REprisal - Kathy Coopmans Page 0,80

That’s impossible! Zack, you said she was being guarded. How could this happen?”

“I don’t know, Clove. She’s free to roam about the county. She was given very specific details of her bail. She was supposed to let her lawyer know when she left her house, which she didn’t. Her home is surrounded by reporters, and the FBI apparently lost her through the masses of them. I have no answers for you. I don’t. All I know is it’s going on twenty four hours now since anyone has seen or heard from her.”

My hands rest on her thighs. She turns my way when I give them a gentle squeeze.

“She would be a fool to try and find you, you know that right? You also know I would never let her do anything to hurt you anymore. She can’t get to you.”

“He’s right. My guess is she took off somewhere, disappeared because she knows she has to spend the rest of her miserable life behind bars,” Zack states matter-of-factly.

“Right,” is all she says back, then turns her attention back to him.

“Neither one of you knows her like I do. She’s coming after me, I can guarantee you that.”

She’s calm, more so than I expected her to be. I sneak a glance at Dr. Jollup, who has a small yet worried smile on her face. I want so badly to know what was said in that room. What could be making her sit here with such a tranquil aura about her? I lift my brows in question at Dr. Jollup, who shrugs.

What the hell?

“You see it only took me an hour to realize one thing,” she laughs nervously.

“I can’t control the actions of others, I can only control myself. Now I’m not saying I’m healed, or that I won’t have a breakdown, but one thing I realize now is that I have a little girl who needs both her mother and her father.”

She looks first at Zack, then at me.

“When I was locked up in that room, I lived every minute in fear, not knowing if Tina was going to come in and try to take her away, or kill me, or whatever the hell she had planned. But I’m free. I’m home with the man I love, and with my family, and I will stop at nothing to make sure neither one of them takes away my right to be a good mother and your wife.”

My smile is sincere this time. I don’t tell her about Trent and his plea bargain, and neither does Zack. But as we show our guests out and the sky begins to turn dark, something eats away at me about the way she was acting.

She’s faking it.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Clove

I know Turner and Zack think I am going to fall off the deep end, but I’m not. I can’t. If I do, Tina wins. To her this is a game; to me, it’s my life. My family’s lives.

When I looked at Turner after I gave my testament today, I saw that all color had drained from his face. Something hit me hard. It wasn’t until I talked to Dr. Jollup that I understood what it was.

He and I need to talk. I need to tell him the truth. It’s the only way I will be able to move forward, the beginning of me forgiving myself and the end of him blaming himself.

The truth will hurt. I hate having to tell him any of this at all. This is a part of my life I wish I could forget; however, I believe in him and I believe in us. I felt broken before, but now I feel as if my pieces are being glued back together. There are several pieces left before I can be whole again, but the biggest one is still lying between myself and the man sitting in front of me.

Turner sits in the chair in the corner of this frilly pink bedroom, reading a story to a baby who has no idea what he is saying, yet who sits there as attentive as a little girl listening to her dad read her favorite book for the hundredth time. I could stand here in the shadows of this darkened hallway forever watching him be the perfect dad I always knew he could be.

“Mommy thinks she’s being sneaky.”

I swallow the lump in my throat as his gaze lifts from the book and looks me over appreciatively from head to toe, lingering on my legs. I wander in, my