Brutal Husband (Brutal Hearts #3)

Chapter 20

20

Rieta

B lood roars in my ears. Black spots zip back and forth across my vision. Both my arms are wrapped around myself, and I can’t stop shaking.

As I felt the kiss of the gun barrel against my body, fear shot through me. Fear for the baby that I suddenly realized I might be carrying. I haven’t had my period since Nero returned, which means I’m over three weeks late. I’ve only ever been a handful of days late in the past. Why did the realization have to hit me now, right in front of him? Why couldn’t I have had the chance to come to terms with this by myself?

The resignation I’ve felt all day, that I don’t care what Nero does to me and whether he kills me, evaporates. If I am pregnant, I want to live and protect my baby.

Maybe I should run.

But the tracker. He’ll find me.

Nero’s hard voice speaks over my head. “Rieta. Are you carrying my child?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper through my tears. There’s been no confirmation from a couple of red lines or by a doctor, but I feel in my heart that I am. Fate is so cruel to grant my wish now and make the father a man who must hate me forever.

“Then we’ll buy a pregnancy test.” Nero seizes my arm and drags me up to standing. His expression is cold and closed off as he leads me out of the office and down to his car.

“I have plenty at home.” I was going through so many with Luca that I bought them in bulk. The half a dozen boxes of tests have been mocking me from under the bathroom sink for months.

“Fine. Then we’ll go home.”

I try to discern Nero’s feelings as we drive, but it’s as though a metal wall has slammed down behind his eyes.

At home, I flee for the sanctuary of my bedroom with Nero hot on my heels. I try to close the bathroom door, but he puts a foot in the gap and then barges in after me.

I stand on the tiles, impatient for him to leave so I can get on with taking the test.

“Well?” he asks.

“Well what? I’m waiting for you to leave the bathroom.”

“I’m your husband. Why would I leave?”

My mouth drops open. “Do you know how these tests work? You have to leave because I’m peeing .”

“I know how a pregnancy test works. I was with you when this baby was conceived, I’ll be with you when it is born, and I’ll be with you for the moment we both find out it’s real. If you try to lock me out, I’ll break down the door. I’ll break down any door. You know I hate being locked away from you.” The light in Nero’s eyes is ferocious.

I glare at him for a moment longer, and then yank open the bathroom cabinet. Looking him dead in the eyes, I yank down my jeans and underwear, sit on the toilet, and stick the test between my legs. He wants to watch me pee? Fine, he can watch me pee. It’s not as though I care about being attractive to him.

Only now I don’t need to pee anymore.

Crap.

I think about rivers, running baths, the ocean sloshing about.

“Well?” he asks.

“I’m trying . You’re distracting me.”

What if I am pregnant? How will I ever tell a child about the tangled, bloody mess that his or her parents created on the way to making them?

“Take a deep breath, cara mia . Just relax and take your time.”

He speaks so soothingly that I feel my body unclench.

Finally, I feel myself go.

When Nero hears the trickle, the corner of his mouth twitches. “I thought you’d forgotten how. Or are you feeling shy around your husband?”

My cheeks heat, I lay the test on the counter, flush the toilet, and wash my hands. Nero immediately goes over and looks at the test, inspecting it as though it will reveal the secrets of the universe.

“How long does it take? What am I looking for?”

“Two minutes, and if it’s positive, there will be two red lines. One red line means negative.” That single red line mocked me for months.

I could watch the test with Nero, but I’m too anxious to keep still. “I can’t look. You tell me.”

I pace up and down the small room, anxiety and doubt swirling through me. I felt so sure I was pregnant when I held Nero’s gun to my heart. If I am pregnant, I don’t know what I’m going to do. If I’m not, I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle the devastation of yet another disappointment.

“You weren’t telling me the truth about getting a vasectomy reversed because you never had one, right?” I ask Nero, still pacing.

“I never got one,” he confirms, staring at the test. “From the first time we had sex, I’ve been trying to get you pregnant. A vasectomy goes against everything I want from this marriage.”

“This marriage? We have a marriage?”

He looks away from the test for a moment and glances at my wedding ring. “I notice you never took it off.”

“Where’s yours? The one I put on your finger on our wedding day.”

I feel a warm glow in my heart as I say our wedding day . I married this man standing beside me, not the man who emotionally tortured me for months. This man has always wanted to get me pregnant, and now maybe I am.

