I made sure to make plenty of noise as I approached Mrs. Tucker. She was clearly anxious, and I wasn’t sure if that was because of our clandestine task or if that was her steady state.
“Mrs. Tucker?” I called when I was still a good ten feet back.
She still jolted, but at least she didn’t bolt. “I’ve got all of the information you need.” Her voice wobbled and her hands shook as she pulled a manila envelope from her oversized purse. “Everything you need should be in here.”
I was faced with two options. I could grab the envelope, give her the do-this-or-else lecture, the phone, and take off and try to forget the bruised woman on a park bench in Florida. That was the easy road. The hard road was the one I went with because . . . why the hell not? Life wasn’t a cakewalk, so why start down easy street that late in the game?
“How long’s he been hitting you?” I asked as I sat next to her. I could have gone with a smoother introduction, but talking about the weather seemed like a crime when Mrs. Tucker was clearly in need of help. If she’d called us, we were the last card in her Rolodex.
Her hands twisted in her lap. “Such a lovely day, isn’t it? I might go for a walk later—”
“Mrs. Tucker.” I covered her hands with one of mine. Hers were cold despite the warm weather. “I’m not your friends at the country club, or your family who wants to keep up the blind-eye act, or a meddling neighbor. I’m the person here to help you.”
Her eyes closed. “How can knowing how long my husband has beaten me help you help me?” Her tone matched her expression—hopeless.
I waited for her to open her eyes. When she finally did, I waited until she looked me in the eye. “Motivation,” I stated, lifting a brow. “The more motivation I have to close an Errand, the faster I get it closed.”
She nodded a few times but stayed quiet.
“So?”
Her eyes closed again, but her mouth finally opened. “Three months, one week, and four days after our wedding.” She paused, took a shaky breath, and continued. “My husband has been beating me for twenty years, one month and eighteen days.”
My stomach coiled. Not that I needed more motivation, but twenty years gave me a special surge of it. “You’ve been keeping track. Why?” God, if I found myself in that kind of a situation, one thing I wouldn’t do was mark the days off on a calendar. I’d try to forget them.
Lifting her gaze slowly, her head followed. For the first time, I saw something blaze to life in Mrs. Tucker’s eyes that gave me hope she was still alive somewhere deep inside that shell. “Motivation.”
Damn. Somewhere deep inside that shaky, seemingly scared shitless shell was a brave and motivated woman ready to break free.
“Why have you stayed with him this long?” I asked.
She lifted a shoulder and followed it with a sigh. “The first ten years I hung around because I kept hoping that I’d wake up and whatever demon had taken him over would be gone and he’d be the man I fell in love with. When I finally stopped being naive, I stayed with him because of our kids.” She twirled her wedding ring around her finger, practically glaring at it. “Of course I realize staying in an unhealthy relationship for the kids isn’t the best reason—”
“But it isn’t the worst either.”
Mrs. Tucker wiped her eyes, although I didn’t notice any tears. Maybe they were only phantom ones. Maybe she’d stopped crying the real kind long ago, when she realized nothing would change no matter how many she shed. Until today. Today, everything was about to change.
“I managed to explain the bruises and bandages for a long time, at least until the kids were in high school. But when I was covering a different body part every other week and picking up a new box of Band-Aids every time we visited the grocery store, they each figured it out eventually.”
“What did they do?”
Mrs. Tucker almost smiled. It was so close, it almost counted. “They got out. They escaped. One’s in college on the East Coast, and the other’s playing semi-pro soccer in Washington. They spread their wings and flew away. They did what I should have done long ago.”
“But that’s what you’re going to do now.” I twisted toward her and slid the envelope from her hands. “It might have taken you a while, but you’re leaving him now and that’s what matters. Not that you maybe hung around for too long, or that you may have stayed for the wrong reasons, or that you’re scared witless to do what you’re about to. What matters is that you’re doing it.”
Mrs. Tucker’s eyes met mine again. “What matters is that I’m taking him down in the process. What matters is that he’s going to feel what’s it’s like to feel his whole life slipping away from him. What matters is that he won’t be able to control it. I’m taking that from him. I’m going to be the one hovering over him when this is over. That is what matters.”