Matters Of The Heart

Chapter 21

Hope woke up at five A.M. when the wind smashed a tree limb against the house. The storm was in full swing. Finn had heard nothing, and as Hope awoke she felt as though her heart had been ripped out through her lungs. She was instantly awake and remembered everything that had happened the night before. Everything. Every word. Every sound. Every innuendo. Every nuance of Finn’s story about the young wife the poor boy killed. She understood all its implications, what she’d done, and what he’d done to her the night before, to her head, not just her body. He had brainwashed her. And every fiber of her being was screaming. She had sold her soul to the devil, or planned to, and he was asleep beside her in the bed. He was worn out from their sexual acrobatics that had only ended two hours before. Hope was still sore and knew she would be for days. And suddenly as she thought of all of it, she knew that as bad as being alone might be one day, this was infinitely worse. What she had just signed on for, and had been living for the past few months, was worse than death. She had bought her ticket to hell the night before, and as she thought of it, she remembered everything Robert Bartlett had said too… trust your instincts… when you know… run, Hope, run… run like hell…

Hope slipped out of the bed by millimeters. She had to go to the bathroom, but didn’t dare. She found her underwear on the floor, the dress she had worn the night before, a sweater of Finn’s, she couldn’t find her shoes, but she grabbed her purse, and slipped through the crack in the barely open door on bare feet. She ran quickly down the stairs, praying they wouldn’t creak, but the wind and the sounds of the storm were so loud that it covered everything else, and she never looked back, fearing he would be standing in the doorway, watching, but no one stopped her. He was sound asleep and would be for hours. She found a coat on a peg next to the back door, and the boots she wore in the garden. She unlocked the door, and ran out into the night, taking big deep gulps of the icy air. She was freezing and it was hard to run in the boots, but she didn’t care. She was doing just what Robert had told her, she was running for her life… to freedom… She had known the minute she woke up that if she didn’t, he would kill her. He had made that clear the night before. And she didn’t doubt it for a minute. Two women were dead because of him, she was certain of it, and she didn’t want to be the third. Even if she was alone forever. She no longer cared. About anything. Except getting out.

She walked for miles in the storm, with snow blanketing her shoulders; her legs were freezing in the thin dress, but she didn’t mind. Her hair was matted to her head. She passed houses and churches, farms and stables, a dog barked when she ran past. She ran and walked, and stumbled in the dark. But no one followed her. She didn’t know what time it was, and it was still dark when she got to a pub outside Blessington. It was closed, but there was a woodshed behind it. She walked into it, and closed the door. She hadn’t seen another human on her route, but she kept expecting Finn to yank open the doors of the shed, drag her home, and kill her. She was shaking violently, and not just from the cold and the storm. She knew she had been snatched back from the jaws of death by the hand of Providence and the memory of Robert’s words. She dug in her bag, and opened the door of the shed a crack so she could see by the light of a streetlamp. She found the tiny scrap of paper she was looking for. Finn had torn the one with Robert’s numbers to shreds, but Mark had written them on a notepad in New York and given her the same numbers. She forgot she had it until that moment, and with trembling, frozen hands, she found her cell phone. His cell phone number was on the paper; she pressed the buttons and listened while it rang. He answered in a deep sleep-filled voice, and her teeth were chattering so hard he didn’t recognize her when she said hello.

“Who is it?” he shouted into the phone. There was a terrible shrieking from the wind, and he was afraid it was one of his children. It was just after six in the morning in Ireland, and after one in the morning on the East Coast of the United States where his daughters were.

“It’s Hope,” she said, shaking violently. She had had trouble saying her own name, and she could hardly speak above a whisper… “I’m out…” she said in a shaken voice, and instantly Robert was awake and knew who was calling. She sounded like she was in shock.

“Where are you? Just tell me. I’ll come as fast as I can.” He was praying that Finn didn’t find her first.

“Thhe Whhhite Horse Pubbbb in BBBllesssington, south edge of town. I’m in the wwwoooddshedd,” she said, starting to cry.

