Almost Ordinary (The Song Wreckers Book 2) (8 page)

He glanced around as if he’d forgotten and tried to push himself up. I put my hand on his shoulder and gently pressed him down. “Just tell me where.”

“Bathroom.”

I went to the bathroom and found four bottles in his medicine cabinet, all dated the day he left the hospital. “Which ones are you supposed to take?” I asked on my way to the living room.

Blank faced, he said, “I don’t know.”

He had four prescription bottles, no idea what medication filled each one, or when he was supposed to take them. I closed my eyes and slowly released a deep breath to ease my frustration.

Then I got to work.

I gathered all of his discharge instructions, and together with his prescriptions, organized his pill schedule. While preparing him dinner, I used my phone’s web and found out what each pill was for and when he was supposed to take it. I studied his discharge papers so I knew what his physical limitations were. I searched his office area for a pen and paper, and wrote it all down in a chart format so easy a monkey could follow it. I wiped the layer of dust off of everything and made his chair area more accessible by moving things around to assure everything he needed was within reach.

I checked my phone for a text from Caleb. Nothing, so I texted Katie for an update on the boys. They were fine.

I shredded the chicken, tossed it in the pasta with some dressing and parmesan cheese, and handed it to Cooper.

I hadn’t expected him to be so pitiful; alone, not able to take care of himself. I stayed longer that I intended.

“I have to go,” I told him when he finished eating. “Anything you need me to do first?”

“No,” he said, and set his bowl on the side table.

I rolled my eyes again and swiped the bowl. I brought it to the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher, then set it to run even though it wasn’t full.

In the living area, his new chart was within reach, and everything was clean and as easy as I could make it for him. I opened the door to leave.

“Thanks, Molly.” he mumbled.

“No problem,” I lied, then shut the door behind me.

My phone trilled its text message alert as soon as I cleared Cooper’s driveway. At the first red light I checked it. From Katie:
Ram home. Leaving. Good luck.

Once home, I heard Caleb and the boys in the family room. “Hey,” I called out.

“Zander said ‘da,’” Caleb said as I stepped over the kid gate to join them.

I lit up and clapped, then hugged and kissed each one. “Let me hear guys,” I coaxed them both with lots of
da, da, das
of my own.

He wouldn’t repeat it for me, and they were only five months old, so it could’ve been a mistake. Oh well. I grabbed the camera I kept sitting on a table and snapped their picture. Later I could label it “The day we think Zander said his first word.”

“I’m going start dinner,” I told Caleb. “Will you join me in the kitchen?”

He followed me. I motioned for him to sit at the table while I assembled the ingredients for spaghetti.

To gauge his anger level, I said, “Let’s have it. You’re mad.”

“I’m not mad, Princess. I’m . . .” He shook his head, unable to finish.

Defensiveness flushed over me and the emotional roadblock in my head slammed into place. I snatched the knife to open the package of hamburger. I stabbed the knife into the plastic and sliced it down, not realizing my left index finger was in the way. “Aahhh, crap.” I dropped the knife and darted over to the roll of paper towels.

Caleb shot up. “What’d you do?” he asked, jogging around the table to me.

I held my finger up. “It’s nothing, just a cut.” A painful, bleeding, worse-than-I-thought cut.

He grabbed my hand and examined it over the sink. “Damn, that’s deep.”

I jerked my hand away. “It’s fine.”

He grabbed my hand again. “It’s not fine. You might need stitches.” He turned on the faucet to cold and tried to force my finger under the stream. I jerked it away again.

With a clenched jaw he stared at me, daring me to act like it didn’t hurt. But it did. A lot.

I jabbed my finger under the water and watched the blood swirl down the drain.

Caleb gently held my injured hand in his and cleaned it with dish soap, then guided it under the water to rinse. “Does it still hurt?”

I shook my head, then burst out crying. Like my body knew being cut was a good excuse to cry, so all of my pent up guilt and fear could come pouring out. “Yes,” I admitted.

I didn’t stop myself from crying. I let it all out; tears, snot, and words. “I’m sorry I’m hurting you by going to see Cooper. I’m sorry I feel the need to make sure he’s okay. He saved your life, and like it or not it’s his DNA mixed with mine in Zander and Alex and I don’t know anything about his medical history. Does cancer run in his family? I don’t know! What’s their heritage? I don’t know that either! I want to hate him, Caleb. But he gave me these children that we love, so I can’t.”

I shut off the water. The house was silent except for gurgling noises from the boys. Caleb wrapped my finger in a paper towel. I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose one handed.