“Guess,” he mutters.

Around a corpse’s finger in the back garden? The warm glow fades.

I try to fit the puzzle pieces of our relationship together. According to what he told me, Nero was the man who proposed to me, but Luca was the man who made all our wedding arrangements. I celebrated my engagement with Luca twice, but I married Nero. Splitting the man I knew into two people is giving me a headache.

Nero gives a sharp intake of breath.

I whirl around with a gasp. “What does it say?”

Nero is staring at the test with huge eyes. I can’t bring myself to look. He turns to me and folds me in his arms, holding me tight. His lips seek my ear.

“We’re having a baby, cara mia .”

I cling to Nero’s bicep and bury my face in his shoulder.

I thought I was mentally prepared for a pregnancy after so many months of hoping, but I burst into noisy, ugly tears.

“I am?” I sob. “You wouldn’t lie to me?”

“Look for yourself.” Nero shows me the test, and there are two red lines. I can’t believe my eyes. I’m not defective, immoral, underserving, or the million other accusations I flung at myself while my so-called husband and I were “trying” for a baby. Was Luca laughing at me behind my back every time I got my hopes up? Did he relish my pain?

“I thought you would shed a few happy tears, not sob like your heart was breaking.”

I wipe the tears from my face and shake my head. “You don’t understand how many times I’ve stood in this room anxiously waiting for a pregnancy test to develop, only to be disappointed. I would torture myself by taking three, five, seven tests after my fertile period, hoping for a different result, but I was always devastated.”

My husband wouldn’t comfort me. The man I called Nero would fix me with cold eyes and say in an uncaring voice, Oh, well. Maybe next time . And we’d go through the hopeless and humiliating ritual of him pretending to inseminate me like I’m livestock the next month.

With the real Nero, I fell pregnant shockingly fast. “I suppose I conceived the night you came back and broke into this house. I was barely awake when you forced yourself on me.” I give a shaky laugh. “What a story to tell people.”

But we won’t tell people our happy couple story because we’re not a happy couple. He’s sworn to kill me.

“I didn’t break in,” Nero replies. “I had a key. I let myself into this house to reunite with my sleeping wife, who always gave herself to me when I embraced her.”

Put like that, it almost sounds romantic.

Nero presses a slow kiss to the top of my head, and the warmth of feeling cherished spreads through me. Though it hurts to do it when all I want to do is cling to him, I push Nero away. “Don’t pretend like you love me. It’s too cruel. Just be the man I know you are. The man who hates me and wants me dead.”

I can’t forget that the only reason I’m not dead already is because of this baby.

Nero grips my shoulders, keeping me close. “You won’t let me hold the mother of my child in my arms?”

“After all the hateful things you’ve said to me? Stop mocking me with your pretend kindness. You want me pregnant as a punishment.”

“Is that so?” he says softly. Nero draws the backs of his fingers lovingly over my throat, a tender gesture that sends heat flashing through me. He pushes his fingers into my hair and fiercely grips me, making me gasp. “Fine. If you want it this way, then let’s do it this way. You’re having my baby. That makes you my property.”

My neck is arched as I’m forced to look up at him.

“You know far too many secrets about me, Rieta. Keep your mouth shut about who I am, or after this child is born, you’ll never see them again. Keep pissing me off, and you’ll end up in a shallow grave just like the one you gave my brother.” He kisses me hard. “Is that what you wanted to hear, Rieta?”

It’s exactly what I expected from my stalker. At least we know where we are. I don’t want him pretending to love me.

Nero rips open the door and pushes me into the bedroom. “Is this what you expected me to do?” Before I can take another breath, he rips the tank top up over my head and unfastens my jeans. Pushing me onto the bed, he drags my jeans and underwear down my legs until I’m spread naked before him. His hungry eyes devour me as he pulls off his own clothes. He stands before me naked with his hair falling into his eyes and his hand wrapped around his erect cock.

Nero bites down on his lower lip and runs it appreciatively through his teeth as he gazes at me. “My wife is so fucking beautiful.”

Moving closer, he gathers his saliva in his mouth and spits on me. I feel it land on my clit, and it sends a ripple of pleasure through me.

“Stop that,” I moan. “Don’t be disgusting.”