“Just hang on, Hope. You’re all right. You’re going to be fine. I’m coming.” He jumped out of bed, raced into his clothes, and five minutes later, he was in his car, speeding south out of Dublin on slippery, deserted roads. All he could think of was that she sounded the way he had the night Nuala had stabbed him. It was over then, and he never went back, although he knew others did in similar conditions, and worse. He just prayed that Hope wasn’t hurt. At least Robert knew she was alive.

The roads were icy, and it took him fifty minutes to get there. It was seven in the morning by then, and there was the faintest gray light coming through the sky. The snow was still falling, but he reached the southern edges of Blessington, and drove around looking for the White Horse Pub, and then he saw it. He got out of his car, walked around it, and saw the shed in the back. He hoped she was still there, and Finn hadn’t found her. He walked to the doors of the woodshed, pulled the doors slowly open, and saw no one, and then he looked down and saw her crouched on the ground, soaking wet, with her thin dress plastered to her legs, and eyes full of terror. She didn’t get up when she saw him, she just crouched there, staring at him. He leaned down gently and pulled her slowly upright, and as she stood up, she started to sob. She couldn’t even speak to him as he put his own coat around her and led her to his car. She was frozen to the bone.

She was still sobbing when they got to Dublin an hour later. He had driven more slowly on the way back. He was debating about taking her to the hospital to have her checked out, or take her to his home and sit her in front of the fire in a warm blanket. She still looked terrified and she hadn’t said a word. He had no idea what had happened, or what Finn had done to her, but she had no obvious injuries or bruises, except to her soul and mind. He knew it would be a long time before she felt whole again, but he knew from talking to her before that she would survive, and even recover, no matter how long it took. It had taken Robert several years.

He asked Hope if she wanted to go to the hospital, and she shook her head. So he took her home with him, and when they got there, he gently undressed her as he would have one of his daughters when she was a child. He rubbed her down with towels as she stood there and cried, handed her a pair of his pajamas, wrapped her in a blanket, and then put her in his bed. He had a doctor come by to look at her later that morning. And she was still looking wild-eyed, but she had stopped crying. All she said to Robert when the doctor left was “Don’t let him find me.”

“I won’t,” he promised. She had left everything there, and she had done what Robert had said. She ran like hell for her life, and she knew with total certainty that if she hadn’t, sooner or later, she would have died.

Robert waited until the next day to talk to her, and she told him everything that had happened. Every word that Finn had said. His pressure for the money. The outline of the story he had described to her, and the implications of it weren’t lost on Robert either. Finn had almost succeeded in getting everything he wanted, but the golden goose had run away during the night. Finn had started calling on her cell phone within hours of her escape. He woke up early in the storm and couldn’t find her, and when she didn’t answer her phone, he started sending text messages. He kept telling her he’d find her, that he wanted her to come home, at first that he loved her, and later when she didn’t respond, his messages were full of thinly veiled threats. Hope didn’t answer, and Robert finally took her phone so she didn’t have to see them. She shook violently every time one of them came in. Robert gave her his bedroom, and he slept on the couch.

And on the second day of her escape, he asked her where she wanted to go, what she wanted to do, and what her plans were for the house. She thought about it for a long moment. In some part of her she still loved the way Finn had been at the beginning, and knew she would for a long time. It wasn’t over yet. She would never forget or stop loving the man she had loved for the first nine months, but the demon he had become after that had nearly cost her her soul, and would have cost her life. She had no doubt of it now.

“I’m not sure what to do about the house,” she said sadly. Making major decisions about anything was too hard for her right now. She was still too shaken by everything that had happened.

Robert looked at her quietly. She needed a guide to get through the dark forest of what she was going through. “The man threatened to kill you. That was not a story for a book, it was a message to you.” She had told Robert all about it.

“I know,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “He killed the woman’s baby too, so he could get all her money.” She spoke about them as though they were real people, which they had become to her, instead of an allegory for her, which she understood clearly in the end.