“I don’t know much about him,” I admitted. “I think it’s safe to assume he has nobody. He was pitiful at home today. He was in pain, didn’t know anything about his medications or when to take them, living in a mess with no food. The man that got shot for you deserves better.”

God, I should’ve explained this to Caleb earlier.

Caleb let go of my hand. “You think I don’t have mixed feelings about that asshole, too? God, Princess, do you know how hard it’s been to work with him day in and day out? Knowing that he treated the love of my life like trash which allowed me to be a father? Then the son of a bitch takes a bullet meant for me and I see you soften towards him. Not to mention you missed one of the boys’ first words because you were with him.”

Ooh, that last sentence hurt. Fucker.

The squeals continued from the family room. Caleb reached around me to grab another tissue.

I wiped my nose and turned away. “I need to make dinner, excuse me.” Standing a few inches from me, he blocked my path.

With a grunt, he left the kitchen and returned a minute later with gauze and medical tape. “Finger,” he demanded.

I turned the stove on then stuck my arm out. He unwound the paper towel and tossed it on the counter, then wrapped and taped my finger without causing me a bit of pain. “It doesn’t look deep enough for stitches.”

“Thanks,” I said. He was good at caring for me, and the gentle way he handled me helped melt the feeling of wanting to kick him in the nuts.

“I’ll finish dinner,” he insisted. “Go hang out with the dynamic duo.”

“Okay.” I stepped over the kid gate, assaulted with rotten eggs, rancid meat, maybe even raw sewage. Good God, a double crapper. “Caleb!” I screamed.

“I know. I smelled that when I came down with the gauze. No way I wanted anything to do with that one. Good luck, though.”

He really was a fucker sometimes.

Chapter 10

Next Sunday began like the last. I woke early and ran out—this time into a misty rain—to get the newspaper, then returned to Caleb waiting for me in the kitchen with our coffees already poured.

We spread the paper out, not having any idea how Adam was able to stay undetected after escaping from the airport. Caleb repeatedly questioned his source at Tipton PD, but we still knew nothing of Adam’s whereabouts for those two days. Not even the local news programs were able to secure any information.

We had one little tidbit, however. Since Friday and Saturday had been a Wreckers Weekend, and one of our regular fans worked as a copy editor for
The Detroit Metro Press
, buying her drinks all night and a cab ride home garnered us an inside scoop. Dwindling newspaper sales in the age of reading news on the Internet has been causing newspapers around the country to take drastic action to keep their subscription numbers steady.
The Detroit Metro Press
was hit worse than most major cities. In a move they perhaps considered ingenious, but I considered unethical,
The Detroit Metro Press
had been making secret deals with local police departments for higher profile stories to be debuted exclusively in the paper . . . before the news channels could beat them to it. It hasn’t been going well. Despite their best efforts, information kept getting leaked. No big surprise, we were able to find out about the secret deals for about a hundred bucks. Adam’s case was their first success.

“You ready?” Caleb asked me.

I breathed in deep. “Let’s find out, shall we?” We each sipped our coffee and focused on the paper.

DETAILS OF FLIGHT FROM JUSTICE REVEAL SMART, YET TROUBLED MAN

The story of Adam Kinder’s two-day evasion from justice, which we first brought to you in last Sunday’s edition, reads as a horror novel. It begins as a troubled adult on the run, and ends with his capture. Squeezed in the middle is alcohol and drug abuse, torture, and, ultimately, murder.

In early May, Kinder was spotted at the airport by a woman who claims Kinder assaulted her more than two years prior. His alleged victim then hid in the bathroom and called the police, giving Kinder time to slip out of the airport. Kinder denies ever assaulting the woman, insisting he fled from the airport thinking the woman witnessed him steal a wallet out of a purse left unattended. However, The Detroit Metro Press has obtained proof that Kinder purchased a one way ticket, and checked no luggage. Airport personnel found no forgotten carry-on bags, and cameras within the airport do not show Kinder as having any type of bag with him at any time. His vehicle was parked in the short term parking garage, indicating his stay at the airport would be brief.

Whether or not Kinder was at the airport to spy on the alleged victim, or steal a wallet before taking a one way flight, the aftermath is the same. Adam Kinder, believing he was about to be arrested, simply walked out of the airport undetected, got in his car, and drove off.

We finished reading the rest of the article in silence. By the time we were done Caleb loomed over me, each of his hands squeezing my upper arms. He had inched toward me while reading, our bodies touching.

I shrugged my shoulders a couple of times so he’d loosen his hold. He did, then pulled out a chair and nudged me to sit down.