“You love it, and just because you’re pregnant doesn’t mean I’m not going to treat you like my dirty little whore.”

He pushes my thighs up to my chest and gets his mouth on me, sucking on my clit and licking me until I’m panting and crying out.

“You know how much I love that I’m already deep inside you?” Nero runs his tongue up my sex, and then again, this time pushing his tongue as deep as he can inside me. “This is where I fucked my baby into you, cara mia . You’re such a good girl for getting pregnant. You must have been longing for my baby.”

I grip the sheets, half moaning, half sobbing. I did want it. I do. I want his baby so much I don’t know how I survived so long without him and this little life growing inside me. Did I know somehow that if I just suffered through the terrible moments, I would finally have the man I’ve always wanted, and his baby?

Nero kisses his way up my body, his hard cock bumping against my inner thighs. I spread them wider for him as I watch him take his shaft in his hand and line it up with my core. The thick, plush head of his cock stretches my entrance.

“You need to be reminded of who you belong to.” He thrusts swiftly until he bottoms out inside me. “Who am I? Say my name.”

“N-Nero,” I say, but I’m still not certain. The man I called Nero for so long never made me feel like this.

“And who am I?”

“I—I don’t know. I only know what you told me.”

“You fucking know. Don’t lie to me. Did Luca kiss you like this?” Nero slants his mouth over mine, and I feel his kiss all the way down to my toes. It’s just like the kiss my fiancé gave me on our first date, and again in the back of his car, and again when we first had sex, and again as we stood at the altar. Nero claims that it was him each of those times, not Luca.

“Luca never kissed me,” I confess. “Not once.”

“Is that so?” Victory gleams in Nero’s eyes, but then they darken with jealousy a moment later. “But you were taking pregnancy tests, which means he was fucking my wife.”

I’d hardly call what Luca was doing to me fucking . More like performing a duty in the most clinical manner possible.

Nero looks down between us as he pumps his cock into me. I can’t help but look as well. My wetness glistening on his veiny length. Our gasps of pleasure mingle together. My hands are touching his muscled body.

“It wasn’t anything like this,” I pant.

“I hate hearing this, but I have to know. What did he do to you?”

“He needed Viagra. He didn’t want me pregnant. He didn’t want me at all. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t…”

Love me.

Even like me.

Nero doesn’t seem to love me either, but he is obsessed with me, and maybe I’m going to hell for it, but I crave his dark obsession. Every hard thrust of it.

Nero’s movements grow harder with his anger. “That fucking monster.”

“Why did you leave me with him?” I whimper. “Why did you abandon me and make me suffer for so long?”

“Believe me, cara mia . I wanted to be—” Nero punctuates his words with a deeper thrust. “Right.” Thrust. “Here. I hate that I wasn’t with you. I hate that he knew how you take your coffee. I hate that he saw you naked. That he fucked you. That he bought Viagra to be with you. My wife. Mine . I want to go out in public with you so I can say to everyone I meet, This is my wife, Rieta. My wife and no one else’s . I want to listen to you having lunch with your shitty family so I can hear them ask, How is your husband? Then I want to take you home again and fuck you senseless like my little slut needs to be fucked.”

Every hard thrust of his cock is pushing me closer to my orgasm. “You can’t talk to me like that. I’m going to be a mother.”

“I can talk to you however I want. You love me filling your pretty holes, don’t you? Your husband who has been aching for you. I haven’t touched another woman. I haven’t looked at another woman. I never even thought about another woman but you. It was all over for me the first time I ever saw you.”

Nero braces himself against the bed and uses his other hand to cradle my head, watching as he makes me come. My legs wrap around him of their own accord. My nails score the flesh of his shoulders. I give myself over to him and my climax.

“You look so beautiful as you come.” Swearing under his breath, Nero thrusts harder, and then his rhythm stutters, and he groans loudly in my ear. Every muscle in his body goes taut and then he melts down over my body.

I’m used to my husband getting up and leaving without a word after sex. Instead of rolling off me and leaving the bedroom, Nero gathers me closer to his body as he shifts onto his side. My face and breasts are pressed against his chest. I don’t know what to do with my arms. I don’t know what to do with Nero. Is this cuddling? Are we supposed to talk now?

“Are you going to kill me or not?” I whisper.

“I can’t now, can I?” he murmurs sleepily.

“Then what are we going to do?”

