Mountain Ice (David Dean Mysteries)

"Has he hurt you in the past?" Cynthia asked.

Edith closed her eyes as tears seeped down her cheeks but she wouldn't answer.

"No one is going to harm you here," Cynthia said, reminiscent to Dean of another promise, another time. Dean crossed his fingers and hoped this affiance would spawn fewer complications than the last. He took a deep breath and plunged in.

"There are laws to protect women if a husband is abusive. He has no hold on you if you decide you want to live apart. Unless he claims to be Donnie's father or he's adopted the boy, I doubt he'd have any rights to see him either. You can ask the court for an order of restraint against your husband and stop him from coming anywhere near you if you're in fear of the man."

"David knows what he's talking about," Cynthia offered. "He used to be a police detective, back in Pennsylvania. He has a lot of experience in these matters."

Edith kept shaking her head 'no' as he spoke. "You don't understand. No one tells Jerome Shipton what to do. Sooner or later he always gets his way. Nothing stops him, ever." She rose. "Look, I'm sorry to bother you with my troubles. You're very kind but we'll just leave in the morning. That will be best for everyone."

Cynthia rose to join her, taking her arm. "Please. Sit down. You're safe here. I'm sure it's far more difficult to trace a credit card than it seems in the movies, even if your husband is trying that hard to find you."

Edith allowed herself to be led back to her seat. She turned to Cynthia, a pleading look in her eyes. "Just don't tell him I'm here when he calls, please!"

Cynthia gently prodded the woman until Edith Shipton began to relate her story, speaking in almost a monotone. She glanced at the door every few minutes, as if her abandoned husband might rush in and drag her back to his lair. It was a trying conversation-obvious this bundle of nerves had little experience talking to strangers. Though Dean wished to remain at hand's-length from her troubled life he quickly sensed from her disjointed description Cynthia had been correct when she assessed that the woman carried serious emotional pain. At the very least, perhaps they might be able to direct her to the help she so obviously needed.

They gleaned from her story that, as suspected, she came from a moneyed background. Dean guessed she had been pampered and protected all of her life and was now ill equipped to function independently. At sixteen, while vacationing at a New Hampshire camp for girls, she had become involved with a local boy, Donald Ryland. The result was not surprising. She managed to keep her pregnancy secret until an abortion was out of the question and Donnie was born. Ryland, twenty years old at the time, wanted to marry Edith but her irate parents forbade it. Instead, they literally forced her to wed Jerome Shipton, a widowed family friend twelve years her senior.