Robert’s chest tightened. It had been a long time since he’d seen a drawing so well done that it evoked this kind of emotion in him. Not since Jessie moved away.
Knowing he violated her privacy but unable to stop himself, he flipped the page to another dark image of a hand extending from the flames of a fire. The fist gripped a human heart. Words surrounded the disturbing image.
“Indescribable pain.”
“Anguish.”
“Broken heart.”
He recognized Jessie’s neat script in heavy ink.
Robert’s breath grew shallow, and a heaviness settle over him. This was Jessie’s escape. Where she tucked all the emotions she had to keep hidden from Patrick.
Shoulders bunched, he reached out to flip the book closed. A photograph slid out, the unmistakable bruises in the shape of a man’s fingers around the creamy white flesh of a wrist.
He bit back a curse as a chill swept through him. Pendleton had been cocky today, and Robert had read the determination in his eyes, but the man hadn’t looked dangerous.
This proved otherwise.
He tucked the picture back into the book and closed it. Judging by its thickness, the book was nearly full. He feared almost every page was full of similar images and writing. And how many photos did the book hold?
Jessie’s husband was a dangerous man.
“Okay, I’m ready.” Jessie’s voice came from down the hall.
Robert hurried toward the door so Jessie wouldn’t know he’d intruded on her privacy.
Within minutes, they were on the trail leading around the lake.
Jessie tipped her head up to the sky. “I’ve been dying to get out of the house. I’m bored out of my mind. You’d think I’d be used to it since I haven’t worked for the past year, but Patrick always had a list of things for me to do that helped fill at least part of my day.”
“What kind of things?” Robert didn’t want to talk about her husband, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to know what Jessie had seen in the man.
“Go to the gym, volunteer at the hospital or senior citizen’s center, drop off and pick up his dry cleaning, hair and nail appointments, clean the house, fix dinner.” Jessie ticked the items off on her fingers.
“I can’t imagine your house got very dirty with just the two of you.”
“It didn’t, but he often had clients over for small dinner parties and everything had to be perfect.” Jessie hugged her arms around herself as she said the words.
Robert could guess what happened to Jessie if things weren’t perfect.
“Fix dinner, huh? I take it you learned to cook.” Robert shot her a teasing grin.
Jessie had frequently offered to fix him dinner when they’d dated, but he’d usually shown up to find dinner burning and Jessie creating a masterpiece. He meant the comment as a joke, but when her eyes clouded, he knew he’d made a mistake.
“It became a necessity early on.”
“When did the abuse start?” He asked quietly, unsure whether he really wanted to know.
Jessie stopped walking and turned to look at the lake from the top of the hill they had hiked up. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with her casted hand then hugged herself again.
Robert stopped beside her.He was about to apologize and tell her she didn’t need to answer when she started talking.
“As soon the honeymoon was over, he started calling a dozen times a day. Wanting to know where I was, who I was with.” She shook her head. “If I was with friends, he often asked me to do a favor for him that required me to leave them. If I didn’t jump to do what he wanted, he reminded me that if I loved him, I’d want to make him happy.”
Jessie raised a fingernail to her lips as if she meant to chew on it, then she dropped it again. “I didn’t see what was happening at first, especially since he was so generous, always giving me gifts and showering me with compliments in front of my friends and coworkers. He kept telling me he couldn’t live without me.”
A tightness filled her voice. “My coworkers and friends thought I was so lucky. But when we were alone, he made his disapproval clear if I did something wrong. He had a way of making me feel guilty for things that weren’t really my fault.”
