Page 40 of Stay Away from Him

Someone in the crowd must have called the police, because soon after Lawrence and Toby pulled Thomas off Carter’s limp body, sirens filled the air.

An ambulance arrived first, paramedics running out to help Carter—and then the cops arrived.

Two cruisers, then a third, their red and blue lights spinning, lighting up the trees, the leaf-covered grass, the glassy surface of the lake in the encroaching dark.

“You know these men?” an officer asked Melissa.

“My ex-husband,” she said. “And my…my—”

She wasn’t sure what to call Thomas. Her boyfriend? Fiancé? She hadn’t gotten around to saying yes to his proposal.

“Your boyfriend beat up your ex-husband, do I have that right?”

She nodded. Bradley still clung to her, his head against her shoulder.

“Is Daddy going to die?”

“No, sweetheart,” Melissa whispered, although she couldn’t say that for sure.

She was the one who yelled You’re killing him!

when Thomas was delivering blow after blow to Carter’s face.

And Carter still hadn’t moved. She craned to see around the cop’s legs, get a view of his body.

The paramedics were putting him on a stretcher, the kind that held the head and kept a patient from moving their neck.

Would they have been bothering with that if he was dead?

She looked back up at the cop questioning her. “Is he…is he going to be—”

“He’s conscious,” the cop said. “And he answered their questions. Knows his name, the president, the year. He’s hazy. But responsive.”

Melissa breathed out. Carter was a terrible husband, a terrible father, and she was furious with him for following her. Stalking her. But he didn’t deserve to die.

More importantly, though, she didn’t want Thomas to be guilty of manslaughter for killing him.

She’d done so much work reconciling herself to Thomas’s past, the accusations that were made against him for his wife’s disappearance and death.

So much work convincing herself that he wasn’t a murderer.

After all that, after she came a split second away from agreeing to marry him—he couldn’t become a real murderer now.

Melissa scanned around, trying to find him in the growing dark of evening, then spotted him by the trees at the water’s edge, with one of the other police officers. Thomas had his back turned to the officer, and cuffs were going on his wrists.

“You’re arresting him?” she asked the cop by her.

“This is a pretty serious assault, miss,” he said. “ Felony assault. We’ll have to take him to county, for processing.”

“County?”

“Ramsey County Correctional Facility.”

Melissa was numb. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Can he get bailed out?”

“After he’s arraigned,” the cop said. “A judge has to set the bail amount. It being the weekend, might be a day or two. He’ll probably spend the weekend in jail, at least.”

A cry rang out on the air. At the trees, the cop was walking Thomas to the cruiser.

Thomas’s head hung down, shamed. Nearby, Rhiannon’s face was crumpled up in tears—it must have been her who let out the loud sob, breaking down inside to see her father taken away.

Close to her, Kendall looked completely numb, her eyes wide and blank, gnawing on a bent knuckle like an anxious little girl.

Something swelled in Melissa, and she nearly burst into tears herself, thinking of these poor girls and everything they’d been through.

First, they lost their mother. Now this.

And it was all Melissa’s fault. If she hadn’t come into their lives, into their father’s life, none of this would have happened.

Amelia came toward Melissa through the dark. “We have to leave,” she said. “We need to get the kids out of here.”

Melissa nodded, pulled herself together.

“I still need to finish taking your statement,” the cop said. He looked to Amelia. “Yours too.”

Amelia pulled Melissa by the elbow. “You have her address,” Amelia said to the cop. “You can finish your report later.”

She gathered the girls, and Lawrence and Toby, and together they walked back to the house in darkness, not talking. Back at the house, the leftover food was still on the table.

“God,” Melissa said, seeing it. “This is depressing.”

“Come on,” Amelia said to her. “We can do this.”

Melissa found a TV and set up Bradley in front of it.

Kendall and Rhiannon disappeared to their rooms upstairs, and Lawrence and Toby started clearing the table.

Amelia and Melissa stationed themselves in the kitchen, scraping food into the garbage, putting some dishes in the dishwasher, washing others in the sink, working wordlessly side by side.

“Can I ask you something?” Melissa asked when they were almost done.

“Sure,” Amelia said.

“What’s the story between you and Thomas?”

