“Are you okay sleeping solo tonight?”
Sonya nodded. “Are you?”
“I expect to be out like these lights in one minute flat. After what she did last night and today while I was gone, I think she needs some recharging time.”
“We can hope, because I really don’t want to lose this romantic movies buzz. But you know where I am.”
“And you know where I am. ’Night,” Cleo added as she turned into her room.
“’Night.”
It took Sonya barely longer than Cleo’s one minute flat to fall asleep.
* * *
Shortly after midnight, Trey pulled up in front of Owen’s house.
Exhausted in every possible way, he sat a moment, scrubbed his hands over his face.
Poole’s Bay spread quiet, serene, safe around him. But the hard and mean, he thought, could manage to carve a place even there.
He knew Marlo couldn’t be in better hands, knew her mother and sister would take turns sitting with her through the night. But he’d never get the image of her bruised and battered face out of his head.
Could he have done something differently? Something more, something less, to somehow avoid what happened? Just one damn thing to stop the pain and viciousness before it started?
Now a woman lay in a hospital bed, a man sat behind bars. And their children … they’d carry the scars.
He’d gone over it countless times in the past hours, searching for that one damn thing. And found nothing. Yet.
He eased himself out of the truck, crossed to the porch, then let himself into Owen’s house.
The TV played some old black-and-white where the men wore fedoras and the women had snappy comebacks. No doubt, at all, Owen had seen it at least a couple dozen times before.
Since he wasn’t sprawled on the sofa, Trey knew Owen had it on for the background noise, and to amuse himself with the dialogue he could, most likely, recite verbatim.
Instead of the sofa, Owen sat at the kitchen table he often used as a drawing board. He’d helped Owen demo the wall so the kitchen opened to the rest.
Owen liked his elbow room.
When Trey walked in, the dogs curled by the fire barely glanced up.
“You didn’t have to wait up.”
“Working on something.” But Owen rolled the drawing up, tucked it in one of the slots he had for that purpose beside the fridge.
And hit the remote on the TV to shut it off.
“How’s Marlo?”
“Jesus, Owen.” In one frustrated move, Trey shrugged off his jacket, tossed it on the back of the sofa.
One look at his friend’s face had Owen getting up.
“Hold that. I was going to say get a beer, but you look like you need a whiskey and a bunk for the night. Sit.”
“Thanks. All around.”
“Now I’ve gotta play Mom. Did you eat anything?”
“Something fairly disgusting from the vending machine.”
“I got Hot Pockets.”
“No. Seeing a woman beat to shit kills the appetite. The whiskey’ll do.”
Owen got them both a short glass and left the bottle on the table. “So?”
“She gave a statement to the cops. Hal ran it all through for me so I didn’t have to ask her to go over it again. He pushed his way into the house, knocked down the oldest boy—the eight-year-old—when the kid opened it. Marlo came running, and he punched her in the face. She went down but yelled for the boys to run. And he kept right on pounding.”
“Kids right there makes it even worse. Is Zane hurt?”
“He’s got some bruises.” Digging for his calm, Trey took a slug of whiskey. “Eight years old, and he has to grab his little brother and run while his father’s calling his mother a whore and beating on her.”
“Motherfucker. How bad is she hurt?”
“Three cracked ribs, dislocated shoulder, concussion. She’s got two black eyes. They were worried about a detached retina in the left, but that’s okay. Busted her nose, fractured her cheekbone. Gut punched her plenty, but they’ve ruled out internal injuries.”
Steadier, he took another, slower sip.
“He tore at her clothes, grabbed her tits, her crotch. If the kids hadn’t gotten out and got Bob Bailey, he’d sure as hell have raped her. And I think he might’ve killed her, Owen. I swear to God.
“I knew it was bad. That’s why I convinced her to get the TRO, but I didn’t see this in him. I didn’t see it.”
“What the hell were you supposed to do about it that you didn’t?”