How to Run with a Naked Werewol(11)
I would miss this. I would miss living in my cozy little house on the edge of the valley. I would miss the thrill of first snows of the season and the relief of the spring thaw. I would miss the irreverent, unpretentious humor of the pack members. I would miss the magic of watching people I shared a post office with shifting from two legs to four and back.
No, I thought, practically whacking myself on my nose with an imaginary newspaper. No reminiscing. None of this mattered. I'd left the pack to protect them, not so much from Glenn's violence-that hadn't come until the end of our marriage-but from his intrusion.
If he wanted to, Glenn could make life for Maggie's pack very difficult. He could compromise the pack's municipal bank accounts, causing the community considerable hardship. He could go to the authorities and raise all sorts of questions about "Dr. Moder" and how someone with the same credentials had managed to practice in the valley for so many years, essentially preventing the pack from getting medical treatment. He could call attention to discrepancies in the pack's birth and death records. He could point out the number of mysterious disappearances involving drug dealers and other undesirables who wandered too close to the pack's territory. He could put the pack's secret in serious jeopardy. And after everything the pack had done for me, I simply would not allow that to happen. The pack had survived for hundreds of years without exposure to humans. I wouldn't let my crazy ex-husband ruin that streak.
And if I told Maggie what I was going through, she would insist on "opening a werewolf-sized can of whoop-ass" on Glenn, and that would bring up a whole new set of problems for an alpha already stretched pretty damn thin by integrating two packs and a recent marriage. And I certainly didn't want to complicate the pack's ability to hire a new Dr. Moder, not with so many couples from the newly merged packs expecting cubs. There were plenty of doctors out there who could take my place as Dr. Moder, doctors without my baggage. It was easier for everyone if I just removed myself from the equation.
Caleb gently jostled me awake in the late afternoon and led me stumbling into another dingy room, this time at the Flint Creek Motor Inn. I chose not to comment on the lone queen-sized bed. I was too tired to protest the possibility of spooning with Bitey McWolfPants again. Caleb practically had to tuck me into bed like a toddler, pulling off my shoes as he explained in his gravelly voice that he needed to talk to some local contacts about Jerry. I stayed up long enough to lock the door behind him and promptly fell asleep again in the squeaky little motel bed.
It was the dream of my darling former husband that woke me up, the dream of him breaking down my motel-room door. I was screaming and screaming for help, but no sound was coming out as he dragged me away. I sat up, making a strangled whimper, clawing at the imagined hands at my throat.
I sprang out of bed into the dark, empty room. I blew out a breath and pushed my hands through my short, snaggled hair, then padded to the door to check the lock again. I shook my head and wondered whether I was going to be waking up like that for the rest of my life. But I still double-checked the bolt.
Better safe than sorry.
I crawled back into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin. How had I sunk to trusting my security to a cut-rate dead bolt? I used to be a pretty nice girl, back when I was Tina Campbell-Bishop, M dramatic pause D. I had everything. A nice husband. A nice home. A promising career. And I walked-well, ran-away from all of it. All the things I took for granted when I was growing up, such as feeling safe, having an indoor place to sleep and food on the table, people being polite and taking notice of me-I lost them somewhere along the way. I got harder, meaner. Rather than looking at people as human beings whom I might be able to help, I viewed them all with a calculating eye, analyzing how they might help me or hurt me before they could even introduce themselves.
Most people can't pinpoint the exact moment when everything in their life goes to shit. I consider myself lucky to have such a definite timeline, so that if I were ever given the opportunity to travel through time, I could hop into the DeLorean, drive directly to April 10, 2004, walk into the break room at the hospital, and bitch-slap myself before I could meet the new technical-support hire, Glenn Bishop. But we seemed like such a good match! It was such a sensible solution to my dry spell, a string of bad dates that made me want to see someone safe for a while. And Glenn was so accommodating, easygoing. We liked the same kinds of movies, food, and, wouldn't you know it, music. We enjoyed lazy weekends and trips to the lake. He was proud of my medical career and the energy I devoted to my work. I thought I was lucky to have fallen into a relationship with someone so easily.
I thought that's what relationships were supposed to be. My parents were married for almost forty years before they died, and in all that time, I couldn't remember them fighting. They didn't really argue, because they knew how to talk to each other and how to compromise. I thought that was what I'd found with Glenn. He was sweet and attentive and dependable. He was that guy, the guy of substance your mother told you to be on the lookout for, just in case he came along.
Being with Glenn was always the easy part. The hard part was spending time with anyone else. Glenn was slight, bookish, and shy, which I sort of liked. It was a nice switch from the alpha-male types I normally went out with, burly, athletic types with dozens of friends and interests I had to compete with for attention. It was lovely to be able to have a conversation with a man without him eyeing the waitress or spotting someone across the restaurant he wanted to speak to, leaving me to fiddle with breadsticks for ten minutes while he bro-hugged some guy from his intramural basketball league.
The problem was that Glenn's shyness became my issue. He had no trouble spending hours online gaming or chatting with total strangers, but he didn't want to go to my work functions or casual drinks with my coworkers. He spent too much time around my colleagues anyway, he said, and my colleagues got enough of my precious time. Before I realized what was happening, Glenn slowly but surely made it more difficult for me to maintain friendships. He pouted when I wanted to go out with the girls, saying he never got to spend time with me. He even hid my car keys a few times so I couldn't leave, all the while claiming it was just a "joke" he was forced to play because he loved me so much.
Of course, I couldn't tell my friends, "Glenn doesn't want me to spend time with you," because that made it sound so unseemly and controlling. So when I retreated from those relationships, my friends thought it was my choice. I was one of those women who can't maintain friendships after they get into a relationship. I was a Cosmo cautionary tale, in more ways than one.
As time went on, a lot of Glenn's problems became my problems. We'd committed to each other, moved in together. It seemed petty and shortsighted to leave my fiancé because he was a little needy. His demands grew so incrementally that I didn't see how unreasonable they were becoming. If I loved him, I'd dress a bit more feminine, keep my hair long, cook the things he liked, enjoy staying home on the weekends the way he did. If I loved him, I would keep my personal cell phone on me at all times, even though it was against hospital policy. I would ignore the "accidents" I seemed to have whenever Glenn was angry with me, like tripping over his feet after an argument about rent and smacking my head against the coffee table. I would pass up the big white wedding debacle and get married on a beach in the Caribbean, which is what we did, one not-so-special weekend when I came home to find Glenn holding the plane tickets. I was the proverbial frog in the pot of slowly boiling water, dying by degrees.
And then, there were the family "issues." I was an only child, a late-in-life miracle for my lovely, rational parents. We'd shared a close, slightly unorthodox relationship, as my parents tended to treat me more like a small adult colleague than a child. I'd been disappointed that Glenn wasn't interested in spending time with them. My parents didn't like him, he claimed. My father made him feel as if he was being interrogated for the entire visit, and my mother was too clingy with me. He caused huge fights right before we were supposed to go to family events, so that either we would skip them, or I would end up fighting off tears for most of the night, sparking tension and uncomfortable questions from my parents. It ended up being easier to tell my mother that we had other plans or that I was working. While he was mollified by my efforts to "focus on us," he grumbled that he didn't understand why I wanted to go see my parents so often anyway.
I tried to tell myself it would take time for Glenn to warm to my parents. But then Mom was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer about two years after our wedding and passed away within six months. Dad never quite recovered from the shock, passing in his sleep a year later. I would always regret missing those last Christmases and birthdays with them. And while I couldn't blame Glenn for my failure to protect my time with my parents, I could blame him for expecting me to bounce back from their deaths as if they were just an inconvenience.