The General Page 16

  I picked out a dress, a color scheme, what kind of veil to wear.

  And on the day, I walked down the aisle sure that my feet never even touched the ground, a giant crowd of people there to watch the happiest day of my life, a small group of camera crews out front to snap pictures with Teddy and me, and more importantly, me with the senator who appeared overjoyed to be getting a daughter-in-law.

  Then there was the crash, the funeral, the hospital visits. And as if those weren't enough, there was the senator and his demands, his endless tasks I needed to complete, his constant critiques on my character, my education - or lack thereof -, my looks, my tone of voice.

  I was mourning my mother and trying to nurse my father while choking on my guilt, and they put a relentless, knee-weakening pressure on me to become an entirely new person in a matter of weeks.

  Teddy got more critical, likely fed an endless stream of things that needed to improve about me.

  He made me stop braiding my hair, cut down on my makeup, get rid of my jeans. He snapped at me at the dinner table when I let my elbows rest on the surface, barked about how if I did that while at a charity event that I would humiliate him.

  I adjusted. I saw his point. I hadn't, after all, been raised in his world. I didn't know all the rules of polite society, basic table manners, what the heck a hostess gift was.

  Of course I needed to learn how to exist in his circle.

  And, of course, he got angry when I continually fell short of his expectations.

  But then it was a Saturday night. I'd spend the whole morning at the hospital, then the next few hours working out, getting into clothes Teddy considered acceptable, reading a few of the study guides that Teddy had given me, telling me that he thought Bertram would appreciate it if I learned a bit more about the inner workings of politics in case anyone ever asked me questions during his next campaign trail.

  I was doing everything he wanted me to do no matter how tired I was, how hungry, how bad my head hurt from all the reading and re-reading until I remembered all the details.

  I heard the door, put my pages away since Teddy hated a mess, then made my way out to find him staggering into the kitchen, going into the cabinet for yet another drink he clearly didn't need.

  And I made the mistake of asking him how his day was.

  Who would have thought that pleasantries, genuine curiosity about his day would be the thing that set him off, not the numerous times I screwed up, forgot things he told me half a dozen times.

  Nope.

  Asking him how his day went made him swing back, backhanding me across the face hard enough to send me whirling against the kitchen counter, the edge catching me in the rib, knocking my air out as the sting spread across my cheek.

  "Teddy..." my voice whined out of me, surprised, hurt, but still somehow needing his approval.

  "You can't give me five fucking minutes when I get home to relax before you leash the fuck into me?" he growled, hand sinking into the back of my hair, curling in, yanking, pulling me up onto my tiptoes to scream in my face.

  I didn't even remember what he said as the pain in my scalp was taking all my attention.

  I did remember crying, begging, apologizing, saying I would be better, do better, be what he needed me to be.

  But all my voice did was tick him off further until I was laying on the floor, spitting blood out of my mouth, one eye swollen shut, a long gash down my cheek.

  I'd never been struck before.

  The actual pain was nothing compared to the shock, the incomprehension, the way my heart and head were racing.

  Teddy had stormed out after, not coming home until hours later, reaching down, pulling me back onto my feet, washing my face, putting me into bed, promising it would never happen again, that he was just stressed from work, that he'd had too much to drink, that I was doing my best.

  And I was.

  Doing my best.

  But I couldn't bring myself to forgive him when he begged for it.

  Luckily, he was too trashed to remember in the morning if I had or not. He did remember he had beat me though because there was a bag of cosmetics on the counter. There'd been no note. But I understood perfectly. I was supposed to cover up, act like nothing happened.

  But it did happen.

  And even under the makeup, I could feel the constant throb of what he had done to me for days, fueling my clandestine trip to an attorney who gave me sad eyes while telling me that I was, essentially, stuck if I wanted the money that I would need for my father's long-term care.

  And the guilt had made me stay. What life was there for him if I divorced Teddy? Being thrown in a nursing home that couldn't give him one-on-one attention, letting him live out a life in a bed because rehabilitation wouldn't be of the utmost importance, leaving him trapped in a body that would never work for him?

  No.

  And the other option was to take him home with me, work my fingers to the bone just to be able to afford the most basic of care given by someone who wasn't trained - or paid - enough to genuinely be able to try to get him moving on his own again. Even just in small ways.

  I didn't want to live with that idea either.

  And, I figured, since it was already my fault that he was in that accident, in that bed, I felt it was only fair that he get the best care. And I would simply endure.

  So that was what I did.

  I got good at enduring.

  Until one night.

  When Teddy flipped.

  And someone came upon us.

  And gave Teddy what he deserved.

  Only to get pulled in on assault charges.

  It was the first time in my life that I stood up for myself, the first time in my marriage that I put my foot down.

  Because they came to me - Teddy and my father-in-law, demanding I spin the story so that Teddy's spousal abuse never hit the papers (or court records).

  They wanted me to lie on the stand.

  And send an innocent guardian angel to jail for nearly a decade.

  I had enough guilt to bear on my too-weak shoulders. I knew I couldn't take that as well.

