the abuse was subtle and mostly verbal, but it was signal enough to her that it was time to go. She might have married in haste, but she had no intention of paying for it for the rest of her life. And no one was going to harm her son. No one.
Protecting Billy became her first priority. Already in his young life, he had heard too much fighting, witnessed too many vicious arguments. If she and Will couldn’t live together peacefully, if not lovingly, then it was time to go.
She had fled first to her parents, but Will had followed and the scene he’d caused had terrified all of them. He’d bashed the headlights on her car, dented the hood with a blow of his fists. He’d threatened her, accused her of trying to ruin his career, their future. He’d threatened her parents, blamed them for harboring his wife when she belonged at home with him. Her parents were just old-fashioned enough to agree that a wife’s place was at her husband’s side, no matter the circumstances. She had seen the unspoken agreement in their eyes, but still she had balked at leaving.
And then Will had sealed her fate. He had calmly vowed to take Billy away from her if she didn’t agree to come home with him.
“You won’t even get weekend visitations by the time I’m through. I can do it,” he’d said with cool cruelty in his eyes. “You know I can.”
She hadn’t doubted it for an instant. She had gone with him simply to keep her baby and to get Will away from her frightened family.
Satisfied that he’d gotten his way, Will had promptly gone back on the campaign trail in the mayoral race that was to be the stepping-stone to his entire political future. And the low-key pattern of denigration had begun again—the sarcastic barbs, the ruthless demands, the never-ending criticism. She had taken it for six more humiliating months while she secretly made her plans. And all the while she watched Will, waiting for an explosion of temper that always came.
This time when she’d left, she had known that wherever she went, she was on her own. A local shelter had provided a safe harbor for a day or two. Then she had turned the car toward Texas, hoping that simply crossing the line into another state might offer her some protection. Too many cops, too many judges, too many politicians in Oklahoma owed favors to Will or to the partners in his law firm. Even though she’d worked there, if it came to a choice between her and Will, she had no doubt which of them would receive the partners’ backing.
The memory of that violent explosion in front of her parents’ home in full view of the neighbors had kept her on the run for a week now, trying to decide where it would be safe to settle down and begin an anonymous life. While in Oklahoma, she hadn’t dared to stay even in a cheap motel for more than a good night’s sleep.
As of today, her options were running out. Her pitiful savings were pretty much wiped out and she didn’t dare phone her parents for help. For all she knew Will would have bugged their phone. It wasn’t beyond him to use the law to his own advantage, especially when her second disappearance at the height of his first campaign for office was no doubt causing him a great deal of public embarrassment.
This time she was truly on her own, for the first time in her life, and the decisions she made were critical not only to her own future, but to the baby’s. This was the ultimate test any woman could face. How she handled it would prove what she was made of. So far, she feared, she was falling pitifully short, but she was determined to pull it together. She might be almost out of money and be running low on ideas, but the one thing Patsy Gresham Longhorn had was gumption.
Billy whimpered, reminding her that she was going to have to come to a decision in a hurry. He needed food and, quite possibly, medical attention, though she was pretty sure the fever was little more than a summer cold.
With the two-year-old still cuddled in her arms, she tried awkwardly to unfold the road map she’d picked up at an earlier highway rest stop. Dallas was close, but was a big city the best choice? Wouldn’t the police there