Raw Justice by Diane Capri

Author:Diane Capri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AugustBooks
Published: 2011-07-04T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Ronald was outraged when he returned from the excavation site after being gone for an hour. “They won’t let me bring my baby home,” he cried. His visit to the police had done no good. The young woman’s body hadn’t been autopsied or identified. “We’re sorry, Mr. Walden,” Ronald mocked them, mimicking what they’d told him. Then his chin quivered with rage and tears streamed down his face. “I don’t want their damn excuses! They better give me my baby to bury!”

Lila didn’t know what to do or how to deal with him. When he headed for the refrigerator again, she went to bed just to get away.

Within minutes, she could hear Ronald on the phone to the police again from his bedroom, and he stayed up most of the night arguing with the person at the other end of the line.

Ronald and Lila had slept in separate bedrooms for years, but even from across the hallway, Lila could hear him. She thought they could hear him all the way to the state capitol in Tallahassee. He shouted, cursed, and opened beer after beer.

When she heard the pop-top on another can around four o’clock in the morning, Lila got up and threw the deadbolt she’d installed on her bedroom door. She pushed the heavy dresser in front of the flimsy hollow wood as well, for good measure. Locked doors didn’t keep Ronald out when he wanted to come in. Lila knew that from experience.

How did our lives degenerate to this? she asked herself, lying in the dark, listening to Ronald rage. Her face hurt, her shoulder was sore, and she was exhausted. Tears leaked out of her eyes and ran down the sides of her face into her hair and onto the pillow.

She tried to think where they’d gone wrong.

He didn’t drink when Lila had first met him, although in hindsight it was pretty obvious that Ronald was headed in that direction. He’d never been good enough for her; her parents had been right about that. But in high school, Ronald had carried the allure of the forbidden, an outlaw’s dangerousness that attracted Lila, the good girl, the homecoming queen. She’d thought then that his blonde good looks would make cute babies.

During the early hours of the morning, she could hear him slamming around, knocking over the furniture. Lila cried harder when she heard him shatter what must have been her grandmother’s vase, which Lila kept on a special table in the living room. She loved the vase and it was all she had left of her grandmother to remember her by. Ronald knew it, too, but when he was mad at Lila, he’d often break the things she cared for the most.

They’d married during her senior year. He’d already quit school and been hired on at the MECO water power plant then. They both thought they’d have all the money they’d ever need. Ten thousand dollars a year had seemed like a fortune in those days. What a joke.

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