“I’d like to give him thirty days to pack up and get out. People like him always land on their feet again. They tell enough lies and screw over enough people, and the next thing you know, they turn up somewhere else,” Robert said. He was sure that Finn would too. “Can you live with that? Thirty days for him to figure out his plans and pack up.” Robert would have preferred to kick him out in twenty-four hours, but he knew that it would be too stressful for Hope to contemplate doing that.

“Okay,” she agreed.

“I’ll go out there and pack up your things sometime this week.”

“What if he follows you back here?” Hope asked, looking terrified again, and Robert thought about it. Hope knew he didn’t have Robert’s name or numbers, because he had torn up the piece of paper and thrown it away, and he was still text-messaging her to no avail. Robert still had her phone. He handed it to her later that day, and saw her reading all the frantic text messages from Finn, and when she turned it off, she cried. It was awful what loving a man like that did to another human being. He had gone through the same thing when he finally walked away from his wife. There was no other choice. They were people who had been stolen by aliens sometime in their youth, destroyed, turned into twisted machines, returned, and then walked the planet destroying other lives. They had virtually no conscience and no heart, and very sick minds.

Hope was afraid that Finn was combing Dublin for her, and Robert knew it was possible. There was no limit to what a sociopath would do to reclaim his prey. So she sent Robert shopping for her, and she gave him all her sizes. He came back with enough clothes to keep her going for a few days. She hadn’t decided where to go yet, but she knew that Finn might look for her in New York or Cape Cod. He would think nothing of getting on a plane to find her. And his text messages were getting increasingly desperate, alternating between threatening and loving. When a sociopath lost his prey, or any perpetrator, they went insane looking for them so they could torture them again. Robert had seen it all before. His wife had been similarly desperate, and the last time he had left her, he never went back. He wanted this to be the last time for Hope and she said it was. Whatever she still felt for him, she knew there was no other choice. She had barely come out alive. If he hadn’t killed her, she would have killed herself. She was certain of that. She remembered thinking about it on the last night, and knowing she had surrendered her soul to him, she would have welcomed death, or sought it herself.

Robert was bringing in food for her, and she was too afraid to leave the house. They were sitting in his kitchen eating dinner, when he gently asked her where she thought she might like to go. She’d had an idea all day, and since she didn’t want to go back to New York or Cape Cod yet, it seemed like it might be the right choice. She didn’t want to go to a strange city and hide. And there was no telling how long Finn would look for her or how desperate he would get. And she didn’t want to give herself the temptation of seeing him again. Every time she read his loving text messages to lure her back, her heart ached and she cried. But she knew that whoever was writing them was not the same man she would find if she went back. The mask was off for good, and as everyone who knew him had said, he was a dangerous man. He was everything they had described and worse.

She had Robert’s secretary make a reservation for her to New Delhi. It was the only place she wanted to go, and she knew she would find her soul again there, just as she had before. She wanted to hide, but she also needed to put herself back together again. She still shook violently every time she heard the phone ring, and her heart stopped every time Robert let himself into his home. She was terrified it would be Finn.

Her reservation to New Delhi was for the following night, two days after she had walked to Blessington in the early-morning snow. And listening to Hope tell him about the ashram over dinner, Robert thought it was a good idea. He wanted her as far away as possible from Finn. He was planning to go to Blaxton House himself after she left, and serve Finn with eviction papers. They were giving him thirty days to get out, and after thinking about it, Hope told him to sell the house. She never wanted to see the place again. It was too intimately linked to Finn. She knew she had to close that chapter of her life for good.

The day she left for New Delhi, she called Mark Webber in New York and told him what had happened. He asked if she had called Robert Bartlett, and she said she was staying in his house and he had been wonderful to her. She didn’t tell him that he had been particularly helpful to her because he had had a sociopathic wife. But Mark was relieved to know she was in good hands. She told Mark she was going back to the Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh, where she had been before, and he thought it was an excellent idea. The photographs she had taken there had been the most beautiful of her career, and being there had restored her before. He asked her to stay in touch, and she promised that she would.

And then, trembling from head to foot, she called Finn before she left. She had to say goodbye. She needed closure, and couldn’t leave without saying something to him, even if only that she loved him, and was sorry she couldn’t see him again. It seemed only fair. But fair was not an operative word for Finn.

