Husband by Choice. Tara Taylor Quinn
like Jill, Meri had enough compassion to fill an ocean. And couldn’t bear to let someone suffer.
Opening the box of vanilla cookies, he gave one to Caleb, and pushed on, navigating his cart through aisle after aisle.
He would not let Meri’s panic infuse him. It was the golden rule by which he lived. He’d promised her he’d be the keeper of her panic. His job was to make certain that old fears didn’t live in their home, lest fear rob them of the second chance at happiness life had afforded them. Steve Smith, former Vegas police detective and abusive ex-husband, was in her past.
Caleb needed a bath. And it was coming close to bedtime. But he wasn’t leaving the store. Not until his phone rang and he knew that Meredith would be at home waiting for them. Or, at the very least, knew where she was and that she was safe.
Of course she was safe. His phone would ring any minute now.
* * *
CALEB TOOK AN extra-long bath. Happy to splash in the water, poking at bubbles and pushing his plastic boat up the sides of the ceramic tub, he asked for his mother a few times, but then went back to his play.
Max sat on the travertine floor, leaning against the wall, one arm on the side of the tub, ready to grab his son if he slipped or tried to stand. He stared at his tennis shoes—purple high-tops that day—and tried to remain calm.
Purple was a spiritual color according to Meri. She’d told him about color associations and some of that had infiltrated his thoughts, as well. But he’d chosen to wear his purple shoes that day because they were the pair closest to the front of the closet. Not because he’d felt in any need of spiritual protection.
Chantel Harris, Jill’s best friend and fellow police officer, had told him to go home when she’d called and found out he was at the grocery store. Someone needed to be at the house in case Meri returned. Or someone else tried to contact them. He’d given her a list of places Meri frequented, from their dry cleaner and grocery store, to clients’ addresses and schools where she worked. Other than Caleb and him, she didn’t have any close friends.
But there were several people, all women, whom she’d helped out of tight spots during the four years she’d been in Santa Raquel.
Chantel had assured him that local police were checking out every place on his list. As a precaution. Meri was only a few hours late. No one was really alarmed. There wasn’t any need for panic.
But in the four years he’d known her, Max had never known Meri to go anywhere or do anything on the spur of the moment. And she’d never once failed to be where she’d said she’d be without a phone call or text to alert him first.
Chantel was checking into Steve Smith’s last known whereabouts, too. Just to assure Max that he was right not to let Meri’s natural inclination to believe the man would find her someday take over rational thought.
Maybe his shoe laces were too long. They looked like the floppy bunny ears on the wallpaper in exam room four. Not his favorite room.
Caleb splashed.
And Max’s phone rang.
The toddler turned, staring at him as he lifted the device he’d been holding in his hand and glanced at the caller ID. It was almost as if Caleb knew they were waiting.
As if he wanted to know where his mother was as desperately as Max needed to find his wife.
And like Max, was man enough to remain in control while he waited.
Chantel.
“Did you find her?” Watching his son, he kept his tone easy.
“Not exactly.”
Hearts couldn’t actually drop. He was a doctor. He knew how the pumping vessel was attached. And knew what stress could do to it, too.
Chantel’s tone made him want to hang up. To watch his boy play in bubbles and know that tomorrow was another day. That the sun would shine again and....
“They found her van, Max.”
Caleb made a motor sound with his mouth. Seemingly unaware that darkness had descended in their bright and cheery bathroom.
“I can’t do it again.”
“Hold on.”
Of course. That was what he’d do. His fingers gripped the side of the tub, slipped and gripped again, bruising the pads and turning his knuckles white. Pressure stopped the blood flow.
With no blood flow there was no pain.
Was there blood in the van? Jill had bled out on the street. And the clean-up crew hadn’t been fast enough. A vision of the empty street with a pool of his wife’s ended life—a photo that had been all over the news for days after she’d saved the life of a fellow officer—sprang to mind.
Caleb splashed. Laughed out loud. And looked to him for a response. Max smiled. His lips trembled and his cheeks hurt, but he kept that grin plastered on his face.
“Tell me,” he said into the phone, careful to keep his tone neutral. He’d promised himself he’d never again be at risk of a phone call like this.
He’d promised.
And then he’d met Meri. Safety conscious, paranoid, locked-in-fear Meri. Who’d found the heart and soul in him that he’d thought dead and gone, awoken it. And given him a son.
“There’s no sign of struggle,” Chantel’s voice held a note of sympathy, but not alarm. “The van was parked nine rows down in front of Chloe’s at the Sun Oaks shopping center.”
An upscale shopping development in the next town over. A maze of stores and parking that covered a square city block.
Meri liked to shop there.
Max’s thoughts calmed. And he rumbled inside. His stomach. His blood pressure. Every nerve on alert.
“Her cell phone was inside,” the thirty-year-old police officer continued. “That’s how they found the van, by tracking her cell. She’d left it on the console.”
Meri’s phone was a lifeline to her—her safety net. One push of a button and she could be connected to law enforcement. To Max. Or to The Lighthouse—a women’s shelter she’d been volunteering at since he’d known her. The shelter she’d lived at when she’d first come to Southern California.
She didn’t go from one room to the next without that cell phone. Wore it in a holster that clipped to any waistband. Showered with it on a shelf she’d had him install above the tile in the stall....
“There was a note, Max.” Another drop in Chantel’s tone. Another splash from the tub. Another rumble inside. “She said that she just couldn’t do it anymore. That she was too worried about Caleb all the time. That she couldn’t even leave him at day care for an afternoon, so how would she ever cope when he went to school? She was afraid that her paranoia would rub off on him. She said she had to go before he was old enough to remember and be traumatized. She left the phone because it was in your name.”
She’d have told him if she was leaving him. She would never have left Caleb. It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t going to panic.
“Were the keys in the car?” If she was ever in trouble and had to run—if she ever thought Steve was after her—she’d leave the car parked with the keys under the driver’s seat. It was one of the many precepts she’d laid out when she’d agreed to marry him.
Precautions, she’d called them.
They had to be prepared, she’d said.
“They were in the closed cup holder. Just like she said they’d be in the note.”
Who left a note in a car telling whoever looked that the keys were in the cup holder?
He sank down a little farther against the tub. She’d very clearly told him she’d leave them under the driver’s