Jericho (A Redemption Novel) (25 page)

CHAPTER 28

T
ime heals all wounds. Georgia thought about that statement as she talked to her sister on the phone two months later. She wished that was true. It wasn’t true for everybody. It wasn’t true for her, but time did help. Time did ease some pain. She rubbed her belly as her sister talked about her own pregnancy and how she had only started to show in her final months.

Georgia wasn’t so lucky. Her belly was round and stuck out beneath her shirts already, and she was only entering her fourth month. But Christian didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to love it, talking to his unborn child every night before they went to sleep. He was so happy about becoming a father. Again.

She thought her pregnancy with a child of his own blood might change the way he felt about Abby, or at least the way he treated her, but there was no change. Abby loved her daddy and Christian couldn’t get enough of her.

“You think you could come to my house next weekend, Georgia? All this unpacking business when I’m about to pop is quite annoying. But Miles really likes Charleston and I’ll be closer to you, so it won’t be bad. Mama said she would come, too. Miles said I should just stop being fussy and let him hire some people to unpack for us, but I can’t. I don’t want strangers touching my underthings.”

“Carolina, they...” she began but stopped herself, knowing she would be wasting her breath trying to explain that to her sister. “I’ll be there.”

Things between her and Carolina was surprisingly wonderful. It was so nice to see her sister as an adult, preparing for motherhood, being a wife. She had loved Carolina as a child because she was her little sister and only friend, but now she liked Carolina as an adult because she was adorable and flighty and happy all the time.

Things with her brothers had not gone as easily, and she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t blame them for what had happened to her, but they blamed themselves, it seemed. Eli still could barely look her in the eye. Josiah apologized every time he saw her and Gideon was away, overseas in Germany serving his country. He hadn’t spoken to any of them since the day of their father’s heart attack. If she could change one thing, she would change that.

In the end her mother had been right. Georgia had needed to leave Oakdale. She wouldn’t have had the life she wanted if she had stayed.

Christian walked into the kitchen with Abby in his arms. She was dressed more beautifully than normal. Her father was taking her to work with him today. He loved to show her off. The people at Howard and Helga’s had really been kind to them since Christian had gone back. Christian could no longer say he was without family or friends. Now he had more of them than he could count.

He buried his face in her neck and kissed her there, moving his lips up her throat until she lost all train of thought and moaned.

“Georgia?” Her sister’s voice rang through the phone. “Are you okay?”

“I’m feeling a little woozy. I’m going to have to call you back later.”

She disconnected from her sister and wrapped her arms around her husband. “What’s the deal with you kissing me like that when I’m on the phone? You know I go all kinds of crazy when you kiss me like that.”

“I know. I wanted you to pay attention to me.”

“Yeah!” Abby said.

“You going to work with Daddy today?” She grabbed Abby’s hand and pressed it to her mouth. “They’re going to spoil you rotten.”

“They are. I’m only going in for a little while. We’ll be back by lunch.” He rubbed her belly and kissed her forehead. “I want you to take a nap while I’m gone. Just relax. No cleaning or gardening or cooking. Just grow the baby.”

“Okay. Take tomorrow off and grow the baby with me. I miss you since you’ve been going in every day.”

“I can’t tomorrow,” he said, looking guilty. “We’re meeting with some potential employers who are interested in hiring some of our men. It’s going to be a while before the plant is open, so it’s important that I meet with these people. We need to place as many servicemen in jobs as we can.”

“I know.” She kissed his mouth. “But I still miss you.”

“Friday. I’ll take off on Friday.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “Now hurry up and go so you can get back. You are taking us out to dinner tonight.”

“Really?” He grinned at her. He loved to take her places. Sometimes she felt spoiled, but she knew that was important to him. He wanted to take care of her. “What are you craving?”

“Cheeseburgers with extra cheese and nachos with lots of jalapenos and butter-pecan ice cream on a waffle cone.”

