A Man Worth Keeping

She used to, of course, six months ago. Before France. Before Jared lost his mind and self-control.

Delia had thought, stupidly, that the divorce had been bad enough. But this? How could they possibly recover from what Jared was doing to them?

Josie always had been such a daddy’s little girl. And really, Delia couldn’t blame her—Jared had been an unbelievable father. Devoted, kind, more patient than she’d ever been, that’s for sure. He’d played endless rounds of tea party and dress-up. He acted as Prince Charming for Josie a hundred times a day.

But as the years stretched on in their marriage, it seemed that the better father he became, the worse husband he became. The qualities that she had found so earth-shatteringly attractive—his confidence, his willingness to fight for what he thought was right, his loyalty to friends—became disastrous as their marriage fell apart and she was increasingly what he fought against. The security she’d thought she’d found had turned to quicksand.

That had been her problem in the end—looking for security in someone else.

It was a lesson she seemed to have to relearn nearly every day.

Despite promises to the contrary—given in the rush of make-up emotion—Jared’s temper started spilling over into their relationship. He brought the pressures of his job into their home and sullied it with his uncontrollable rage.

She was never right and Jared’s opinion of her, which he vocalized more and more, plummeted. Until finally he started calling her stupid. Worthless. A terrible mother.

She’d moved out at that point, filed for divorce and joint custody. Probably too late, having stuck it out for Josie’s sake, but life had been okay for close to a year. Jared had been stable, their relationship civil. Then her mother got sick, alone in a shabby apartment outside of Paris.

Delia twined a lock of Josie’s hair between her fingers and thought about fate. About the way the world turned out of control all the time.

For Josie the past year had been one catastrophe after another. Culminating in this “vacation” with a mother she no longer seemed to like.

Delia had the memory of shrugging off her own mother. She’d been twelve or so and on one of her summer trips to France to visit the mother who had left them. She remembered wanting so badly to be touched by her mother but wanting to deny her at the same time. Hurt her. Wound her for leaving as she’d been wounded by the leaving.

Like mother like daughter, she thought bitterly about both connections.

Josie sighed and rolled on her side away from Delia. The little girl was exhausted. She’d barely eaten anything and had almost fallen asleep halfway through her bath.

Delia felt her own eyelids flutter, the panic and fear in her bloodstream ebbing as she relaxed.

Don’t start resting yet, she told herself, shaking away the weariness that stuck to her like cobwebs. There were things she had to do before she could let down her guard. She had to deal with Jared.

Assured Josie was out cold, Delia eased off the bed and grabbed her room key, calling card and cell phone from her purse.

She felt as though she was in some bad made-for-TV movie. Running around, buying cell phones from gas stations and throwing them away, using a calling card so the number couldn’t be traced. She didn’t even know if any of her tactics worked.

Those bad made-for-TV movies were her only guide.

The room door opened soundlessly, easing over the wide oak-planked floor. The floorboards creaked slightly as she stepped into the hallway and crept downstairs to the dark, silent dining room.

The moon still hid behind clouds and so the light sliding out from under the kitchen door was the only illumination in the opaque, thick blackness.

She was alone.

Stepping into the darkest shadows beside the staircase, she made a quick prayer to a no-doubt-incredulous god and dialed her phone with shaking fingers.

If you want to stop running, you have to do this, she assured herself. This is the right thing to do.

But every instinct—survival, maternal, self-preservation—screamed for her to stop, to not make the call.

“Hello?” Jared’s voice was enough to make adrenaline gush through her body, locking her muscles. Her throat closed and her heart hammered against her breastbone.

“Delia? Is that you?”

Her mouth was the Sahara Desert. “It’s me.”

His laughter, evil and snide, rippled down her back. “Well, if it isn’t my vacationing ex-wife. Tell me, how is South Carolina?”

Tears of panic and fear burned in her eyes and she couldn’t say anything.

“Did you think I wouldn’t look for you there?” he asked, so mocking and confident she wanted to reach through the phone lines and claw at his face. “Your cousin runs a shelter for idiots like you. I knew you’d go there.”

“I’m not there anymore,” she finally managed to say. “So who is the idiot?”

“Listen, you bitch.” His voice turned mean, a physical slap across the miles separating them. “I’m doing you a huge favor right now telling people you and Josie are just on a little trip. But I’m running out of patience. All I have to do is breathe the word kidnapping into my good friend the district attorney’s ear and this little ’vacation’ of yours is over.”

That galvanized her. Her spine straightened and the tears vanished. The good-old-boys’ club that her exhusband was so secure in had forced her to run, had turned a blind eye to his actions and had ruined any trust she’d had in the men she’d called friends over the years.

And she’d had enough.

What Delia knew about Jared he’d never want known. And that balanced the scales.

“You know your ’friends’ might forgive a man who beats his wife,” she said, her voice low. “They might understand an officer of the law taking some bribes now and again. Hell—” she was on a roll, feeling her own power well up from the ground under her feet “—an old football star like you might be forgiven a lot of things. But all I need to do is mention your involvement with the vanload of Mexican immigrants found dead in the desert to the press and you—”

“You don’t know anything,” he said, but she could hear the doubt in his voice.

“The man they arrested was staying with you, Jared. Josie saw him in your house in the middle of the night. She heard you arguing. Before you turned him in you kept him hidden. In the same house as your daughter!”

His laughter cut her short. “Who is going to believe you, sweetheart? I am the Lubbock County sheriff. I play golf with the governor. She’s just a little girl and you’re an unstable mother who abandoned her daughter to go to France.”

Anger blasted through her nervous system like an electric charge. “For six weeks, you bastard. My mother was dying and you wouldn’t let Josie leave the country with me.”

“Baby, you were never cut out to be a mother. And now you’re proving it by dragging our little girl all over the country for nothing.”

So mocking. So cocky. She wanted to go to the police right now. This minute. Just to see Jared’s mug shot all over the evening news.

But she didn’t know who she could trust. Where she could turn. And if something happened to her, if his evil web of golf buddies buried her and the evidence, what would happen to Josie?

What would happen to Josie if Jared truly understood what his little girl had seen?

“If I don’t know anything, and Josie’s just a little girl, why did you try to kill me? Why did Chris—” She nearly stuttered on the name.

“Sweetheart, Chris was doing his job. When he became one of my deputies he stopped being your friend. His loyalty is to me.”

“His job shouldn’t include protecting a scumbag like you, Jared.”

“Well, then maybe he decided it paid better to be my friend than yours.”

She pressed her forehead against the wall, wishing she could shove the memories of her friend’s betrayal out of her skull. But they were burned there. Like the fingerprints and fingernail scratches around her neck that, even though they were a week and half old, didn’t appear to be going away.