“I told you, you’re my property. So that means you have to do what I say.” Nero grasps one of my hands and wraps it around his waist.

He makes me hold him. My body tenses, wondering what I’m supposed to do. Maybe I’m not supposed to do anything but lie here. Slowly, I relax, and to my surprise, it starts to feel nice. After a moment, my fingers stroke his back. He makes an appreciative noise in his throat. Without thinking, I trace the scars on his back, and suddenly, he freezes.

“Sorry,” I whisper, and stop touching him. I wonder how he got the scars, and why when he first returned, he was thinner than he used to be. Since his return, Nero has been eating well and working out energetically, and his physique has returned to the way I remember it.

Nero takes a deep breath and seems to force himself to relax. “Don’t stop.”

He moves my hand back to where it was. He wants me to touch his scars? I tentatively stroke his back, and he groans and burrows deeper into my arms.

Slowly, Nero’s breathing deepens until he falls asleep.

Now what am I supposed to do? I’m half pinned to the bed by my naked husband. I’ve never been in this position before, and I feel trapped. I suppose that was the point, as I’m his captive. I reach up and gently brush his hair out of his eyes, admiring his handsome face while he sleeps. I start to enjoy my husband’s embrace and the possessive way he’s draped over me. I can feel the slickness of his cum between my thighs as well as a warm, just-orgasmed feeling in my core.

So this is what having a real husband is like.

I bite my lip as I have these dangerous thoughts. I’m playing happy family with Nero in my mind, and he will probably kill me as soon as I give birth to his child.

As carefully as I can, I ease myself out from beneath Nero’s heavy limbs and get off the bed. I’m not trying to flee. I just need some space to catch my breath.

I take a shower, and afterward, I wipe the condensation off the mirror and examine my reflection. There’s no sign on my body that I’m pregnant, but of course there wouldn’t be yet. Despite the circumstances, I feel excited by the prospect of watching my body change. I’m going to be a mother. A future that felt on the other side of a chasm is now in reach.

I swipe more condensation from the mirror and reveal someone standing behind me. Nero’s come into the bathroom, and his deep brown eyes gaze into my reflection.

“Can you tell yet?” he asks huskily, moving forward to touch my body. “Can you feel the baby inside you? Do you feel different?”

I shake my head. “Nothing’s different. I don’t even have morning sickness yet.”

“I can’t wait until you start to show.” Nero’s lips whisper up the side of my throat. “All those long, dark months, I pictured what you would look like pregnant. Your belly big. Your breasts so full.”

“Then why did you get a—” I shake my head. I need to keep them separate in my mind. Luca got a vasectomy, not Nero. I wish I knew why Luca did it, but the man with the answers lies rotting in a shallow grave.

“I don’t know why he got a vasectomy. It was his intention to start a family with you. He wanted your marriage to look as normal as possible.”

To look as normal as possible. So getting married was all about appearances to Luca. “The doctor told me that he got the vasectomy almost immediately after we got back from our honeymoon. He suddenly became so cruel and cold. Even colder than the man I remember from my engagement parties. Mom said it was my fault for sleeping with him before we were married. My husband had been testing me, and I failed. We started performing this horrible ritual every month. Cold, passionless sex, and he wouldn’t even look at me, and I put up with it because I wanted to fall pregnant so badly.”

With an agonized groan, Nero closes his eyes and buries his face in my throat, squeezing me tight. “That was my fault. All my fault. Not yours. I don’t want you to blame yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

Instead of answering me, he carries me back into the bedroom and lays me down on the bed. He gets in beside me and covers us both up with the still warm blankets. Unable to help myself, I wrap my arms around his strong body. This kind of intimacy should feel wrong. I’m lying in the arms of someone who’s forcing me to be with him.

Nero’s left arm is around my waist, and the daisy tattoo stands out amid the other ink. “Luca punished you because of what I did. I’m so sorry he made you suffer like that.”

Nero is apologizing for his brother? I thought Nero was firmly on Luca’s side, and I’m just the bitch who killed him. His apology makes no sense. “Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t painful. It was just humiliating.”

Anger flashes across his face. “It was cruel and sick, degrading you like that while getting your hopes up. I’m so outraged and jealous that I could put my fist through a wall.”

It feels shocking that Nero’s taking my side, especially because degrading me is something he’s always enjoyed. But when he does it, the strange thing is that I like it.

