Law Man (Dream Man #3)(53)

Oh boy.

He pushed open the door and used my hand to guide me forward, dropped it and put it in my back to force me down to duck under the criss-cross tape. We walked in and he flipped on the overhead lights.

The instant my eyes saw it, my mind retreated and it didn’t register on me. I saw my sofa and armchair had been slashed, the stuffing everywhere. I saw my television turned over on its face, smashed. Parts of my stereo strewn around the room. CDs, DVDs books from my shelves everywhere, cases broken, discs broken, books torn. I saw everything in my kitchen cupboards was all over the counters and some of it peeking out on the floor at the end of the bar. Broken crockery. Even food.

Holy crap.

I wandered down the hall and reached into the hall bathroom to turn on the light. I didn’t keep much in there but what was in there was all over the place.

I moved to my bedroom and turned on that light. My Spring Deluxe was slashed too. Completely laid to waste. My raspberry sheets and blush comforter cover with its embroidered raspberry flowers with delicate, grass green stems and leaves was shredded, feathers from my duvet and pillows all over the place. My clothes were everywhere, my dresser drawers pulled out and tossed, broken, across the room, their contents tangled with the feathers and shreds of my sheets.

I walked to my bathroom and more of the same. Tampon boxes emptied, tampons all over the sink and floor. The plastic pulled away from toilet paper rolls, the rolls unrolled. Bottles and tubs of my toiletries open, their insides spilling out, mingled with tampons and toilet paper and staining my towels and extra sheets that had been yanked out of my bathroom closet. My medicine cabinet looted. Even my ibuprofen capsules were littered everywhere.

“Mara, sweetheart, just grab what you need and –” I heard Mitch say from close but I moved, drifting out of the room and down the hall where I switched the light on to the kids’ room.

The same there. Their new beds where annihilated. The bedclothes slashed and shredded. Their new and old clothes scattered across the room.

I saw something and walked to it, picking up the remnants of Billie’s new, tiny, pink fluffy teddy bear that Mitch bought her. She loved that thing. It was the nicest toy she owned. She slept with it every night since he gave it to her. Every night. She never let it go even as heavy as she slept.

She never let it go.

Why would Mom and Lulamae do this? Why?

As these things go, whatever fog that had drifted around me cleared and the crushing weight of what I was seeing landed on me.

I needed new everything. The kids did too.

Everything.

Without me telling my body to do it, I folded into a deep, knees-closed squat, my ass to my ankles, my knees in my chest. I wrapped my arms around the back of my head as I pressed my face into my knees, feeling the soft fur of Billie’s decimated teddy bear brushing my cheek.

“Fuck,” I heard Mitch mutter.

I was sobbing into my knees, oblivious to everything but the hatred and ugliness that surrounded me. All that was hideous about the home I grew up in washing through my life, the one I’d worked so hard to build, the one I desperately wanted to give Billy and Billie. As ever, all I knew, all I was, all that was contained in the blood flowing through my veins shredding everything good that I worked so hard to have.

More fool I that I thought I’d ever get away from it, escape it. Ever.

I felt myself moving and then I was in Mitch’s arms. I wound mine around his neck, pressed my face in his throat and sobbed silently against his skin as he carried me through my apartment. I vaguely heard the police tape tearing off the doorframe and we were in the breezeway. Then we were in Mitch’s apartment.

“Oh f**k,” I heard Bray whisper. “That doesn’t look like it went too well.”

I didn’t lift my head and Mitch didn’t pause in walking as I heard him issue orders.

“Go get LaTanya,” Mitch said to Bray. “Mara’ll need stuff for a while. Tell her she needs to be careful about what she touches; she only touches what she’s bringin’ over. Nothin’ else. Can you do that for Mara?”

“Absolutely,” Bradon replied.

Then Mitch was moving funny and I vaguely noticed he was no longer standing but sitting. I was folded in his lap, his arms tight around me. This didn’t register except that I burrowed deeper and held on tighter, pressing my face hard into his neck.

One of his hands started stroking my back. I felt his head tilt down and his lips at my ear.

“It’s okay, baby, everything’s gonna be okay,” he whispered there.

“I wah…worked so hard,” I stammered back.

“I know,” Mitch replied gently.

“I wah…worked so hard to be eh…eh…everything they weren’t. To have duh…decent things around me,” I stuttered into his skin. “Wah…wah…why do they hate me so much? What did I ever do to them except bah…bah…breathe?”

Mitch didn’t respond but he kept his head tilted to me, I could feel his cheek pressed against my hair and I felt his hand moving, warm and soothing on my back. After a while it penetrated that this felt nice and when it did, my tears started to subside.

Mitch heard it and repeated, “Everything’s gonna be okay, Mara.”

I nodded against his neck not believing him for a second.

In a cautious voice, he asked, “Do you have renter’s insurance?”