Running from Monday Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Lea M. Sims

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted under copyright law.

  Cover Design: Megan Burns

  Editor: Kristin Wall

  Creative Consultants: Sherri Eshelman, Brandi Cortés-Hickson

  Author back cover photo: Susannah Moore, The Copper Lens Photography

  ISBN: 978-0-99979-470-8

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018900427

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition, 2018

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Scripture quotations from the NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

  Scripture quotations from the NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations from the MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  ISBN 978-0-99979-470-8 (ebook)

  Visit the author’s website, subscribe to updates, and access the ministry resources at:

  leasims.org

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  References & Permissions

  To Beth Moore

  For being obedient to the call on your life,

  For turning trial into testimony,

  For rescuing the women in your world,

  And for teaching me to go get my sister.

  From all of us you have “broken free,”

  Thank you.

  [Six years old]

  Delaney’s eyelids fluttered open.

  She had been dreaming about a goldfish. But a persistent tug on her consciousness had slowly pulled her to a foggy waking state. The bedroom was dark except for the faint yellow glow of the Tinker Bell nightlight in the corner of the room. The tinted light spread thinly outward, falling on objects that were benign in the light of day but now cast malevolent shadows on the walls of the tiny bedroom in which she slept.

  As the Technicolor goldfish faded to the blurry edges of her mind, it took a few moments for her to remember where she was. Duchess, her stuffed dog, was tucked into her right elbow. The fan on the dresser hummed softly. Her eyelids shuttered closed again. But then her hand brushed across the distinctive puffs of the chenille bedspread around her. Her eyes flew wide and her heart began to pound. She was in her Aunt Beth’s spare room. She suddenly became fully and utterly aware.

  He was touching her.

  Again.

  He was kneeling beside the bed. She was still under the covers, but his large rough hands had slipped beneath them. Her nightgown had been pulled up. Her panties were down around her ankles. He had parted her legs and was touching her the way he had done before. His other hand reached up to pinch her chest, and she stiffened, alerting him that she had awakened. He put a hand firmly over her mouth.

  “Steady, girl,” he said in low rasp, “Don’t you wake up your Aunt Beth.”

  His breath was fetid and stale with the sickening sweet odor of whiskey and cigars. It permeated the room and clung to his skin. It was the way her uncle’s breath always smelled, but it was particularly suffocating on the nights he visited her in this room. She would despise that smell for the rest of her life.

  Delaney turned her face into her pillow and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She wanted to go back to the goldfish dream. She didn’t understand what he was doing or why, but she knew it wasn’t right and she wanted it to be over. After a few minutes, she felt his hands withdraw from the covers, and she held her breath. Maybe he was done. But then she heard him fumble with his belt buckle and unzip his pants. One hand slipped back under the covers to touch her again, this time more roughly, invading tender flesh. Delaney bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  He was breathing faster now. His belt buckle jingled wildly, but she had no desire to open her eyes to see what he was doing. Please, God, let it be over, she begged silently. As if reading her thoughts, her uncle drew a ragged breath. His fingers stilled, his body jerked, and he let out a low anguished moan. He collapsed forward onto the bed, pinning her legs beneath him. She could feel his heart racing against her knees.

  A few moments later, his breathing slowed. He stood up, refastened his pants, and bent down close, an exhale of foul breath filling her ear and drifting unwelcome across her face. “Good, girl,” he whispered, stroking her hair. And then he was gone.

  Delaney waited until the door clicked shut before opening her eyes again. She rolled to her side, panties still twisted around her ankles. As tears slipped down her cheeks and onto her pillow, she hugged Duchess tightly and had only one thought.

  Come back, goldfish. Come back.

  New York

  “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

  —John Updike

  June 2017

  Delaney Anderson stepped out of her attorney’s office on Lexington Street and, with a shielding hand to her brow, squinted against the sunlight bouncing brightly off the windows and chrome of downtown New York. Her eyes quickly scanned the avenue for the town car that would take her back to her office.

  It was early June. Oppressive heat lingered thickly between the city’s towering buildings, and Delaney stepped into a wall of it on her way to the curb. It was the kind of heat that took your breath away, making her glad she had ordered a car. When the weather was cooler, she didn’t mind making her way around Manhattan on foot, especially if she didn’t have far to go. But on a day like today, she didn’t even hesitate. She had no intention of sweating it out in her new Armani suit.

