Free Smoke Signals by Catherine Gayle Page A

In this world, a woman like me could never be her own master.

 

     
     

    TRYING TO PRY answers out of Tori hadn’t worked once yet, so I had no doubt any such endeavor would be fruitless as all hell. Instead, I decided to wait her out. Let her cry until she was done, and then we could talk.
    But I damn sure intended to get her to talk to me. She didn’t have to tell me everything down to who her best friend was when she was seven, but she was my wife. I needed to know more than the bare-bones minimum she’d fed me so far. I intended to do whatever it took to understand her. At the moment, I was clueless beyond realizing she’d been through a lifetime of shit, probably before her fifteenth birthday, not to mention everything that must have happened since. That much was clear in the haunted look in her eyes and the way she was fighting so hard to keep her crying under wraps, despite the fact that there was no point in it at all. Whatever was behind this was going to force its way out, whether she was on board with it or not.
    I stroked a hand over her long, dark hair again. It was soft and still smelled like the hotel shampoo she’d used this morning, a fresh combination of orange and ginger that tickled my nostrils. The temptation to bury my nose in her hair and breathe deeply was strong, but that was going to have to wait. This wasn’t about me.
    At first, there’d only been a few tears streaming, but it had turned into full-blown sobs before much time had passed, her shoulders heaving from the force of whatever was going on in her head. So I waited, trailing my fingers through the silky tendrils of her hair, for her to make the next move…whatever that move might be.
    She kept her spine straight, her neck rigid. She refused to lean in toward me or to seek more comfort. Pride? Maybe. I doubted it. Fear seemed more likely. Or shame. She was carrying around a shit-ton of that.
    “You followed me,” she said after a long while, her voice raspy from the effort of crying so hard. “I don’t understand.”
    “What’s there to understand? I married you. I promised I would take care of you.”
    Even though I tried to brush it off and make it sound simple, I knew it was anything but. I couldn’t explain my reaction to her any more than she could tell me all that she’d been through.
    She shook her head, staring down at her knees. “Why? Why leave friends for me?”
    “Has no one ever put you first, beautiful?” More and more, it seemed as if she’d never had anyone in her corner. No one fighting for her. She’d had to do it all on her own.
    She shrugged, which was no answer.
    “What about your parents? Did they look out for you?” I didn’t know how much to push and when to back off with her. Her do-not-cross line was so grayed out and scrubbed over that I couldn’t make out where it fell. I’d gotten her talking, at least for now, but she could close off and run again at any moment.
    “Yes. As much as they could.”
    That was cryptic. She’d used could , not can . Had they disowned her? Were they dead?
    She wasn’t offering up much for free.
    “And what about when they couldn’t? Who else did you have?”
    “I have me.”
    She had me, too, whether she was ready to accept that or not.
    “How long has it been just you?”
    “Since I came to America. Papa helped me.” She inched closer, just enough to allow me to breathe easier. Because it meant she was letting down her guard a bit. And maybe starting to feel comfortable with me.
    I switched from gently brushing my hand over her hair to massaging her scalp with my fingertips. “When’s the last time you saw him?”
    She let out the tiniest sound, which might have been a sigh. “Three years. When I got on plane in St. Petersburg.”
    “And your mother? Is that the last time you saw her, too?”
    Tori shook her head. “Mama was already gone.”
    Time to push harder? I wasn’t sure. It was a risk, but one I knew I had to take. “Gone where? Did