Caleb refilled our coffee mugs. He sat down next to me and shook his head while pinching the bridge of his nose.

“God,” I mumbled. “That mother fucker not only killed her, he tortured her first.” And I read all the gory the details.

“He was right under my nose and I missed him.” He set his mug down a little too hard, making coffee splash out. “Damn it. Two times I went to her place and missed him.”

I knew where his thoughts wandered. “Caleb, Belinda Nord’s death was not your fault.”

He pushed his chair back and stood. After taking another drink of coffee, he turned toward his office.

I reached out and grabbed his shirt. Standing, I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Don’t walk away and berate yourself. Talk to me.”

He turned around and put his arms around me. “If I had followed my gut and forced her to open her door, I could’ve stopped him.”

“You don’t know that,” I countered. “He could’ve been waiting for you to do that, ready to shoot or stab whoever barged through that door.”

I felt his shoulders relax, so I knew what I said registered. At least somewhat. I wiggled myself out of his arms and we both sat again.

“He was there the whole time, Princess.”

“Did you have any hunches about where Adam hid while you talked to her?”

He ran his hands through his hair, grabbed and held it for a few seconds, then let his hands fall to his lap. “I had a strong hunch he’d been in contact with her, and that she might know where he was. But I also thought if he was in there, she would’ve given us some sign; a look in her eyes, a secret point with her finger, something. Since no one at 3D saw him coming or going I believed he picked somewhere else to hide.”

“So your gut didn’t tell you that he was in there?”

He thought for a minute. “I guess not. Still.”

“Still nothing. You had no idea. He was
that
sneaky.” My fingers played with the edges of the newspaper. Part of me wanted to chuck the paper in the recycling bin like he did last Sunday’s paper. There was also the part of me, the morbid part, which wanted to keep the whole sick article as a reminder of how lucky I was. Lucky to be alive. Lucky, because despite what he did to me, I wasn’t a broken mess. Sure I was for a while, but I came out of it.

And did I really want to reread the disgusting details? Adam left the airport. He drove his car into a garage of an abandoned house less than a mile away from Belinda’s, and stashed it there. He snuck behind buildings and through neighborhoods to her apartment.

She was home when broke in, so he’d used his favorite knife to put the fear of God into her. First he cut Belinda a few times on her arms to scare her, and let her know he meant business with his threat to kill her if she told the police he was there.

Adam hadn’t cut anyone in a while. He’d missed it.

He’d had the audacity to brag to the reporter about his actions, the sick bastard.

He then went on to brag how Belinda fell under his complete control. Even when she wasn’t with him, like when she went for groceries. He’d cut her, and beat her when he had to, all to ensure she’d be too afraid to save herself.

That wasn’t the most disturbing, though. All the cutting and beating and threatening tore me up inside, but the more terrifying part enraged me.

Adam believed what he did turned Belinda on sexually, so he “gave her what she wanted.” God, knowing that he’d raped her on top of everything else made me sick to my stomach. If I was being honest with myself, deep down I knew that already. That had to be why my gut’s been churning ever since I learned he was found at her apartment.

He’d abused her—physically, sexually, mentally. He had her believing he’d kill her or her family if she alerted the police. He’d even forced her to buy him a black market gun knowing he’d be visited by the police.

If the beginning and middle of the article made me sick, the ending infuriated me. The psycho fuck had the nerve to tell the reporter he killed Belinda Nord and shot Cooper in self-defense. They would’ve killed him, he’d insisted, had he not shot them.

There was another lengthy section in the newspaper dedicated to the psychiatry of Adam and others with mental health issues. Personality disorders were given names. Horrible actions had reasons behind them. How scary to think thousands of untreated assholes like Adam lurked out there, possibly making someone’s life a living hell.

“Somehow, he thinks he’s not going to be in prison all that long,” I told Caleb. “It’s like he’s convinced that he’s going to circumvent the system somehow. And if you think about it, it makes sense for him to think that. He never stayed in jail very long. He got away with what he did to me. I bet his whole life’s been like that. He finds a way to wiggle free and does what he wants.”

Caleb’s jaw clenched, which wasn’t unusual these days, and a vein popped from his neck. His eyes held that manic look that I’d seen in the hospital after my attack.

“You have no idea,” he said, “how close I am to driving down to the prison tonight and killing him. I know people who work there. I could slip in, get it done, could cover it up.”

“I wouldn’t stop you.” I wanted Adam dead. He deserved it and I hated that my tax dollars were going to feed and clothe him. I didn’t care if that made me a bad person.