A few minutes slip by in silence while I listen to the pounding of his heart.

Finally, I ask the question that I’m most curious about. “Nero. Where were you all this time?”

What I really want to know is, Why did you abandon me when I think you were the brother I fell in love with?

I search Nero’s face, which is full of anger and resentment. He remains silent, and it’s clear that he doesn’t want to give me any answers.

“I need to know what my brother was up to while I was gone,” he says in a hard voice. “That girl’s hair clip in his office. What the hell was that about? Did the police suspect him of kidnapping her?”

“Not that I know of. I reported him missing not long after Harriet vanished, but the police sounded so uninterested that I doubt they believed there was any connection between the two cases.”

“Then I’ll look into it myself. For Harriet’s sake, and because I need answers.”

I look up in surprise. He cares what happened to Harriet? Luca drove right past everyone searching for Harriet the night she disappeared and went into the house without stopping to ask me or anyone else what was wrong. He was so bored whenever I brought up our neighbor’s disappearance. My husband’s coldness and indifference about the missing girl was just one more in a long string of disappointments, but it still hurt.

I wonder if I could have saved Harriet the day she disappeared by going to my husband’s office. It never occurred to me that she would be there, but should it have occurred to me? If I wasn’t a drunk who was so wrapped up in herself, would I have seen or heard something?

I’m filled with so much guilt that I moan and cover my face.

“ Cara mia? What’s wrong?”

“If I hadn’t been a drunk,” I say tearfully. “If I hadn’t ignored everything that was wrong in my marriage, and if I hadn’t switched off because of the pain, maybe I could have saved Harriet.”

“How could you have known? Luca was very good at keeping secrets.”

He was, wasn’t he? He had a brother I never knew about. A life that he kept me out of while I stayed home.

“I don’t know how I stayed married to Luca so long. I should have divorced him the moment we returned from Paris. We had separate hotel rooms, and I didn’t immediately serve him with divorce papers. What kind of pathetic woman am I?”

Nero smooths my hair back and kisses my forehead. “I saw how your mother treated you. I don’t blame you for wanting to get out of that house for good.”

I blink the tears from my eyes and gaze up at him. “Really? You’re not just saying that while you actually believe I’m pathetic?”

“I’m not just saying that.”

I almost can’t breathe I’m so overwhelmed with emotion. Is this what having a husband is like? A man who listens to you, comforts you, holds you. Accepts all your flaws and wrongdoings. A man would only do that because he loves you.

I trace the daisy tattoo on his arm with my fingertip.

Does Nero love me?

But I killed his brother, and he can never forgive me for that. The only reason he’s being gentle with me now is because I’m carrying his baby.

I take my hand off his arm and clench it on the sheets. I need to stop fooling myself and focus on what’s important. “How will you find out if Luca had anything to do with Harriet’s disappearance?”

“I’ll look though what messages and papers I can find. His emails and bank statements, though I’m not sure how useful those will be as we were always careful about not leaving a paper trail. His phone would be valuable. Do you know where it is?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know what happened to his phone.”

Nero thinks for a moment while staring at the ceiling. “Something Shields said while I was beating him for being a child abuser keeps going through my mind. He said, This kind of thing has never bothered you before. You said it was a good way of making money. What’s a good way of making money?” He rubs his eyes. “I don’t want to know, but I have to find out.” He drops his hand and looks at me. “Who was Luca meeting with during the months you were married to him?”

“I’m not sure. He kept his business away from this house.”

“Any faces that you can describe? Names spoken on the phone?”

I think back to the final weeks with the man I called Nero. The confused, desperate weeks when I followed him around, not knowing what else to do, lost in misery and alcohol. “There were some men he did business with, but I only saw them from a distance.”

“Why only from a distance?”

“I…was following my husband,” I confess.

A slow smile spreads over Nero’s lips. “I thought I was the stalker in this marriage.”

“I’m not a stalker, and stop that. This is not a marriage.”

“What are you talking about, Rieta? We’re married. Don’t you remember what our marriage license says? Rieta Bianchi is married to Nero Lombardi. You watched me sign that marriage license. I watched you sign it. I stood at the altar with you, and we exchanged vows.”

It hurts to look at my handsome husband when there’s so much pain and confusion in my heart. “Let’s not talk about any of this. We need to focus on Harriet.”

