The In Death Collection Books 16-20 - J. D. Robb [435]
“During this difficult and hostile time, she met a man.” Mira’s voice changed, subtly, went just a bit tight at the edges. “Charming, personable, attentive, handsome. He swept her off her feet. Flowers, gifts, time. She married him impulsively, less than four months after she and my father divorced.”
She rose, went to the coffeepot. “I shouldn’t have a second cup of this. I’ll be buzzing around driving Dennis to distraction half the night. But . . .”
“You don’t have to tell me this. I get the picture. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’ll finish it. Though I’ll shorten a long story for both our sakes.” She set the coffeepot down again, and spent a moment just tracing her fingers over the purple pansies that decorated it.
“The first time he touched me, I was shocked. Outraged. He warned me that she’d never believe me, that she’d send me away. I’d been in a little bit of trouble. Acting out, you might say.” She smiled, sat again. “Won’t go into that. But my mother and I were at odds, very much at odds. He was convincing, and frightened me. I was young, and felt powerless. You understand.”
“Yeah.”
“She traveled quite a bit. I think—well, it came out later, that she’d realized she’d made a mistake, marrying him. But she’d already had one marriage fail, and she wasn’t going to give up so quickly. She focused on her career for a time, and he had many opportunities to molest me. He used drugs to keep me . . . quiet. It went on for a very long time. I told no one. In my mind, my father had deserted me, my mother loved this man more than she loved me. And neither of them cared if I lived or died. I attempted suicide.”
“It’s hard,” Eve managed, “really hard to feel like you’re alone in all that.”
“You were alone. But yes, it’s equally hard to feel alone, and helpless, and guilty. Fortunately, I bungled the suicide. My parents, both of them, were in my hospital room, at their wits’ end. It came spewing out of me, all of it. The rage, the fear, the hate. It all came out, two and a half years of rape and abuse.”
“How’d they handle it?” Eve asked when Mira fell into silence.
“In a most unexpected way. They believed me. He was arrested. Imagine my surprise,” she murmured. “That it could be stopped, just by speaking of it. That saying it out loud could make it stop.”
“That’s why you became a doctor. So you could make it stop for other people.”
“Yes. I didn’t think of it then. I was still angry, still hurt, but yes. I had therapy—individual, group, family. And sometime during that healing period, my parents found each other again. They mended what was ripped. We don’t often talk of that time. I don’t often think of it. When I think of my parents, I think of them as they were before things began to unravel, and as they’ve been since they repaired the damage. I don’t think of the bitter years.”
“You forgave them.”
“Yes, and myself. They forgave each other, and me. We were stronger for it,” Mira added. “And I think I was drawn to Dennis because of his bottomless well of kindness, and decency. I’d learned the value of those things because I’d seen their opposite.”
“How do you find the way back? How do you find the way when a marriage crumbles under you, and you turn away from each other? When it’s bad, so bad you can’t talk about it, or think about it?”
Mira reached out, laid her hands over Eve’s. “You can’t tell me what’s hurting you, and Roarke?”
“I can’t.”
“Then I’ll tell you the simple and most complex answer is love. It’s where you start, and where, if you work hard enough, want hard enough, you end.”
20 SHE DIDN’T WANT to go home. It was, Eve knew, evasion at its worst, but she didn’t want to go home to a houseful of people. She didn’t want to go home to Roarke.