Leaning his elbows on his knees, Mason bent toward her, wishing he could take her hand in his and not have her pull it away.
“Did he tell you not to drive at night anymore?”
“I don’t like to be out at night alone.”
Yet she’d climbed out a bedroom window to take a walk in the dark. Alone. To prove her independence.
Because Bruce had stripped her confidence in herself—maybe even without meaning to? Or had he purposely replaced a sense of independence with fear as a way of controlling her?
“Did he forbid you to go out at night, Gram?”
She didn’t answer.
“Look at me, please.”
A few seconds of silence passed, accompanied by another few crumbs of doughnut going to her mouth, and then she looked at him.
“Did he forbid you to go out? At night or any other time?”
“I’m a grown woman! No one can forbid me to do something.”
“Did he try? Did he ask you not to drive at night anymore?”
Her gaze dropped as she shook her head and Mason knew she’d just lied to him.
* * *
HARPER WASN’T EVEN out of the shower when Bruce called Thursday morning. Brianna answered the phone and came into her bathroom.
“Daddy needs you!” she called through the steam.
Fear shot through Harper and she yanked at the shower curtain and peered out. Brianna stood there, still in her short-sleeved princess nightgown, hair all askew, holding Harper’s cell phone.
Thank God. The phone.
Had she really thought the man had shown up at her house and that Brianna had let him in?
She was letting Mason get to her. That had to stop.
Grabbing a towel, she dried her hand, wrapped herself and took the phone, an eye on her daughter as she did so.
What had Bruce said to Brianna?
The four-year-old seemed as happy as always.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Bruce said to her, his tone affable. Kind. “I got called back for a job. Looks like I’m going to be on it all week. But…it’s been too long since I’ve seen my little girl. Is there any way you could bring her up here? Just for a few hours, if that’s all you can spare.” He suggested hours during each of the next three days, saying he could be free from his assignment then.
“We could do something, the three of us,” he continued. “Maybe have a picnic on the beach.”
Picnic on the beach. That was what he’d done on his second date with the woman he’d been sleeping with for weeks before they were married. Mason had said that Bruce’s report stated he’d slept with her on their second date—during a picnic on the beach.
“Harper?”
“I…” Have Friday off. The next day. With Miriam at the Stand, she’d been planning to go in—so Brianna could spend time with her great-grandmother. To keep Miriam satisfied and to give Mason an opportunity—to…clear Bruce?
“Sorry, I was just getting out of the shower,” she told her ex-husband, trying to focus. To think.
What should she do?
Taking Brianna to Albina was better than having Bruce back in Santa Raquel. Near Miriam.
She’d have to come up with some explanation to give Brianna to make certain the little girl didn’t mention seeing Miriam to Bruce.
What would Mason suggest she do?
She could see her parents. Time with them always put life in a more manageable perspective.
“I think I can do tomorrow afternoon,” she heard herself say before she’d consciously reached that decision.
He seemed delighted, which always made her feel better.
But she hung up with a pit in her stomach.
Dressing, tending to Brianna’s morning preparations, she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling of unease. She didn’t want to call Mason—although she had to let him know about the meeting—until she knew why she was feeling that way.
She wasn’t afraid of Bruce.
So what was it?
* * *
GRAM’S MAKEUP COMPLETELY covered her bruises, but Mason couldn’t look at her without remembering they were there.
She’d resorted to lying to him. How on earth was he going to help her?
Half of her doughnut gone, she’d pushed it aside. “I really need to get back,” she said, her hands on the table as though getting ready to stand.