I get hurt. Nor was I ever physically afraid of him. Like I said. The incidents were accidents.”

Brad didn’t believe her. But he didn’t have any real reason not to, so kept his thoughts to himself. Maybe he’d seen too much of the other side. Maybe knowing that, statistically, one in two women suffered some form of spousal abuse had clouded his judgment. Maybe his perspective was too jaded.

And maybe not.

“Besides, one thing I know is that I’m more than capable of taking care of myself and those around me.”

Jane’s description fit the woman he knew.

“I’ve always had preservation instincts,” she continued, her voice going stronger. And when she smiled, Brad smiled with her. “I remember when I was a kid and I couldn’t wait for my dad’s visits. He’d only be with us a few days or weeks at a time, and those were the highlight of the year. For both my mom and me. Except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He used to tickle me to the point that it hurt. I hated that. And the more I struggled, the more he tickled. It was a game to him but it wasn’t one I enjoyed playing. But I wasn’t strong enough to get away.”

Brad didn’t like the game at all. The older man had been way out of line, holding his own daughter captive.