Worn Me Down

Chapter 4 Gwen

“Come on, asshole, give me the money shot.”

I stare through the zoom lens of my camera at Mr. Bradford, standing in the parking lot of a Harley Davidson dealership. Mr. Bradford, a fifty-two-year old foreman at a local car manufacturing plant, “slipped and fell” at work and has been collecting workman’s comp for the last four weeks. Supposedly, the spill he took at work slipped two disks in his back that have been causing him extreme pain. Strange how someone who is supposedly in so much agony that he can no longer work, is thinking about purchasing a motorcycle.

Under normal circumstances, just buying a motorcycle wouldn’t be cause for alarm, but if this idiot gets on the bike and drives away, he’s toast. While I wait for Mr. Bradford to negotiate with a salesman, I can’t help but think about the previous day at the office. I can’t believe Brady had the nerve to send Austin to keep an eye on me without letting me know. I’m going to kill him. I get where he’s coming from – he’s been on edge ever since I told him I was filing for divorce, but this really wasn’t the way to go about calming his nerves. If William hasn’t tried to contact me by now, I doubt he ever will. Having Austin under foot every day until Brady gets back is just going to make things worse. I don’t know what it is about him that puts me so on edge and I don’t like it. I don’t like how I want to punch the smug look off of his face one minute and kiss him the next. He’s hot – there’s no denying that fact. His body looks like it was carved out of stone and my fingers itch to touch the muscles on his chest. These conflicting feelings just piss me off and I can’t help but be a total bitch around him so he’ll just go away and I won’t have to worry about the things I’m feeling. I have no business wanting any man, especially a friend of my brother.

I couldn’t help but be a little hurt that Austin had no idea I have a child. I just can’t believe that Brady never mentioned it to him. I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, since Brady didn’t even know I had a child until I showed up at his apartment a few months ago. Turning my back on him all those years ago when he left for the Navy had hurt him deeply, but I was the one left behind to deal with our parents day in and day out. I was the one they transferred every single expectation onto in Brady’s absence. I wasn’t able to run away like he did, not until I had a child of my own and knew I would do whatever it took to keep her safe.

I really wasn’t surprised by the look on Austin’s face when Emma ran into the office. Men like him are a dime a dozen. They’re all over you until they find out you’re a single mother and then they head for the hills. And yet, Austin took the time to talk to Emma. I’m sure it was just a ploy to butter me up so I’d agree to let him hang around the office.

Emma had a million questions for me after we left Austin, and those questions led to questions about her father. Why doesn’t he call or come to visit, does he miss her, can she write him a letter… Ever since I left William, I’ve done nothing but second-guess my decision. Even though he did everything he could to break me, he was always a decent father to Emma. He never laid a hand on her and up until the night I left, he always made sure she was never around when his anger got out of control.

Maybe enough time has passed… maybe the fact that he isn’t contesting the divorce is proof enough that he’s okay with me leaving him and he can be a part of Emma’s life again. I never wanted to take her away from him, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t survive one more day with him. I knew if I spent even one more hour in the same house as him, there would be nothing left of me.

My cell phone rings and without pulling the camera away from my face, I reach blindly into the center console and answer it.

“Hello, Gwendolyn.”

The sound of my mother’s smooth, cultured voice makes me sit up straighter so I’m not slouching. Even after months of being out of her presence, my automatic response to her voice is still the same.

“Mother, this is a surprise. I didn’t expect to hear from you until next week,” I tell her.

Even though I skipped town without a word to anyone, and never told my parents where I was going, over the last month or so I reached out to my mother. To say Brady was pissed is an understatement. He didn’t trust them at all. When they found out he wanted to go into the military instead of following in our father’s footsteps of becoming a lawyer, they pretty much disowned him and he hasn’t spoken to them since. As angry as I am with them for pushing me towards William and for never believing my accusations of abuse, they’re still my parents. I needed to at least let them know that Emma and I were alive, even if I couldn’t tell them where we were.

“I know, but I had some news I wanted to tell you,” my mother answers. “I really think it’s time for you to put an end to this foolishness and come home. There are things happening here that you need to fix.”

