Husband by Choice

She’d meant the note, but she wouldn’t have left just because she was feeling paranoid. She’d at least have talked to him first. Looked for other options. She loved them too much to just walk away out of fear that her paranoia would hurt their son in the future. They still had three years before Caleb started school. And there were other options to help her deal with her fears.

Anything could happen between now and then. Which was why she took one step at a time.

A motto she lived by. Had taught him to live by.

And all of that meant there was something else going on.

Swinging his feet to the floor, Max sat on the side of the bed in the dark. Why would she just up and leave? Their mail hadn’t arrived until four—long after she’d left the house. It had still been in the box when he got home.

No unusual calls showed up on her cell phone records—he’d checked their usage online himself.

She hadn’t logged into her email account—all of the messages had still been on the server, unread.

And that left physical confrontation.

There’d been no sign of a struggle.

So she’d gone willingly. To avoid physical harm? To herself or to him and Caleb?

Meri would give her life to protect Max or their son. But they hadn’t been threatened.

Would an abductor have waited for her to write a goodbye letter and leave her keys in the cup holder?

He would if her abductor was a determined ex-husband who would want to make certain that Max knew that she was leaving him of her own accord. Steve could have made her write the note.

But why put the keys in the cup holder instead of under the seat? If Steve didn’t know she’d hidden them, or even if he did, what could it have mattered to him whether they were in a cup holder or under a seat?

No one but he and Meri knew about the hiding place.

Which was why they’d had the predetermined keys-under-the-seat agreement. An overkill safety measure agreement, in his opinion, but one Meri had insisted on having so that they’d have a way to signal each other if the other was being taken against their will.

Leave the keys under the driver’s seat if you needed help.

She’d left her keys in the cup holder. She hadn’t taken them with her, or disposed of them, so he could imagine that she’d been unable to leave them. They’d been in the cup holder. Where she’d deliberately left them. Not under the seat.

Her message to him was clear.

She didn’t need his help.

The Meri he knew would never have left such a message.

It had to be Steve. He’d found her and she’d reverted back to the terrified woman who did as he demanded so he didn’t beat her senseless. The woman who believed that the former detective, with all of his underground contacts, was more powerful than the laws that were there to protect her. Who believed, deep down, that she’d never be free of him.

She hadn’t wanted to talk about Steve. Seeing how much it upset her—and honestly believing, after years of no sign of the ex-cop, that he posed them no danger—he hadn’t pushed her for more information.

Lying there in the dark, Max feared that in not doing so, he might have made one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

* * *

DAY TWO.

Sometimes the part of me that takes on different names scares me. She’s so capable, but like an automaton. She goes through the day, doing what is expected of her, even watching for and trying to help others when opportunity or necessity presents itself.

She adapts to the situation in spite of her own needs.

And she doesn’t cry. Ever. It’s as if she can’t and that worries me. She is me and if I’m reaching the point where I can turn off so completely, I fear that my heart is really and truly dying.

Pen suspended over the page, Jenna read what she’d written. And shook her head. Sitting at the antique desk in her room just after dinner that Thursday night, she bent over her diary once again.