“This is about the money, isn’t it?” he said, when she called him.

“No, it’s about everything else,” she said, feeling broken as she talked to him. Hearing his voice ripped out her heart and reminded her of the agony she’d been through at his hands. “It wasn’t right. I couldn’t do what you wanted me to. You frightened me with that story the last night.” He had intended to, to get out of her what he wanted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was just a story for a book, for chrissake. You knew that goddamn well. What the fuck is this all about?” It was about saving her life. She knew it then, and even when she heard his familiar voice, and his denials, she still knew it now.

“It wasn’t just a story, it was a threat,” she said, sounding more like herself.

“You’re sick. You’re frightened and paranoid and neurotic and you’re going to wind up all by yourself,” he threatened her.

“Possibly,” she admitted to him and herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, and he heard something in her voice that concerned him. He knew her well. It was how he did what he did, by knowing people’s underbellies and their weaknesses and how to play them. He could hear a note of apology in her voice.

“What are you doing about the house?”

“You have thirty days,” she said in a choked voice. “And then I’m putting it on the market. I’m going to sell it.” There was no other choice unless he wanted to buy it himself. And there was no way he could. All his plans to bilk her out of money had gone awry. He had shown his hand too early and played it too hard. He had been so sure of himself that he had blown all his Machiavellian schemes to smithereens. “I’m sorry, Finn,” she said again, and all she heard after that were two words.

“You bitch!” he said, and cut the line. The words were his final gift to her, and somehow made it easier to leave.

Robert drove her to the airport that night, and she thanked him again for everything he had done, including the use of his bed and his good advice.

“It was nice to meet you, Hope,” he said, looking at her kindly. He was a very decent man, and had been a good friend to her. He would never forget finding her in the woodshed in Blessington, and she would never forget looking into those gentle eyes. “I hope to see you again sometime. Maybe when we’re both back in New York. How long do you think you’ll stay in India?”

“As long as it takes. It took six months before. I don’t know if I’ll stay longer this time or not.” Right now, she never wanted to come back. And she never wanted to see Ireland again. For the rest of her life. She was afraid she would have nightmares about it for years.

“I think you’ll be fine.” He thought she had made remarkable progress in the past two days. From the broken woman she had seemed two days before, the shell of who she had been before was already beginning to emerge. She was stronger than she thought, and she had been through worse, but not much. Falling in love with a sociopath was one of those experiences you never forgot, if you were lucky enough to survive at all. And the worst was that they seemed so human, and sometimes acted so mortally wounded themselves, but when you reached down to help them on the ground, they pulled you into the swamp and drowned you if they could. Their killer instincts couldn’t be cured. Robert was glad she was going as far away as she could, and the place she had described sounded like heaven to him. He hoped it would be for her.

They hugged each other as he left her at security with her small bag, full of the clothes he had bought for her to wear.

“Take care, Hope,” he told her, feeling the way he had when he sent his daughters off to camp.

She thanked him again, and as he walked back to his car in the garage, he knew that whatever happened to her next, she would be all right. There was a spirit in her and a light that even a man like Finn O’Neill couldn’t kill.

He was in his house, sitting in front of the fire, thinking about her and his own experience with his wife, when the plane Hope was on lifted off the runway and headed for New Delhi. She closed her eyes, laid her head back against the seat, and thanked God that she was safe. And then she wondered how long it would take for her to stop loving Finn. She didn’t have the answer to that question, but knew she would one day. When the flight attendant handed her the newspaper, Hope took it and sat staring at the date. She had met him a year ago today. It had started exactly a year before, and now it was over. There was a symmetry to it, a perfect seamlessness. Like a bubble floating into space. The life that had been hers and Finn’s was over. It had been beautiful at first, and terrifying at the last. She sat staring at the sky as they burst through the clouds over Dublin, and she could see stars in the sky. And as she looked at them, she knew that however broken she still felt, her soul had reentered her body, and one day she would be whole again.