There’s a reason why my mother and I only speak on the phone every two weeks. I can only handle so much of her guilt and refusal to understand the life I left behind.

I ignore her demand to come home. “What’s going on?”

She sighs into the phone and if I was in the same room with her, I’m sure she would be sitting at the island in the kitchen with her fingers against her temples, like what she has to tell me is causing her a great deal of stress.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but William is seeing someone.”

She pauses dramatically and I’m sure she’s expecting me to burst into tears or rage at the unfairness of it all. Hearing this news, I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m definitely not sad. If anything, I’m relived. The fact that he’s left me alone all this time makes more sense now.

“Did you hear me, Gwendolyn? I said, William is dating someone else,” she reiterates.

“I heard you mother. I’m not really sure what you expect me to say. I’ve filed for divorce. He’s free to date anyone he likes,” I remind her, pulling the camera away from my face and resting my head on the seat back.

“You’ve made your point. The two of you had a few problems and you left. Obviously he’s hurting so badly that he needed comfort. It’s time for you to come home and work things out. You need to stop thinking about yourself for once and put your family back together,” she tells me.

I take a few deep breaths to calm myself before replying. Screaming at my mother will accomplish nothing. No matter how many times I try to explain things to her, she never listens; she never hears me. She’s so in love with the idea of me being married to one of the top surgeons in New York and the prestige that comes with it, she doesn’t even care that her only daughter spent year after year in her own private hell.

“If this is how our conversations are going to go each time we speak, then I really don’t see the need to continue putting up with this every other week. You know why I left; you just don’t want to accept it. I’m not coming home, mother. And if you want to continue being in your granddaughter’s life, you’ll respect my wishes and stop trying to make me feel guilty.”

I hate using Emma against her, but at this point, it’s the only way to make her see reason.

“There’s no need to be that way, Gwendolyn. Of course I want to be in Emma’s life and yours as well. I just don’t understand all of this nonsense,” she replies with a sigh.

“And herein lies our problem. Having your husband put you down with his words and his fists for ten years isn’t nonsense. Look, I have to go. I’ll have Emma call you next week.”

I end the call before she can say anything else, tossing my cell phone angrily onto the passenger seat and bringing the camera back up to my face. I push my mother’s words out of my mind as I see Mr. Bradford swing his leg over the seat of a brand new Harley. The click of the shutter release echoes through my car as I take over fifty pictures of him starting up the motorcycle, pulling out of the dealership and gunning it top speed down the street.

Once he’s out of sight, I pull the camera way from my face and quickly scan through the photos. These should be good enough for the plant to take to their lawyer and put an end to their weekly payments to Mr. Bradford. A man with that many problems and in so much pain shouldn’t be able to drive a Harley.

There’s nothing like the feeling of closing a case. When Brady first asked me to help out at the office, I had no idea what I was doing. Now, I’m out on jobs and doing investigations on my own. William never let me have a job. He was adamant that I stay home and be at his beck and call. Being able to come and go as I please and have a job I love is the best feeling in the world.

Setting the camera down on the passenger seat, I start up my car and drive a few blocks to the grocery store to pick up a few things before Emma gets home from school. As I walk up and down the aisles, throwing random things into the cart, I stop in my tracks in the soup aisle when something makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The overwhelming feeling of being watched fills me and I whip my head around nervously. I’m the only one in the aisle. I shake my head at my foolishness and turn back around, pushing my cart to the next aisle. The feeling of being followed lingers and I rub the goose bumps off of my arms, looking over my shoulder every few minutes as I finish my shopping.

It’s probably just because of the conversation I had with my mother. Thinking about William always leaves me feeling uneasy. Just because I had to put my whereabouts on the divorce papers, doesn’t mean he would come here and find me. My lawyer assured me that William agreed to the divorce without complaint and said that he would do whatever I asked to make things happen smoothly and without publicity. He knows that at any moment, I could out him to his colleagues as an abuser. His reputation would never recover.

Shoving aside the nerves, I load up my car with the bags of groceries and head home to Emma. Another call to my lawyer just to make sure William is still in New York probably wouldn’t hurt.