His smile widened. “Okay.” He kissed her nose, her cheeks, then her mouth. “I’m going to stuff you so full you won’t want to move. Then I’m going to love you all night. Because I love you. I love you, Georgia. Do you know that?”

“Yes.” Her insides warmed deliciously. “I know it. You never say it, but I know you love me.”

“From the moment I opened my eyes in Jericho and saw you.”

“You asked me to kill you.”

“Yes, but you brought me back to life and I love you for it.”

“Go to work,” she ordered, feeling ridiculously close to tears. “I’ll see you later.” She kissed Abby and Christian once more before she pushed him away.

“I’m going.” He gave her belly a quick rub and left the house.

Georgia knew she was supposed to be relaxing. She had been a little more tired with this pregnancy. This baby was a little bigger, according to her doctor. He was taking a little more out of her, but she couldn’t rest. She was still feeling tingly from Christian’s words.

She pulled out the flour and all her baking supplies and prepared to make him the Mississippi mud brownies he loved so much. All she needed was more butter. She grabbed her handbag and stepped out the kitchen door to head to the little convenience store a few blocks away.

“Georgia.” She heard a male voice call her name and smiled, assuming it was her neighbor, Tim. Christian had apologized to him and since then they had become friendly, but when she looked up it wasn’t Tim. It was the last person she had ever wanted to see.

Robert.

She backed away from him and turned, unable to think. All her body told her to do was get away. She ran back into her house, but he ran after her, slamming his body into the door as she was trying to close it.

The force of the blow sent her reeling backward. She landed against the counter, hitting her side so hard it took her breath away.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said as he walked into her home and stood over her. “I just want to talk to you.”

“Get out!” she screamed.

“No.” He crouched in front of her, pushing his face too close to hers. It had only been two years since she had seen him last, since he had lied to her family, to her father, and claimed that she had tried to seduce him, tried to trap him into being the father of her unborn child.

He hadn’t changed much. He looked a little older. He was in his thirties now, and his face had lost that handsome boyish charm that it used to contain. Mostly because he was sporting a black eye and his nose was crooked. “I need you to stop this.”

“Get out of my house.” She pushed herself away from him, scrambling to her feet. She would never feel beneath him again. She would never let him take anything from her again.

“You have to stop this.” He followed her closely, trying to corner her. His eyes looked different, a little unfocused, but his jaw was determined. He had come here for a reason, but she had no inclination to find out what that was.

“If my husband finds you here he’ll kill you.”

“He left. On his way to work. It’s far away, Georgia. It takes forty minutes to get there this time of day.”

“How do you know that?” She swallowed. She had to get away from him, but she didn’t want him to know how scared she was. She didn’t want him to see her fear. She had lived in fear after he had hurt her the first time. Fear that he would find her alone, fear that he would force himself on her again, and then after her father had turned her away, she lived in fear that she wouldn’t be able to feed her baby; she feared living in solitude forever.

Robert had too much power over her for all these years. She refused to let him take any more.

“I followed him. I needed to get you alone. He’s a big man, and I really don’t want any problems.”

“Then go.” She reached behind her on the counter, feeling for a knife or fork or something to keep him away from her.

“I just want to talk to you.”

“Talk, damn it. Then get the hell out of my house.”

“Georgia.” His eyes widened a bit as if he was shocked by her language. “What has happened to you?”

“I’m calling the cops.” She reached for the phone but he wrenched it from her hand.

“I didn’t mean for things to happen the way they did. Your father wanted me for your sister, but I wanted you. I was going to marry you. I loved you.”

“You raped me!”

“You wanted it. You took a walk with me. You came into that shed with me.”

“You asked me to. I trusted you. My father loved you like a son. I never thought you would hurt me.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted you.”

“And then you lied about it. About me. You said I was a seductress. You called me a whore.”

“I didn’t mean that and I’m sorry for that, but what did you expect me to do? I loved your father more than my own. Your family was the only thing I had. I couldn’t lose them.”

“But you were okay with them losing me.”

“Your life is fine. You married a rich man. You live in a big house. You got everything you ever wanted. You should be grateful.”

