How to Run with a Naked Werewol(12)

At first, I stayed because I was afraid to admit, even to myself, that my marriage was such a mistake. I didn't love Glenn. He'd strangled any love I'd felt for him with his insecurities and his manipulations. But I was a successful doctor, on my way up the ladder at a major Nashville medical center. Marriages that lasted less than one presidential term were not supposed to happen to women like me. I was ashamed and embarrassed and every other word that expressed world-shaking regret. When Glenn started talking about having children of our own, instead of going all warm and tender at the idea of starting a family, I panicked. I knew I couldn't be tied to him in that way for the rest of my life. So I made a clean break.

With my parents gone and my friendships damaged, nothing prevented me from moving across the country. I didn't have enough evidence for a restraining order, so I elected just to disappear. I used computers at the public library to find a new job at a hospital in Tampa and used what was left of my inheritance to set up an apartment there. I filed divorce papers and moved out before Glenn could make it home from a late-night department meeting. I used my own name to start my new life but thought I was being smart by listing a post-office box on bills and accounts. I hoped Glenn would just move on, get bored, find someone else.

As usual, I'd underestimated him. He hacked into my e-mail accounts, no matter how many times I changed the address or password. I had to change my credit-card information and post-office box three times after he managed to buy some nice Jet Skis, a flat-screen TV, and a bass boat on my dime. When I complained to police in our hometown, he told them it was simply a predivorce credit spat and that we were working through it in family court. With me in another state, they were all too happy to let me fend for myself.

And still, I didn't realize how bad things could get. I'd made the mistake of staying in contact with old friends. They'd been so convinced by my "perfectly happy wife" act that most of them were shocked by the sudden shift. One well-meaning (read: ill-informed and utterly without boundaries) college friend gave Glenn my address, thinking I'd given up on the marriage too quickly and should give him another chance. Having followed me through the lobby of my building and through my front door, he walked right into my new apartment and broke my jaw.

I didn't know that it was possible to hurt that badly. I could barely crawl to a sitting position as Glenn ranted and raved over me.

After Glenn let me know how much I had hurt him, he told me to wait in the bedroom while he went to fix himself a drink. He was so convinced that I would do it, he just walked out of the room, leaving me right next to a phone, and never even considered that I would use it to call for help. That chapped my butt much later, when I was in my analyze every moment so I can better blame myself phase. He was so sure of his "shock and awe" campaign. He was so sure I would just cower on the carpet. It never occurred to him to take the phone with him.                       
       
           



       

It wasn't the first "accident" I'd had around Glenn, but it was the first that I couldn't treat myself afterward. I called 911, and Glenn-to my shock-stuck around. The paramedics-to Glenn's shock-didn't accept his assertion that a fully dressed woman with dry hair fell getting out of the shower, so he was arrested on assault charges. I was a patient in my own hospital for two days, treated to pitying looks from my coworkers as I recovered from a broken jaw, several broken fingers, and internal injuries.

I knew what would happen when he was released. I'd had him arrested. To Glenn, that was unforgivable. When I went to file a restraining order, I found that he had called some online-gaming friend and given him some sob story to convince him to post bail. Glenn skipped town, without regard for his friend's bail collateral. And when I tried to file the restraining order, I found out that Glenn had been fired from the hospital months before and moved out of our apartment. Other than his birthdate, I had no information with which to file the order, which would make it difficult to serve and enforce. If I wanted to keep this new life I'd started and continue the divorce proceedings, I would have to stay put. Although I couldn't find a trace of where Glenn might have disappeared to, he would know exactly where I was. And he could come back anytime he wanted. And even if I moved somewhere new and started over, if I wanted to practice medicine, it would be impossible to hide. Hospitals and private practices expected their doctors to post profiles on their Web sites, appear in ads, and have some public presence. Trying to make myself invisible would mean the end of my medical career. Walking away from the divorce proceedings would stall them, giving credence to Glenn's claims of my mental instability and "cruelty." But it had to be done.

