Page 39 of Shelter from the Storm

The way she said nice so wistfully, it occurred to him she didn’t seem to consider kind people the norm.

Theo rested his arm along the back of the porch swing, his fingers inches from her shoulder. She’d left her long blonde hair down today, and he itched to touch it to see if it was as soft and thick as it looked.

“I suppose your time in foster care must have felt torturous too.” Theo was anxious to learn more about her. God, he wanted to know every single thing, including all those childish secrets she’d whispered to the original Boots.

“It wasn’t bad at first,” she said. “Because Shaw was there for the first two years too. After graduation, he joined the Navy, and that was when it got harder.”

“You never saw your parents again?”

Her shoulders drooped slightly, and he considered changing the subject, but he dismissed that thought. Especially when she looked down at the stuffed toy in her hands, one finger stroking the cat’s head as if it were real.

“I’ve seen them since.”

“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” he offered, not wanting to ruin what had been a really great day.

“No. It’s okay. I’ve talked to Edith about…” She paused, and he got the sense she was trying to decide if she should finish her thought. “Some of it. And it’s helped. Before coming here, I didn’t really have anyone to share these things with.”

How in the hell did a woman this interesting, this intelligent, this beautiful, make it to twenty-four years of age without any friends? Especially considering his three cousins and Kasi had already absorbed her into their girl gang as if she’d been there all along.

“Well, you can talk to me.” Theo tugged on both ears, wiggling them. “I’m a great listener.”

He hoped to make her smile but instead, her expression remained somber.

“I told you that my dad split when I was five.”

Theo nodded.

“Shaw was eight, and he took our dad leaving hard. He became belligerent, acting out at school, talking back to Mom and his teachers. Mom couldn’t handle him, so she basically washed her hands of him.”

Theo recalled her mentioning Shaw’s behavior before. “So, what? She ignored him?”

“You have to understand, my mom was always distant and cold, so she didn’t really change after Dad left. As far back as I can remember, she was short-tempered and disinterested in us. Dealing with Shaw was more than she wanted to bother with, so she let him run wild.”

“Poor kid,” Theo said, even though he wanted to make the word “kid” plural. Gretchen had suffered as well.

“Unfortunately, Mom is one of those women who can’t live without a man. She finds her identity through who she’s with, preferring to be a kept woman.” Gretchen rolled her eyes at the term, her disgust evident. “She was forced to go to work after Dad left to support us, and she hated it, resented that the job of putting food on the table fell to her. She became a cashier at a supermarket, and that was where she found the store manager, Ivan.”

Gretchen said the name Ivan with even more disgust than kept woman. Given she’d already mentioned her stepfather was an abusive bastard, he understood why. He was beginning to suspect who might’ve physically hurt her.

“She and Ivan married after only a few months of dating because they fed each other’s egos in just the right way. She deferred to him on everything, and he got to strut around like lord of the manor.”

“He sounds like an asshole.”

Gretchen tapped the end of her nose. “You got it in one. He’s a judgmental prick, always preaching about how people should live their lives. He’s one of those ‘it’s my way or the highway’ douchebags. He and Shaw butted heads from day one.”

“And your mom never stepped in?”

Gretchen shook her head. “No. She handed all the discipline over to Ivan, and he quickly moved from yelling at Shaw, to grounding him, to spankings. I hated it when Ivan hit him.”

“Did he hit you too?” If her answer was yes, Theo would be hard-pressed not to drive to Harrisburg to give Ivan the Asshole a taste of his own medicine, while explaining why children weren’t punching bags.

“No.”

Theo frowned, surprised by her answer—and even more shocked to realize he believed her.

“Ivan hated Shaw, who received the brunt of his anger. With me,” she lifted one shoulder, “he felt complete and utter indifference. Sometimes, I wasn’t even sure he knew I was living in the house.”

“Did your mother hit you?”

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