“So tell me what you remember about my brother’s colleagues, cara mia .”

His warm arms around me, the endearment, and the way his lips whisper against my brow makes the ache in my heart double. “Your brother didn’t bring anyone to the house or even talk on the phone in front of me. I never hosted dinner parties to impress his associates. The only man I ever met was in passing.”

“Oh? Who was it?”

I try to remember the details. “It was the day I found out my sister Mia was pregnant. I was upset because…” Why am I sharing this? I don’t want to be sharing this with him. “I was with Annie and Harriet in a restaurant when Nero came in with one of his associates.”

“Luca,” Nero corrects me. “ Luca came in. I’m Nero, and I always have been.”

“Sorry. Yes. Luca came in with one of his associates. They stood by our table for a moment talking. The man was in his forties, and he had blondish, reddish hair. The kind people call strawberry blond. I think Luca called him Costa. That’s all I remember.”

My face creases with emotion, and I press a hand over my eyes.

“Rieta?”

Swallowing the tears down, I say, “I just realized that was the last time I saw Harriet.”

Nero draws his thumbs beneath my eyes, wiping away the tears. “Thank you for telling me this.”

My husband never treated me so tenderly. I don’t know what to do. I want to start crying again.

“It’s somewhere to start. I’ll be back later.”

Before Nero can get out of bed, I put my hand on his wrist. “Wait. Who was the man who called me cara mia ? Him or you?”

He watches me for a moment. “When do you remember being called cara mia ?”

I think back to all the times I heard those two words. I’ve never been called by a sweet endearment before, so cara mia glowed particularly bright in my heart. All those memories are stored away in a gilt box in my mind. “My fiancé called me cara mia on our first date. When my mother locked me away in the dark basement and he rescued me. When we were in the back of his car and…and the first time we were together.”

“When didn’t he call you cara mia ?”

I shiver slightly. “When he was cold and rude to me. At the first engagement party. At the engagement dinner. While we were planning our wedding. On our disastrous wedding night. My husband never said it. My husband never said one kind or sweet thing to me.”

“Never? Not once?” Nero asks.

“He was always cold. I think he hated me.”

Nero drags my hand from his wrist and gets out of bed. A wall has slammed down behind his eyes, and I have the feeling he’s angry. He leaves the bedroom, and a few minutes later I hear him slam out of the house.

Wherever Nero’s gone, I suppose he feels confident that he can hunt me down if I run.

I get out of bed and wrap a bathrobe around myself, enveloping my body and my tiny little baby inside me in the warm, fuzzy fabric.

This is the first moment I’ve had alone to process the news. I’m going to be a mother. It feels as surreal as much as it feels wonderful.

“I won’t let anyone take you from me,” I whisper, going to the wardrobe and getting dressed. “Mama loves you so much.”

Twenty minutes later, I stand on Annie’s doorstep and press the bell. I’ve only seen her briefly at the weekly Harriet’s Helpers meetings since Nero got home.

When she opens the door, Annie has dark circles beneath her eyes, and she’s pale, but she manages a small smile and invites me inside.

Over coffee, Annie gives me the dismal news that there have been no new leads about Harriet’s disappearance.

Should I tell her about the hair clip that I found in Luca’s office? It’s the right thing to do. The police should know everything so they have the best chance of finding her, but what if they think Nero is Luca and arrest the wrong man? I already know how much the police despise my husband. They’d probably enjoy pinning Harriet’s kidnapping on Nero, but locking up the wrong man won’t get Harriet back home safe and sound.

Nero’s gone to find out what he can, which means I should give him a chance to discover something useful about Harriet. Still, I feel horribly guilty as I sit at Annie’s kitchen table, holding back what I know.

As Annie sees me to the front door, she says, “I noticed that your husband has come back. I’ve seen him coming and going. I said hello to him, and he said hello back for a change. I nearly fell over.”

As far as Annie knows, my husband left me because we were having marital problems. I nod, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Um, yes, he’s different than how he used to be.”

“I guess that means he’s trying. People change as they go through life. When Harriet comes home…” Annie stares into the road for a moment as if she expects to see her daughter out there. “I’m not allowed to say when Harriet comes home around Jake. My hope hurts him, but I have to have hope. When Harriet comes home, she’ll be different, but I’ll still love her.”