  I said no when they walked into my room with the plan, fully expecting my acquiescence. I refused to talk to the police. I shut my mouth, shook my head, and tried to convince myself that there was nothing they could do to me.

  I had thought I'd seen the worst of Teddy.

  Until we were both released from the hospital, sent home where no one was around to watch on, make sure we were both happy and healing.

  The staff was given leave.

  There was no one there to see it.

  No one there to report it.

  When Teddy whipped me so hard I had to sleep on my stomach for weeks. When he busted my eye socket. When he fractured the bones in my jaw.

  I don't remember which beating made me scream out that Yes, I would do it; I would lie. I would take on more of that guilt if only the pain would stop.

  But it happened.

  And my fate - and Eli's - was sealed.

  I spent the next week with plastic surgeons making it look like nothing had ever happened to me.

  I went to a charity event for the local women's shelter, talking about the atrocities that happened to some poor women while my tongue traced the edges of my stitches, hiding my beating and surgery bruises under thick makeup, my pain numbed only because I took four pain pills before we left the house.

  I didn't remember much of the trial, so beautifully numbed by the seeming endless supply of pills in the bottle on my nightstand. I had only been in court the one day, the day I had to testify, damn myself to hell by putting my hand on a Bible, swearing to tell the truth, then lying through my teeth.

  Teddy had needed to walk me out of the courtroom. Not because I was so overcome by emotion as the papers implied - no doubt fed that line by the ever image-conscious Bertram - but because I was so messed up on the pain medicine that I could barely walk.

  It wasn't until he was convicted that I
stopped taking them, deciding I deserved the pain that still plagued my body. But, more so, the emotional pain at knowing a man - innocent by my eyes - had to spend years behind bars away from his family because of me.

  I deserved the pain.

  I believed that to my core as I sat in the bathroom following each beating through those years, cleaning my cuts, icing my bruises.

  I deserved it.

  For what I did to him.

  For what I did to my father.

  For what I did to my mother.

  I deserved it.

  The pain was my punishment for all the ways I had ruined other people's lives.

  So wrapped up in my own martyrdom, it rarely occurred to me that I wasn't the only one who should have been suffering for what had happened.

  That Teddy and Bertram were just as at fault for what happened to Eli Mallick. That they shouldn't have been able to live their lives, buying expensive things, going on fancy vacations, having the time of their lives with a criminally clear conscience.

  I guess abuse had a way of doing that. Slowly. Bit by bit over time. Lowering your self-worth into the ground, trapping you so fully in your own little hell that you didn't see things the way you used to, the way any not-abused woman might. Everything simply became a shower, rinse, repeat. You shut it down, became an automaton, became resigned to your fate, saw no way out.

  I hadn't even realized I had been burying all the pain, the resentment, the helplessness, the anger, the real, raw, human parts of the abuse down deep inside until that night in the kitchen when it burrowed outward, overtaking me completely, making me go for the gun, slip a finger to the trigger, and put an end to it all.

  TEN

  Smith

  She'd been a child.

  Poor, desperate, starstruck by an older man's charm and money and worldliness.

  Really, it was one of those tales as old as time.

  Young girls who never knew anything but wanting, needing, but never having, being offered a world that would never have needs unmet, where every want would be met by the object of their desire.

  Of course, there hadn't been much thought involved.

  I mean, at seventeen-years-old, I barely considered the consequences of getting into all sorts of trouble with my buddies. I couldn't be trusted to decide the rest of my life right then.

  But that was what Teddy had done to her, asked her to decide her future when she was so young that he shouldn't have even been talking to her, let alone putting his pervy fucking hands on her.

  Grooming.

  That was what grooming was.

  Getting them young, getting them before they understood the world fully, before they developed too much self-worth, before they got too many opinions of their own.

  Then give them what they need from you. Attention, compliments, promises of comfort, of an easy life.

  Then take them to bed, get all that oxytocin flooding their system, making them feel like they were in love even if they truly weren't.

  Bide your time, put a ring on their finger, get them to sign away their ability to have any quality of life if they left you, then trap them for life.

  It was worse with political families. We'd worked with enough of them to know the fucked shit they would do to keep their positions, to allow them to portray their squeaky clean personas.

  Arranged marriages. Hush money. A team of fixers much like my team and me burying all their bad deeds so deep that no one could let them surface.

  Absentmindedly, I wondered who Bertram worked with. Surely he had someone. And that was troublesome if they ever looked into us.

  With a small pit in my stomach, I shot off a text to Lincoln.

  - Does the sen. have a team like us?

  It was only maybe two minutes before he got back to me.

  - Just an image consultant.

  "What's the matter?" Jenny asked, voice hitched a bit.

  "I just wanted to make sure Bertram doesn't have anyone like us on his team." Her eyes went big. "He doesn't," I assured her, giving her thigh a squeeze. "Anyway, back to your story. Sweetheart, you didn't fucking deserve a single one of those beatings, let alone a whole life of them."