  As she stood at the curb watching her town car approach, she was oblivious to the hea
ds turning around her. The figure she cut as she descended the steps of Snyder, Beckworth & Frost was a striking one. At five eight in her bare feet, she was a fairly tall woman, but with the added height of her charcoal stilettos, she stood out in a crowd. Her suit was gunmetal gray and tailored to fit like a glove. A silk blouse of electric blue peeked out from the asymmetrical zipper of her jacket. She was all legs and blonde hair, and she walked with a command of the ground that was a deadly combination of confident stride and feminine hip sway. You’d be hard pressed not to notice her.

  She stepped off the curb and swung gracefully into the sleek black town car, tucking her long legs beneath her. Closing the door, she glanced up at the driver in the rear-view mirror. It was Eddie. The service sent him more often than not when she requested a car, probably because he was familiar with all her routes. If she’d paid attention to the heat in the eyes looking back at her in the rear-view mirror, she would have known that wasn’t the reason. Eddie spent a lot of time jockeying with the other drivers for this assignment. He loved escorting Mrs. Anderson anywhere she wanted to go.

  “Back to work, Eddie,” Delaney said with a distracted smile. “Thanks, hon.”

  Eddie nodded to her in the mirror and then smiled to himself. She always called him “hon” or “sugar” or “love.” From anyone else, it would probably annoy the crap out of him. He was from Queens. But when she said it—with that soft Southern drawl—it was like a caress. As he nudged the car back into Lexington traffic, he stole another glance at her in the mirror. She had removed her suit jacket and was staring pensively out the window. Her sleek blonde hair was cut in a shoulder-length lob that came to points in the front at her breast line. A long section of thick bang swept across her brow over a dusky fringe of lashes. She suddenly looked up at him and caught him staring. He grinned.

  “Keep your eyes on the traffic,” she said, furrowing her beautiful brows and pointing to the long line of cabs and tail lights in front of him. She’d been in New York for twelve years, but she would never get used to the frenetic way people drove here, especially cabbies. It was the main reason she splurged on a town car. At least it gave her the illusion of safety.

  So different than the way we drive at home. For a moment, she thought of leisurely Sunday drives down two-lane country byways and off-road adventures down unpaved red clay trails, but she shook those from her mind. That was another life, memories fading around the edges. New York was her home now. No matter how crazy the drivers were.

  Staring out the window now at the crush of traffic and darting pedestrians, her thoughts turned to the conversation that had just taken place in her attorney’s office. Her divorce would be final in the next few weeks, and despite months of haggling with her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s lawyer, mostly over money, they were finally getting to the weary end of it.

  “He’s being unreasonable,” Amanda Beckworth had said. Amanda was a tough attorney with a brilliant reputation for protecting businesswomen in divorce proceedings. She’d been through two divorces of her own, and neither of her ex-husbands had been able to wring a penny out of her. She had been urging Delaney for months to throw some counter punches, but Delaney just wanted it to be over.

  “If you keep letting him walk all over you,” she said, “you’re going to regret it later. All you’re thinking about is the here and now. I get it. You want this nightmare to end. But you can’t come back and renegotiate these terms later, Delaney.”

  “He’s very angry,” Delaney responded. “People are rarely reasonable when they’re angry.”

  “Your husband has a very short fuse.”

  “Maybe so, but all the more reason not to set him off.” Delaney thought about the last exchange she’d had with Danny. It was about the dog. He was fighting her tooth and nail over Rogue, their black lab. Rogue had been a Christmas gift from Danny three years ago. He was determined to hit her where it hurt.

  Maybe I should just let him take the dog.

  She’d given in to every demand he’d thrown at her so far. He was getting pretty much everything, including their Mets tickets. He’d claimed their condo in Soho, laid siege to the furniture and artwork she had spent several years collecting, and demanded their timeshare in Vero Beach. Since she couldn’t see herself going there by herself or with anyone else, she let it go. She let it all go. But when she thought of letting him have her dog, her heart rebelled. Some people might think it silly to let go of a beachfront condo and fight over a dog, but Rogue was her baby. Only a dog lover could understand that. And Danny wasn’t a dog lover.

  “You can tell him I’m ready to sign when he stops asking for Rogue,” Delaney said decisively.

  “Okaaay,” Amanda responded with slow surprise. “Let me get this straight. The man is taking you to the cleaners, but the one thing you’re willing to fight him for is your dog?”

  “Do you have pets, Amanda?” Delaney asked, quirking an eyebrow at her.

