are you going to tell her?”
It was Thursday morning. He was thinking about...maybe...Sunday night. Give her as much peace of mind as he could.
Give himself some way to figure out how to get the asshole back behind bars before he’d had a chance to take a step out.
“With his conviction overturned there won’t even be a probation period.”
He knew that.
“What about a restraining order?” Chantel asked the question even as she shook her head.
“Not until he approaches her again,” he said what they both already knew. When a case went away, so did all of the painfully collected evidence. At least in theory.
“She needs time to make arrangements.”
She had a point. Maybe Sunday night was leaving it a little late. Still, he needed time to make a plan.
“Is she still local?”
“Yeah. She’s in private practice now. Has an office in that professional plaza across the street from the hospital.” Still living in the beach house she’d bought with the bastard. That was one of the first things they were going to have to fix.
They. As though she was going to want to have anything to do with him when she found out that he hadn’t been able to keep his promise to her that once she testified the man who’d hurt her so cruelly would spend the rest of his life behind bars. That if she testified he, Detective Sam Larson, would guarantee her safety.
Not that Banyon’s sins were on him. But the fact that the asshole professor’s wife had testified against him when everything in her had told her not to do so—that was on Sam. He’d ridden her hard.
He’d needed her testimony to make his case.
To keep her safe.
Well, he’d sure as hell screwed that one up.
“I HAD A degree in psychology from Stanford University when I was seventeen. My master’s by the time I was nineteen. And my doctorate at twenty-one.”
Bloom spoke with authority. Because when it came to her own life, she was the expert. And that was okay.
“I’m smart. Aware. And a talented right brain, as well.” She could talk about her paintings. The artwork on her office walls. She didn’t. They weren’t pertinent and she had a job to do. A task to get through.
“Unlike many geniuses, I was also gifted with a good bit of common sense. When I was little my mother could get me through most unwanted tasks by telling me that Baby—a rubber doll from which I was inseparable—had to go through them, too. Baby had to get a shot, so I was fine getting one. If it was nap time, Baby had to take a nap, and so I would, too...”
Audience members were looking at her, nodding. A few of them even bore little grins.
“She tells the story that when I was eighteen months old, I announced from the bathtub one morning that I wanted chocolate for breakfast. At which point she informed me that we didn’t eat chocolate for breakfast. I frowned for a moment, picked up Baby—who, of course, was in the bath with me—and announced that Baby wanted chocolate for breakfast.”
Yep. Three hundred faces were upturned in her direction. Bloom just kept on doing what she was doing. Because she’d told herself to do so.
“My mother told me to tell Baby that we didn’t eat chocolate for breakfast. She was one step ahead of me the whole way. Until I held my rubber doll up to her nose and pointed out that ‘Baby doesn’t have any ears.’”
The entire room erupted in laughter. Bloom started to sweat. It was those bright lights.
She was successful. Capable. And in control.
But she looked to the right, anyway. To the seat at the very end of the front row. She’d arrived early specifically to put a reserved sign on that chair. Lila McDaniel didn’t have a lot of time. But when Bloom had called the director of The Lemonade Stand—the unique women’s shelter where she’d lived for the weeks it had taken her to come back to herself after it had been discovered that her husband had been drugging her for months—to ask for support for the Friday morning keynote session, for backup statistics and a small informational speech to her colleagues about shelter work, Lila had immediately appointed herself to attend.
As the laughter died down around them, Lila nodded. She wasn’t smiling. Yet there was no doubting the warmth in her expression. And it empowered Bloom.
“Mom recovered before I was out of the tub,” she continued. The room, when she paused to take a breath, was completely silent. She was speaking to interested bodies. Not walls...
“She explained to me that if I gave Baby chocolate for breakfast I would make her sick. And I told her that she couldn’t give me chocolate for breakfast because she’d feel bad if she made me sick.”
A collective sigh moved around the room. There were men there. Many of them. All with psychiatric doctoral credentials.
She glanced at Lila again. The woman just looked at her without even so much as another nod of encouragement. To anyone in the room, Lila was just another attendee. To Bloom, she was fresh air in her lungs.
“I can stand up here and fill the next two hours with my mother’s tales of my greatness. I can talk about the long-distance call I made when I was five to reassure my grandmother, whose purse had just been stolen, that she would be just fine because I loved her and so did other people, so she hadn’t lost what mattered. I can entertain you all day long. To a room full of psychiatrists, my childhood is fascinating stuff. But entertaining you is not my purpose here today.” Heads tilted, a few people frowned, all eyes were still on her.
It could be, a small voice inside her said. She could wing this. Be a huge success. But this invitation—to keynote for her peers on whatever topic she chose—gave her a chance to fulfill a higher purpose.
And to grow as a person, too. To take back another piece of herself that the bastard had tried to steal from her.
“I’m a smart woman. A wise woman. And a victim of domestic violence.”
Many of them knew. Bloom’s husband had been an esteemed colleague to some of them. Even if just through professional organization memberships.
Knowing and wanting to hear were two different things.
She forced herself to look out at them. To continue to connect. All but a few heads were turned away or bowed. People were suddenly interested in loose threads in their clothing. Their shoes. The carpet. A clock on the wall.
“I am also a survivor,” she said, her voice imbued with emotion. “I am strong and capable, successful and healthy. Because I was able to get out. To get help. Because I had a counselor who was educated to my specific needs, who not only knew the kinds of things I was experiencing, but who knew what would most likely come as well, who was able to prepare me to handle those things, sometimes even on my
