she’d remembered....
“He took one look at me and I was a goner. The weird thing was, he was, too. Even weirder, he needn’t have come at all. Turns out while I didn’t have any friends, there was a community full of people who knew of me and came to that party to show me that I wasn’t alone. To cheer me on in my success since my parents weren’t able to be there to congratulate me themselves.”
She paused, waiting for the choked-up feeling to pass. And then said, “I didn’t know a lot of them, but the gesture meant the world to me.”
A light came to Yvonne’s eye. Jenna smiled at her friend and in the midst of the pain, they shared a few seconds of joy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“IT TURNS OUT that my foster mother and Steve were half brother and sister.” Jenna was sitting now, with a cold glass of water, provided by the nurse who’d come to check on Yvonne and administer another round of meds in her IV drip. “They shared a mother, who died when Steve was little. My foster mother was already in college by then. He was brought up by his father who, as it turns out, wasn’t a kind man. He didn’t ever hit Steve, nothing overtly abusive, but he belittled him every chance he got. Steve wet the bed until he was ten and any time he had an accident, his dad would rub his nose in the sheet and make him wear a diaper to school. He’d take it off the second he got the chance, of course, but sometimes that wasn’t until he got to school. He used to die thinking about someone finding out.”
The question in Yvonne’s eye had Jenna shaking her head. “No one did. But I guess as he got older, and bigger, his father would threaten to tell someone about the diapers if Steve acted out. That was his worst nightmare, the thought of other people finding out. He was so humiliated, and afraid of what people would think. Steve didn’t play sports. He didn’t even like to watch football. He wasn’t into fast cars. His father was hugely disappointed in him and never failed to point that out to him....”
“...lane i...” Blame him. The nasal attached to the words gave Jenna their meaning.
“He blamed Steve for his mother’s death,” Jenna said and watched for Yvonne’s affirmative, which came now in a blink of the eye. Her friend was growing sleepy. Probably due to the meds, but she also looked much more relaxed.
“Which wasn’t fair because she died of breast cancer and that didn’t have anything to do with him, but she’d breast fed Steve and his father had somehow attached everything bad to that act. Steve’s lack of being man enough, and his wife’s death, too.”
“elau....”
“Jealous?” She waited for confirmation. “Yeah, that’s what I told Steve,” she said.
She tensed. She’d forgotten how much she’d cared about Steve in the beginning. Because her heart had ached for him.
“I not only found him attractive, but I admired him so much,” she said out loud. “He’d come through all of that, gone to college, gotten a degree in criminal justice and was far more of a man than his father would ever be.
“We had a lot in common, too,” she continued, almost to herself as Yvonne closed her eye. “We’d both lost our mothers young and grown up feeling isolated. We had a lot of talks about how alike we were before he told me his secret. I was the only person he’d ever told. As far as I know, I still am. I think that’s part of the reason he can’t let me go.”
Yvonne opened her eye at that.
“It wasn’t until after we were married that I found out that in some ways he wasn’t man enough at all. Even to himself. He was constantly having to prove his manhood. On the job. And with women....
“I tried to understand. He was my life. And I loved his sister,” she added. She’d had a family again. A mother figure. A husband.... “I finally tried to tell her what Steve was doing to me, one time after he’d beaten me unconscious. But he’d gotten to her first. Told her about one of his affairs.” She wasn’t even sure Yvonne could still hear her, but the words kept tumbling out. “He made it sound like the girl was the only one and that it had only been once. He’d been so upset with himself. So contrite. He told her he’d come to me immediately and begged for my forgiveness, but that he was afraid I was going to do something horrible to get back at him. I didn’t know this, of course, so you can imagine how I felt when I finally worked up the courage to tell her everything and she not only didn’t believe me, she accused me of trying to ruin his career and said she’d do whatever it took to protect him, which included testifying against me, including my inability to fit in socially during high school, if I ever told anyone else what I’d told her.”
Yvonne opened her eye and was clearly drowsy. “Ga i ana....” Gave him another... She broke off, then winced as she forced out, “Ance...chan....”
“I gave him another chance,” Jenna said, and when Yvonne closed her eye again she added softly, “Too many of them.” She’d actually lost count of the number of times she’d given Steve another chance. Because she’d loved him. And he’d been a good man in so many ways, had helped so many people.
Yvonne’s breathing deepened and Jenna watched her body struggling to gain air, to heal.
And she saw herself. Had she really stayed because she’d loved a man who’d done that to her?
Or had she stayed because she’d been afraid to face life without him? Because it meant she’d be alone in the world?
And then another thought occurred to her. Steve had known her deepest fear. He’d known how desperately afraid she’d been back then to be alone.
And he’d used the fear to keep her with him. Every time. He’d reminded her that if she left him, if she even tried to turn him in, he’d have everyone in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department defending him, from the commissioner on down, and she’d have no one.
He used her fear because he’d known it would work. He’d known it was the one way to control her.
But she wasn’t afraid to be alone anymore. She’d married Max because she was in love with him. And loved him enough to leave him, too.
Yvonne breathed. Her machines beeped. And Jenna knew how she was going to beat Steve at his own game.
Hearing her story out loud for the first time, the beginning part of it, she’d remembered so much. Remembered the man he was, someplace inside of the twisted, evil human being he’d become.
Steve’s biggest fear was losing Meri. He, like her, feared being alone and unloved. And he needed her, in particular, because she was the only one who knew the whole truth about him. Not even his sister knew about the bedwetting. If anyone had known, Steve would have been rescued from the cruel man who’d fathered him. If anyone had known, Steve’s father would have lost his power over him. So Steve’s father had made sure his son was too humiliated to tell anyone.