keep his building frustration from his voice.
Her bare shoulders slumped. “Dr. Carstairs only confirmed what all the other doctors have already told me. That there’s no way I can ever conceive a child.”
She’d already shared the unhappy news with Molly, who’d assured her that her infertility, possibly due to a sexually transmitted pelvic infection acquired before her marriage, had not been punishment from God for her promiscuous behavior. But still, having been brought up under the stern guidance of the St. Joseph nuns, Lena couldn’t help wondering.
“I always wanted children,” she murmured, looking out over the city, wondering how many people were sitting home alone, wishing they had someone—anyone—to love them. New Year’s, she knew from personal experience, could be one of the loneliest nights of the year. That thought reminded her of all the strangers she’d gone to bed with, just to avoid being alone. “I always dreamed of becoming the mother I never had.”
“I know how important having a child is to you, sweetheart,” Reece said carefully, feeling as if he were making his way across a deadly conversational minefield. “But I’ve never felt any great need to perpetuate the Longworth name. And we could adopt.”
“I suppose that’s one possibility.”
She sighed and sat down in the suede chair across the room. Although he longed to take her in his arms, Reece took the fact that she’d chosen not to sit next to him on the sofa as a sign she needed her own space to tell him what was bothering her.
“You never asked how my mother and father died.”
“I figured you’d tell me. When you were ready.”
She smiled at that. A soft sad smile that tore at something elemental inside Reece. “You are so incredible. I’ve never known anyone with such patience.”
For some reason, her words rankled. “Dammit, Lena, don’t make me into any kind of saint. Because I’m not. I’m just a man. Who loves you with a depth I never would have imagined possible. I’ve tried to come up with a word for how I feel. Obsession comes close. But it’s still not enough.”
She felt the traitorous tears overbrimming her eyes. “I’m never going to make it through this if you keep making me cry.”
Reece managed, just barely, to remain where he was, watching with admiration as she drew in a deep, calming breath. She’d changed since Molly’s attack, the emotionally frail young bride he’d married had begun to show signs of becoming an independent woman.
Lena turned her gaze away from him and looked back out the window at the lights of the city below them. “I can’t remember a time when my parents weren’t fighting.” Her voice was soft, little more than a whisper, but Reece had no difficulty hearing it in the hushed room. “About everything. And anything. My father was a big man. With a big hairy belly that always stuck out from beneath his sweat-stained undershirt. And big hands that loved to hit little girls. But of course, I was very little, so perhaps he wasn’t so big at all. Perhaps he just seemed that way....
“Did I ever tell you I had a kitten?”
“No,” Reece said carefully, feeling like he’d just entered one of those dark carnival fun houses that weren’t really any fun at all but filled with monsters who’d gleefully leap out and scare the piss out of little kids.
“Her name was Miss Puss in Boots.” She turned toward him, her eyes as flat as her voice. “Because she had white paws. Like little boots. I found her in the alley and brought her home. Molly helped me hide her in our bedroom closet and every night I’d let her out of her box and she’d sneak beneath the blanket and curl up next to me and purr. I used to listen to that sound, like a small warm little engine, and it helped me block out the sound of the fighting.”
She fell silent. Reece waited.
“One night he came in to drag us out of bed for some perceived misbehavior. I can’t remember what, and it probably wasn’t anything at all. Drinking always made him paranoid and he’d imagine all sorts of things we might have done. Or even thought.
“Anyway, he found Miss Puss. He pulled her out of the bed, and Molly tried to stop him. He knocked her away and she hit her head on the corner of the metal bed frame. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget that sound.
“She still has the scar on her temple. It’s faint, but if you know it’s there, you can see it. There was so much blood, I thought she was going to die. But of course she didn’t....
“Then he strangled Miss Puss with his big hairy hands. And threatened to do the same to us if we ever brought another animal into his house.”
As an ER doctor, Reece thought he’d seen all the evils humans could do to one another. But never had such horror hit so close to home.
“My God, Lena—”
“No.” She held up a hand. “Please, just let me get this all out. Because it’s taken me years to get up the nerve to say it out loud, and if I stop, I may never be able to do it again.”
Reece tamped down his building fury and nodded.
“I think he raped our mother that night. I didn’t understand the sounds coming through the wall from their bedroom at the time. But now I believe that’s what happened. Then he left the house to go out drinking.
“Molly and I tried to see if Mama was all right—we could hear her crying—but she wouldn’t open her bedroom door. She told us to go to bed and everything would be all right in the morning.... She always said that. But of course it never was.”
Lena shook her head and dragged her hand through her hair. In the moonlight streaming in through the window, the diamonds in her wedding band glistened like ice.
“Molly put a Band-Aid on her head to stop the bleeding, which it really didn’t do, but it finally slowed down. At least it wasn’t streaming down her face anymore.
“Once Mama seemed to be all right, Molly wrapped Miss Puss in a clean nightgown. Then, when we knew he wasn’t coming back that night, when it was safe, she got a flashlight and we went out in the backyard and Molly dug a hole and we buried Miss Puss.
“Our house was by Dodger Stadium and Molly had just finished saying a prayer, when the game ended and suddenly the sky lit up with the most wonderful fireworks.”
She closed her eyes. “I can still see them today. They were so beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And Molly told me they were in celebration of Miss Puss’s arrival in heaven, where all the angels would love her and she’d have all the cream and kibble she’d ever want.”
Reece had always known what a special person Molly was, but for the first time he was getting a sense of the burden she’d had put on her young shoulders, and he finally began to understand her seemingly limitless capacity for caring.
As if in a trance, Lena continued to relate the story of the lives and times of Lena and Molly McBride. Reece had been sickened by the saga of Miss Puss, but he was horrified by his wife’s tale of the murder/suicide of her parents.
When she was finally finished, when she’d unburdened her heart and her soul, including the self-
destructive sexual behavior that may have left