He shook his head, still frustrated. “I can’t do anything that might jeopardize you or the boys. If something went wrong and I was taken away from you . . .”

His absence from our lives would be intolerable. We didn’t have to say it.

I placed my hand on the back of his head and pushed it toward mine to meet him halfway for a kiss. Our lips grazed each other’s in a sweet kiss despite the bitter words he just spoke, and we stayed forehead to forehead.

I felt his muscles relax. We looked one final time at each other. Eyes to eyes, no tension, just softness. I smiled the tiniest bit, then him. Words weren’t necessary. We loved each other, had gone through a lot to be here, and were bonded to one another forever.

Sometimes I wished I could freeze time when Caleb looked at me like that. But life waited for both of us, so off we went to deal with it.

I was a bad mother. Horrible.

The stress of everything—Adam, Cooper, the tension that my caring for Cooper caused with Caleb—finally got to me. I needed to drink.

Grown-up drinks. Alcohol. Liquid relaxers.

So I weaned the twins. It wasn’t too hard on them. They would already take a bottle from everyone else, so I outright refused to give them a boob. A lot of crying occurred, mostly by me, then they relented and drank from a bottle while I held them. Bam, nursing ceased. They weren’t happy for the first few minutes, then must’ve realized that being fed was being fed. They were still cuddled and loved. They just weren’t physically attached to me anymore. I missed it, and had more than one internal argument with myself about resuming it.

Especially when intense pain in my boobs brought me to my knees sometimes. Caleb couldn’t go near my boobs for a while so he suffered too.

Holy shit. I weaned my kids to be able to drink. Ugh.

I’d been using a lot of the hours Franny was over to take care of Cooper. I gave up referring to it as visiting him, or simply checking up on him. I made sure he had food in the house. I prepared some of his meals. I arranged for Merry Maids to clean his loft twice a week. I checked his medicine bottles and counted the pills so I knew if he’d taken them. I forced him to take walks outside, weather permitting. He hated them, which caused me perverse pleasure.

Two weeks I cared for him. Here’s what I’ve learned about Cooper in that time: he ate what you placed in front of him. Everything I knew about him—his moods generally switched between serious and grumpy, he knew his way around a dance floor, and he hated surprises, I already knew. I never pried information from him when I visited. I should’ve. I wanted to, but I’d lose my nerve. My goal was to prod pieces of his life from him. Then I’d find some way to turn the conversation into the things I needed to know. Did he have any medical issues in his family, what was his nationality, things like that. And if it so happened he let slip what was so awful about me that he couldn’t bear to man up and take responsibility, then great. Though I never expected the answer to that one.

Instead, our daily conversations—if you could call them that—were practical. I told him to do things. I asked him if he did what I told him to do. He answered. I never nagged. However, I took a lot of deep, frustrated breaths that made him shoot me annoyed looks.

I reported to Caleb every time I went to Cooper’s, and everything I did while there. He never asked me to stop, probably because my frustration with Cooper was obvious. And, I knew I needed to curb my cursing with kids in the house, but Cooper really was an asshat! Seriously, his head was shoved so far up his butt I didn’t think it would ever come out.

Caleb seemed to understand. Either that or 3D kept him so busy he didn’t have the mental energy to fight me on it. Plus Cooper informed me a few days ago that he’d be returning to work soon. I told him he wasn’t quite ready, but hey, what did I know? According to Cooper, he knew what he could handle, not me.

Cooper wouldn’t need a caregiver so often, or maybe at all. That would ease some of Caleb’s stress, and no doubt Cooper itched to have me out of his hair. Caleb might not have taken issue with me over Cooper yet, but my caring for Cooper was bound to cause tension between the two of us.

Which was why Katie’s bachelorette party couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. At first I dreaded it. As Katie’s maid of honor it was my duty to plan her bachelorette party. She didn’t trust me to do it right, though, so she planned every last detail and I paid for it. And to be honest, I preferred it that way.

Instead of going to a strip club, she rented a hall where the food and booze would flow. She hired a woman to hold one of those sex toy parties. Embarrassment burned my face when I thought about sex toys. Maybe I’d picture them as something else instead. Like shoes. Yeah, instead of a sex toy, I’d see a pair of shoes.

I didn’t tell Caleb the bachelorette party was a sex toy party until the day of because I knew he’d tease me about it. He laughed his ass off when I finally did tell him, just like I’d predicted. I would rather die than let someone see me anywhere near those things, and he knew this. Believe me, I wasn’t uptight in the bedroom. But no way did I want anyone other than my husband knowing what I did in there.