  “Um, no.”

  “Have you ever had a dog?”

  Amanda considered the question, tapping her fountain pen against her bottom lip. “Well, my brother talked my parents into a dog once when we were kids. He brought home a puppy from someone giving them away outside the grocery store. That dog ate three pairs of my mother’s shoes, chewed the handle off my dad’s briefcase, and kept peeing on the hallway rug. He lasted about a month before my mom told my brother he had to go.”

  “What happened to him?” Delaney asked.

  “My brother?” Amanda quirked with a grin.

  “Very funny. What happened to the dog?”

  “My dad gave him to a guy at work,” Amanda said, shrugging her shoulders. “At least that’s what he told us.”

  “So you’ve never had a dog since then? What about a cat?” Delaney asked, though she honestly couldn’t picture Amanda with a cat in her lap. An image of Dr. Evil stroking his hairless cat popped into her head. She smothered a smile.

  Amanda laughed, obviously trying to picture the same thing. “Oh, honey, I don’t do kids or animals. I get enough of both in the men I date.” That statement didn’t surprise Delaney. There was something about Amanda that reminded her of Samantha from Sex and the City. She may not do kids or animals, but she definitely did men.

  Delaney sighed. “Well, then, you wouldn’t understand. You don’t know what that dog means to me or how much I need her close to me right now.”

  She couldn’t put into words the relationship she had with Rogue—the relationship she’d had with all her dogs. It was more than an affinity for dogs or a love of animals. She had a very deep connection to and need for a dog in her world. There was a very dark period in her teens when her dog Monday, a collie she’d rescued as a stray, had been the only thing that stood between her and the ragged edge of despair. In many ways, she trusted dogs more than she trusted people.

  “You need to tell his attorney he’s not getting the dog,” Delaney said, squaring her shoulders and meeting Amanda’s gaze directly. “He can’t have Rogue. End of discussion.”

  Amanda recognized resolve when she saw it. She’d gotten good at reading her clients, good at recognizing what strengths and weaknesses really lay behind the wall of bravado they put on the table. Some would put on a great show, posturing impressively about what they would and would not tolerate from the divorce process. Those were the same people who would break down and make desperate decisions, whose resolve would unravel over time.

  Then there were other clients, like Delaney, whose unwillingness to scrap it out with their husbands might be confused for weakness. There were times when Amanda herself wondered why Delaney didn’t push back on Danny’s unreasonable demands.

  She’d seen women who were afraid to stand up to angry or domineering husbands. She’d seen women sit meekly through the process while their husbands determined their futures for them. She’d also seen the women who put their husbands through the ringer—th
e selfish, the bitter, the vengeful, the pampered, and the entitled. She’d seen it all.

  But Delaney was different and much harder to read. She was smart and articulate. She listened intently to all of Amanda’s instructions and asked the right questions. She was gracious and tolerant, and you got the distinct impression that she was comfortable with her decisions. She didn’t fight back, but she definitely had it in her. There was an undeniable strength there. There were also some seriously fortified walls around her emotions, which Amanda had observed on several occasions. Delaney Anderson was a woman with a story.

  The only part of her story Amanda knew was the succinct summary Delaney had given her at their first meeting. Her client admitted to having an affair. She had been forthcoming about it but provided very few details. It was a brief dalliance with a colleague that was over as quickly as it began, and the guy was no longer in the picture.

  Amanda knew the affair was the reason Danny was being so ruthless with his negotiations. It was also the reason Delaney was letting him get away with it. Amanda wasn’t sure if it was guilt or indifference or simply a desire to shut the door on this chapter of her life, but Delaney yielded to her husband’s demands without so much as blinking.

  Until he asked for the dog.

  Amanda wasn’t a therapist. She didn’t advise her clients on how to process the emotional nuances of divorce. She also didn’t judge them. If Delaney needed the dog, then Delaney would get the dog. “Okay, Delaney,” Amanda said softly. “We draw the line at Rogue.”

  The honking of horns and a sudden slam on the brakes jerked Delaney’s thoughts from that conversation to the road in front of her. Eddie had rolled his window down and was gesturing and shouting at two cab drivers trying to force their way into the lane he was in. Delaney shook her head and grinned. The way New York drivers jockeyed for lane position was like a version of The Hunger Games, where the weapons were profane gestures and a flurry of F-bombs.

  “Just let them in, Eddie,” she said to her exuberant driver.