"I'll try. But I need to get groceries tomorrow morning," she said.
"I'll be home by eight-thirty. I'll take you."
"You need to sleep."
"I can sleep later. Now, come on – and lock the door behind me."
Hannah went with him to the front door of their small house and kissed him good-bye, perhaps clinging a bit more than was her habit. "Drive carefully. It's still snowing."
"I will, don't worry." Joe patted her on the bottom and whispered a lewd suggestion in her ear, which made her smile and remind him they didn't have time and he was going to be late for work. He grinned and winked at her.
And then he was gone.
Hannah locked the door behind him and checked the locks twice. She took Beason with her when she finally went to bed, even though he was supposed to stay in his bed in the living room.
She turned on the TV and watched a very old movie just so she wouldn't have to listen to the thick silence of the snowy night.
" Gary," Abby said.
He kept his gaze on the dog and didn't venture to cross the threshold. "Where the hell did you get that?" he demanded.
Abby was about to answer him, when it occurred to her that she didn't have to. " Gary, what are you doing here? It's nearly midnight." She made no attempt to quiet the tense, growling dog at her side.
Gary tore his gaze from the dog and smiled at her. It was the charming smile she had fallen for as an eighteen-year-old girl too young and inexperienced to worry about his brooding silences and bursts of jealous rage. He had been a strikingly handsome man then; at forty, he was thickening – around the middle and in his features. Too many years of indulging his temper and his appetites had left their mark.
"I just came to see you, Abby. What's wrong with that?"
She had been terrified, and fought not to let him see her overwhelming relief. He didn't know about Matt, at least not yet. If he had, he wouldn't have been able to keep quiet about it; in Gary, jealousy was immediate and unmistakable.
Abby drew a breath and kept her voice even and without emotion. " Gary, it's late, the weather's lousy, and I'm tired. And if that isn't enough, you must remember what Judge Ryan told you. You don't live here anymore, and if you keep showing up here unannounced, I'll get a restraining order. You don't want me to do that, do you? Talk about our business in court for everybody to know?"
It was the only real leverage she had against him, and she used it cautiously so as not to use it up. Gary was a vice president at one of the local businesses, a real estate development company that was highly respected and very prominent in town, and his reputation meant a great deal to him. A divorce was one thing; a divorce from a wife claiming physical and emotional abuse during a thirteen-year marriage was something else entirely.
She had gone to Ben Ryan the day after she'd ordered Gary – at the point of his own gun – to leave. He had listened to her story, the whole sad and messy story Matt still didn't know, and had given her both genuine compassion and excellent legal advice. Even more, he had paid Gary a discreet visit and had made it very plain to her husband that he could either quietly agree to an uncontested divorce, or find himself charged with assault and battery and divorced on the grounds of extreme cruelty.
In the months since then, Gary had been relatively cooperative, though at first prone to show up at the house from time to time. When she had gotten involved with Matt only a few months after her separation, Abby had grown fearful that her volatile husband would appear at just the wrong moment; combine Gary 's violent jealousy with Matt's fierce protectiveness and the meeting could only end in tragedy.
Once again she had gone to Ben, though this time withholding the relevant fact of her involvement with another man. And once again he had visited Gary, this time to explain that unsolicited visits would not be tolerated.
Gary had been very quiet since then.
Too quiet.
Now he scowled at her. "I suppose you'll go running to Ryan again, just because I wanted to see you. It's a sad thing when a man can't talk to his own wife, Abby."
Bryce's growls grew louder as he either sensed her growing tension or heard the menace in Gary 's voice.
Abby allowed the dog's growls to fill the silence for a moment, then said, " Gary, our divorce will be final in just about three weeks. I am not your wife, not anymore. There's nothing you have to say to me that I'm the least bit interested in hearing. Except good-bye. Please close the gate as you leave."
His scowl intensified, but his voice was low, almost gentle. "You really shouldn't talk to me like that, Abby. Until those final papers are signed, you're still my wife. And a wife should never say such things to her husband. Not if she knows what's good for her."
Abby felt an all-too-familiar chill of fear and fought to keep him from seeing how easily he could still manipulate her emotions. "In thirty seconds I'm going to let go of this dog. From the sound of him, I don't think he'll need any encouragement at all to take a few pieces out of you. And while he's doing it, I'll be calling the sheriff."
Maybe he remembered that shotgun she had pointed at him on his last night in this house, or maybe Gary simply recognized that Abby was not going to back down this time. In any case, he was the one who retreated, slowly, down the steps.
"And Gary?"
He looked at her, silent, face hard.
"Just so you know – if anything happens to this dog, like poison, for instance, or a stray shot from some anonymous hunter's gun, or even a car that doesn't stop, I'm going to give your name to the sheriff."
His expression darkened just a bit, proving to Abby that she did indeed know her husband. Then he swore beneath his breath and stalked away. She heard the gate open, and then close with a loud click.
Abby stood stiffly, listening until she heard a car start up nearby, then the crunch of tires on the snowy street and the engine fading into the distance.
Then she slumped against the doorjamb.
She really needed to get a padlock for the gate, a strong one. And the security company had recommended shrubbery lights and a post lamp at the front walkway, so that no one could approach the house at night unseen. Burglars, they'd said, tended to avoid houses with good perimeter lighting.
She wondered if violent ex-husbands would.
Bryce was whimpering softly, obviously disturbed. Abby managed to get hold of herself enough to take him out onto the porch. But the dog refused to move more than a few feet away from her, lifting his leg against the nearest bush and returning quickly to her. Maybe it was the cold or the snow still drifting lazily downward that made him disinclined to linger. Or maybe he simply knew that he needed to remain close.
Abby brought him back inside and locked the door, then reset the security system.
"Tomorrow," she told the dog as she dried his feet and brushed a bit of snow from his glossy red coat, "we're calling the security company and getting those lights put in. And we'll get a padlock for the back gate."
Her voice was calm, but her heart still thudded, and that horrible cold knot of anxiety that Gary always created lay huge and heavy in the pit of her stomach.
She was afraid. She hated to be afraid.
"I don't want to scare you, Abby. But you have to be careful. I saw a possible future for you, and it isn't good.
There's a chance… I saw him kill you, Abby. I couldn't see his face, and I don't know who he is, but he was enraged, cursing, and his hands were on your throat."
"What? What are you saying?"
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. You have to be careful. He's a madman, sick in his mind, and he'll kill you unless – "
"Unless?"
"The future is not static, Abby. Even prophecies are not always what the seer interprets them to be."