She closed her hand and slapped him as hard as she could manage. “My life was not fine. I was pregnant and homeless and alone because you raped me. I was not fine.”

“Stop saying that word,” he hissed. “That’s not what I did. We had sex.”

“You ripped my clothes. You forced me!”

He slapped her this time. Twice. On her cheek and across her mouth. She tasted blood on her tongue. Panic beat in her chest, but so did anger.

She was mad as hell.

“You’re ruining my life!” he spat at her. “You have got to stop telling people that I did that to you. I lost my job because of you. My boss said I was a man he couldn’t trust around his daughter. A rock was thrown through my window. My tires were slashed. My friends are gone. Look at my face!” He pointed to his eye. “Josiah did this to me. In the middle of the supermarket. It took two people to pull him off. He told me I had to leave town or he was going to kill me. I have no place else to go. Oakdale has been my home for the past fifteen years.”

“And it was my home for twenty-one, but you never seemed to care about that,” she yelled back at him, too angry to be scared of the consequences.

“Your father won’t see me anymore! He banned me from the house, from the church. The whole town has convicted me. I can’t take it, Georgia. You’ve got to go back and tell them you lied. I need Abraham. They beat me, you know. My parents beat me for everything I did. For no reason sometimes. I didn’t deserve that, but your father took me in and it stopped. He was the only one who loved me. You’ve got to tell them I didn’t do that to you.”

“I won’t! You did do that to me. You hurt me!”

“You will or you won’t see the last of me.” He turned away from her for a moment, pacing nervously. “That baby you had is mine. I have rights. I can take her from you. I’ll make it so you have to let me see her all the time.”

“You can’t,” she said, feeling panic rise in her chest. “They don’t give babies to rapists.”

“Who’s a rapist? You didn’t go to the police. I wasn’t charged with a crime. I’m just a man who had his child hidden from him. You think a judge won’t believe that?”

“I know it.” She would kill him herself before she let that happen. “You’re nothing but a fraud. A fake. You’ll never get her.”

“Maybe not, but a court case could take years, and you’ll see me at every hearing. I’ll be around you, hassling you, in your space, in your head until you give me what I want.”

“No.” She wasn’t sure of many things in her life, but that much she was sure of. Robert would never touch Abby. She would die before it came to that.

“Then I’ll take her. I’ll take her and run away with her and you’ll never see her again. She looks like me. I’ve seen her. I’ve seen her with your husband. He likes to take her to the park when he gets home from work. You like to shop at the farm stand on weekends. I know everything about your life, Georgia. I’ve been watching you.”

“You’re crazy!” She didn’t know why she was shocked to hear what he’d been doing, but she was. She had felt so safe here. This was her home, her sanctuary, and he had been watching her and Christian and their family. She felt violated again. She felt dirty. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

“Because you ruined my life! I can’t leave you alone until I get it back.”

“You did this to yourself. You’re spoiled and selfish and you deserve this. You think I won’t call the police? You think I’ll just let you haunt me? You think my husband will?”

He gripped her by the shoulders, digging his fingers into her skin. “I’ll kill him.”

His eyes had grown wilder, his face more determined. He was serious. “You’re insane.”

“No, I’m desperate and that’s worse.”

* * *

A funny feeling nagged Christian as he drove to Howard and Helga’s that morning. He looked back at Abby, who was occupying herself with a board book in her car seat. She was fine, and the only reason he was taking her to work with him this morning was so Georgia could get some rest. She was tired all the time; some nights she barely made it to eight o’clock before sleepiness overtook her.

She needed to rest, but he felt as though maybe he shouldn’t have left her alone.

For the past month, he had been working a lot—too much. He thought he’d finally found his purpose in life, to help the men that were so much like him, but he had to take care of his wife first. He’d told her the truth when he’d said she had brought him back to life. He wouldn’t be here, he wouldn’t be happy without her.

He turned the car around, calling Cliff to tell him that he wasn’t going to make it in that day or the next and to ask the general to take his place in the meetings.