  "I see that now, I do," she said, voice a little firmer when I likely gave her a look that said I didn't believe her. "I mean, I don't agree with you about the guilt. There is some fault on me about what happened to my parents. And there is almost ALL the guilt on my shoulders about what happened to Eli. I could have told the cops the truth right when they first questioned me, before Bertram even got a chance to get to the hospital, asking them to give me time to recover."

  "You were barely eighteen-years-old, Jenny," I told her, shaking my head. "You should have been worried about what college to go to or what house party you'd be going to that weekend, not whether or not your husband might damn near kill you for speaking the truth. You were alone in a world full of monsters and scared. No one would hold this against you. Not if they knew what was happening to you. And, if it is any consolation, it's not like the Mallick family is full of fine, upstanding citizens. They beat people for a living. And while I am not one to judge, Lord knows, he was, at his core, guilty. Not just because he almost killed Teddy. But because he'd done this countless times before without ever serving any time. I think that is why he didn't try to defend himself. It's why he didn't go back into the family business after he got out. If the cops weren't as corrupt as they were back then, he'd have been locked up - and all his brothers, hell, even his parents - long before you even came along."

  "That doesn't make me feel any better," she told me, shrugging. "If it weren't for me, he might have gotten off."

  "No," I said, voice vehement. "There's no way Bertram would have let that happen, let him get away with it. He's too strong on law and order. It's his platform. He's one of those fucks who wanted mandatory sentences for first-time offenders of even low-level, non-violent crimes. He couldn't have allowed the man who beat his son to go unpunished. That would never have been allowed to stand. Even without your testimony."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. We will never know because I did testify, perjure myself, condemn him. Let's... not talk about it anymore," she suggested, looking away.

  It was a sore subject.

  One she had firm beliefs about.

  Ones I might never be able to change.

  I wondered if maybe she would agree, someday, to meeting with Eli, hearing reassurances from the mouth of the man she blamed herself for imprisoning.

  See, I knew his story after he got out.

  I doubted she did.

  Maybe if they sat down, and he explained it to her, about the dog, about meeting the love of his life, about creating a family, repairing burned bridges, about how none of it would have ever happened if not for that whole situation, maybe that would change her view of it all, maybe she would see that sometimes even awful things happen for a reason, even if you can't see it at the time.

  But that was an idea for another time.

  "Are we staying here tonight?" I asked, and maybe my voice was hopeful.

  "I think we have to get back to my house," she said, and I didn't imagine the disappointment in her voice. She no more wanted to go back there than I did. "Staff," she added with a grimace. "We'll already have to say we slipped out early for my appointment," she added, reaching over her shoulder to rub a knot. Even just the thought of going home was making her tense.

  But she was right. There was the staff to worry about. And their direct line to Senator Ericsson's ear. Until she was sure enough in her situation to get rid of them, we had to keep up appearances.

  As much as I wanted the freedom to be able to be with her the way I wanted - and the way I wanted was all in - I knew that there was no way we could do that. Not yet. It wouldn't look right. It was too soon. It might draw suspicion.

  So as long as she was under that roof with those people, she needed to keep up appearances.

  No matter how distasteful I found it.

&nb
sp; "Okay, let's get going then," I agreed, and we drove in silence, like both of us needed the space to slip back into our respective roles.

  "Mrs. Ericsson," Maritza said as we walked in the front door, tone faux concerned while her eyes were accusatory. "We were worried. We almost called the senator."

  At that, I expected her to shrink back like she always did, to become smaller. I was shocked to find her spine straightening, her chin lifting.

  "My usual meeting with Dr. Patterson was pushed earlier at the last minute," she declared, sounding exasperated at the idea. "We had to get to the center by eight-thirty," she added, shaking her head.

  And because of the travel time, that would mean we had to leave before they would have gotten in for their shift.

  "Has there been any news?" Maritza asked.

  To that, Jenny's eyes went sad. And there was no faking going on. She shook her head, looking down at her feet.

  She hadn't taken her jacket off, acutely aware that she was still wearing the dress from the funeral.

  "Oh, well. You never know, missus," Maritza said, giving her a nod before moving away to the kitchen. "I will put the kettle on for you. You must be frozen through."

  As soon as she was out of sight, Jenny practically threw her jacket at me and made a dash for the stairs, coming down half an hour later, showered, redressed in jeans and a simple white sweater, her wet hair pulled into a side braid.

  And it was the first time I had seen this woman looking exactly how she wanted to look. It wasn't just an external change, either. It was inside. It radiated through - a deep self-assuredness, a comfort in her own skin.

  And, let me tell you, it was a fucking beautiful thing.

  Maritza stopped short at seeing her, but knowing she couldn't say anything, didn't, just handed her the tea, and likely shuffled off to go talk shit to Lydia. And maybe even the senator.

  "I am going to make some calls," Jenny told me when we were alone again.

  "Calls?" I prompted when she didn't elaborate, not liking invading her privacy, but knowing her innocence in the eyes of everyone was dependent on how things went for the next few weeks and months.