I'd learned my lesson. I checked myself out of the hospital against doctors' orders and ran. I sold everything I had, which wasn't much after Glenn's playing Russian roulette with my credit rating. I bought fake IDs and a junker car and drove in jagged lines across the country, until anyone Glenn used to find me would be so confused they wouldn't know where I was heading. I figured Alaska was as far as I could go without having to switch citizenships.

Most people try to use abandonment as a reason to dissolve a marriage. Glenn had used it as a reason to stall the divorce decree, stating that I should be present for the decision. He used the fact that I couldn't return home to keep me tied to him.

And now, all these years later, Glenn was looking for me again. And I was running. Again.

How long was I going to live this strange, untethered half life? Would I be an eighty-year-old woman working under an assumed name in a bowling alley in Saskatoon, dreading that day my geriatric ex wobbled up to my door on his walker? Would I ever have a home again? Would I ever have a family? I was lucky to have escaped my marriage without a child. At this point in my life, a child, particularly Glenn's child, would be a liability, a beautiful burden I couldn't protect or move without worry. But the idea of never having one of my own put a cold, insistent pressure on my heart. I'd delivered so many children to the valley werewolves. Then again, having a baby would mean trusting someone enough to let him see me naked, perhaps even telling him my real name. If I had to wait until I was eighty to do that, it was going to be disappointing on several levels.

Shaking off those depressing thoughts, I shuffled into the bathroom, whacking my ankle against the bed frame. I showered in the surprisingly clean bathtub, hoping the hot water would help unwind the muscles in my back and neck.

After stepping out of the shower onto an improvised washcloth bath mat, I mopped the water from my skin with the thinnest towel this side of cheesecloth. I carefully sorted through Caleb's bag, praying I wouldn't find anything else that would set off my weirdo alarm. The gray boxer shorts swamped me, but they kept me from wandering around a strange motel room bottomless.

I shrugged into an old flannel shirt of his, curled back under the covers for warmth, and buried my face in the sleeve of the shirt. I may have looked like I was wearing the latest in refugee chic, but Caleb's mossy, spicy smell made me feel . . . safe. As safe as I'd felt in a long time, which, considering how little I knew of him, was disconcerting at best.

I glanced down at the soft, well-worn plaid I was wearing. You will not steal this man's shirt and shorts, I told myself. There are limits.


I was totally stealing Caleb's shirt and shorts. I'd never slept more comfortably in my life. No dreams of screaming ex-husbands, confusion, and bruises. No dreams of running down the winding halls of the hospital, looking for coding alarms in a patient room, only to find that battered, flatlining patient was me. I didn't dream at all, and it was lovely.

I woke up hours later to find Caleb reading through a case file from a plastic mobile drawer I'd seen earlier in the back of the truck. Each file was tagged with its own color-coded label and contained newspaper clippings, police reports, and carefully typed notes. Caleb was sitting on the uncomfortable wooden chair, stretching his long legs against the little wood-laminate dinette table. It would have been more comfortable to sit on the bed, but I appreciated that he gave me the space. He'd taken the time to change into a soft blue-and-gray plaid flannel shirt and jeans. I'd seen men in three-thousand-dollar tailored suits who didn't make their clothes look that good. The lamp behind his head gave his black hair a bluish corona, as if some dark paper-pushing angel had fallen to earth.

Stupid good-looking, confusing werewolves.

He'd glanced over at me every few seconds, in a pattern that took me a minute or two to pin down. Review a page, check on me, review a page, check on me. It was as if he thought I would jump out of bed and launch myself out the window if he read two pages at a time.

I sat up, blinking blearily at him. "You have very neat files."

"And you have ink on your back." He grinned at the outraged expression on my face. "I never would have expected that from a girl like you."

My cheeks flushed as I pulled at the hem of his shirt, covering the dark shapes dancing up my spine. Somewhere in Indiana, I had started getting tattoos, one star for every place I'd lived for more than a few nights. I'd read somewhere that foster kids do that sort of thing, keeping a list of all the families they've lived with. For me, it was a galaxy of tiny stars swirling along the ridges of my spine to remind myself of the number of times I'd managed to start over.