The Man Behind the Cop. Janice Kay Johnson

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      “That took courage,” Karin said with approval.

      “I was so afraid he’d notice when I had something tucked under my shirt or my purse was bulging! But he never did.”

      “How did you feel about keeping that kind of secret from him?”

      “The truth?” Her face relaxed. “I felt good. Like a kid with a secret from her sister. You know?”

      Karin laughed. “I do. Powerful.”

      “Right! Powerful.” Lenora seemed to savor the word. When had she ever been able to think of herself as powerful? “I’ve been looking at him and counting off the days. Thursday is payday and he always gives me money for groceries. I’ve been stowing some away, but a couple hundred more would be nice. So I’m going to leave Friday.”

      Karin nodded. “Enough for a month’s rent would be great.”

      “But I feel I should tell him I’m going, not just disappear. After fifteen years of marriage, I think it’s the least I owe him. If I had somebody there with me…”

      Karin straightened in her chair. “You know how dangerous confronting him could be.”

      Lenora bit her lip. “Yes.”

      “Why do you feel you ‘owe’ Roberto?”

      Lenora floundered, claiming at first that owe probably wasn’t the best choice of word.

      “Since I’ve never worked, he has brought home all the money.”

      “You’ve talked about how you would have liked to work.”

      She nodded. “If I’d had a paycheck of my own…”

      Karin finished for her. “You would have felt more independent.”

      Lenora gave a small, painful smile. “He didn’t want me to be independent.”

      Karin waited.

      “You don’t think I should tell him face-to-face?”

      Usually, Karin let clients work their way to their own conclusion, but in this instance she said, “No. I don’t think Roberto will let you walk out the door. If you have someone with you, that person will be in danger, as well. And where will the children be? What if he grabs Anna and Enrico and threatens to hurt them?”

      Just audibly, Lenora confessed, “I would do anything he asked me to do.”

      Karin waited again.

      “Okay. We’ll sneak away,” Lenora said.

      “I really believe that’s smart.”

      The frail woman said, “He’ll come after me.”

      “Then you have to make sure neither you nor the children are ever vulnerable.”

      “I wish we could join the witness protection program or something like that.”

      “Just disappear,” Karin said. The ultimate fantasy for a woman in Lenora’s position.

      Lenora nodded.

      “But then you’d never see your aunt and uncle or sister again,” Karin pointed out.

      “They could come, too.”

      “Along with your sister’s children? And her husband? What about his family?”

      Lenora’s eyes filled with fears and longings. “I know that can’t be. But I wish.”

      “You realize you’ll have to stay away from your family and friends for now. He’ll be watching them. But if you can stay safe long enough, he’ll lose interest.”

      Lenora agreed but didn’t look convinced. And as scared as she had to be right now, who could blame her?

      When the hour was over and Karin was walking her out, Karin asked, “Will you call me once you’re at the safe house?”

      “Of course I will.” In the reception area, furnished like a living room, Lenora hugged her. “Thank you. You’ve helped me more than you can imagine.”

      Touched, Karin hugged her back. “Thank you.”

      Lenora drew back, sniffing. “I can keep coming here, can’t I?”

      “As long as you’re sure he’s never known about A Woman’s Hand. Remember, you can’t do anything predictable,” Karin reminded her.

      “He’s never heard about this place or about you.” Lenora sounded sure.

      “Great. Then I’ll expect you next Tuesday. Oh, and don’t forget that Monday evening we’re having the first class in the women’s self-defense course. It would be really good for you.”

      They’d talked about this, too—how the course wasn’t geared so much to building hand-to-hand combat skills as it was to changing the participants’ confidence in themselves and teaching preparedness.

      Lenora nodded. “I mentioned it to the director at the safe house, and she said she’d drive me here. She told me I could leave Enrico and Anna there, that someone would watch them, but I think I’d rather bring them. You’ll have babysitting here, right?”

      “Absolutely.” Karin smiled and impulsively hugged her again. “Good luck.”

      She stood at the door and watched this amazing woman, who had defied her husband’s efforts to turn her into nothing, hurry to the bus stop so she could pick up her children and be home before he was, ready to playact for three more days.

      Karin seldom prayed—her faith was more bruised than her most damaged client’s. But this was one of those moments when she gave wing to a silent wish.

      Let her escape safely. Please let her make it.

      The blue-and-white metro bus pulled to a stop, and Lenora disappeared inside it. With a sigh, Karin turned from the glass door. She had five minutes to get a cup of coffee before her next appointment, this one a fifty-eight-year-old rape survivor who’d been left for dead in the basement of her apartment building when all she’d done was go down to move her laundry from the washer to the dryer.

      In the hall, Karin slowed her step briefly when she heard a woman sobbing, the sound muffled by the closed door to another office. Maybe they should have called the clinic A Woman’s Tears, they ran so freely here.

      Sometimes she was amazed that of the five women psychologists and counselors in practice here, three were happily married to nice men. She was grateful for the reminder that kind, patient men did exist. They might even be commonplace and not extraordinary at all. In the stories—no, the tragedies—that filled her days, men were the monsters, rarely the СКАЧАТЬ