“The story?”

“Please don’t be coy with me,” Melissa said. “I can’t take it tonight. There was something between the two of you.”

Amelia sighed, gazing out the window into the dark as she dried a platter.

“We dated ages ago. I think you know that.”

“Yes.”

“But then we stopped, and then suddenly—there was Rose. And that was that.”

Melissa tried to read the emotion in her voice. Regret? Resignation? Relief?

“But you stayed close.”

“We did,” Amelia said. “That was mostly Thomas’s doing, in hindsight. He was the one who kept our friendship going. Seeking me out, calling me. Flirting with me.”

“Flirting? Even when he was married to Rose?”

Amelia glanced at Melissa. “I don’t even know if he knew he was doing it. Thomas pursues people. He woos them. He makes them love him. It’s what he does. He doesn’t know any other way to be.”

Melissa thought about the way he had pursued her. She thought it was because she was special, but maybe not. Maybe Thomas was that way with everyone. Doing whatever it took to make them love him, for some reason of his own.

“And you never thought about getting back together? After Rose disappeared?”

Amelia opened a cupboard, set the platter inside.

“There was one night,” Amelia said. “One night after, where…well. We found each other.”

Melissa held her breath. Was Amelia really saying what she thought she was saying? Confessing that she and Thomas had slept together, when Rose’s disappearance—her presumed death—was still fresh?

“But it was a mistake,” Amelia went on. “I knew it right away. And then Thomas and I had a falling out.”

“A falling out? Over what?”

Amelia shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

“Can’t? Or don’t want to?”

Amelia bared her teeth in a pained grimace. “It was a hard time, with Rose being gone, and the accusations against Thomas. He wasn’t himself. And I realized that I’d gotten too close to him. Let him keep me too close. Closer than I wanted to be.”

“But you’re still close today. In spite of your falling out.”

Amelia squinted. “Are we?”

Melissa scoffed in disbelief at Amelia’s confusion. Was she pretending not to know what Melissa was talking about? Or was she being genuine?

“You’re neighbors,” she said. “You have coffee every week. His girls call you ‘Aunt Amelia.’”

“I thought about moving away,” Amelia said. “Getting some distance from all this. But something kept me here. Even after our falling out, even when we weren’t really talking. I cared about him. I still do. And his girls too. But also…”

“What?” Melissa prodded.

“There’s something about Thomas that I’ve never quite understood,” Amelia said.

“A hidden part of him I’ve never solved.

I know him so well—but also, he’s a mystery to me.

Maybe that’s what keeps relationships going for so many years.

Even complicated ones. Messy ones. Another person presents us with a mystery.

And the people we keep closest are the ones who stay mysterious. ”

They entered into a long silence. Melissa thought about Thomas’s proposal at the pier.

Did he ask her to marry him because she was a mystery he wanted to solve?

And did she fall for him because he was a mystery?

His outburst of violence against Carter wasn’t exactly something she expected, wasn’t something she knew he had inside him.

Did she want to see the rest? Did she want to discover everything he’d hidden away in the secret parts of himself?

“I’m no threat to you, Melissa,” Amelia continued.

“Is that what you really want to know? I’m not going to steal Thomas from you.

There was a time when I wanted him. Maybe I even wanted to take him from Rose.

But that time has passed. Thomas is all yours.

You can have him. And I hope you’re happy together. I do. You deserve that. Both of you.”

Melissa sighed, suddenly feeling a huge weight on her shoulders—the burden of the decisions she’d have to navigate in the days ahead.

Thomas’s arrest and arraignment, but also Carter and his threat to sue her for full custody of Bradley.

She was sure everything that had happened would help Carter’s case against her, his claim that she was marrying someone who would pose a danger to their son.

Melissa wanted happiness more than anything—but she wasn’t sure if it was going to be possible for any of them.

If this story would have a happy ending.

Lawrence came in from the dining room. “Everything’s cleaned up. We’re heading home. Will you be coming too?”

Melissa glanced at Amelia. “Who’s going to stay with Rhiannon and Kendall?”

“I’ve got it,” Amelia said. “Aunt Amelia to the rescue. You go. Try to get some rest tonight.”