Big Girls Don't Cry. Brenda Novak

want I should take you somewhere else?”

      “No.”

      The license plate of the minivan said, 1 I LUV. Keith’s license plate was pretty conspicuous, too. It read, MY3GRLS, which had made him quite easy to follow.

      Isaac lightly rubbed his lip. He’d risked his grant to follow Keith across two states, but he still wasn’t sure what his brother-in-law was up to. He only knew it didn’t look good. Especially when two figures, a man and a woman, appeared in the window. The glaring porch light made it difficult to see much detail, but a softer light coming from another room in the house threw both their bodies into relief.

      They were kissing. The man was Keith. No question. The woman he didn’t recognize. He couldn’t discern any specific features, not even the color of her hair.

      “Meter’s running,” the cabby reminded him.

      When Isaac made no response, the driver rolled down his window and lit a cigarette while Isaac watched Keith shove the woman’s robe off her shoulders. When Keith bent his head to kiss his partner’s neck, Isaac looked away. He felt sick. Elizabeth was going to be devastated. This would hurt Mica and Christopher, too.

      What should he do? Dropping his head in his hand, he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to think.

      “That’s not your wife, is it?” the cab driver asked, smoke curling from his nose as he spoke.

      Again, Isaac didn’t respond. He was too busy searching for an answer. But no answer presented itself.

      When he glanced up again, the figures in the window were gone. No doubt they’d moved to the bedroom.

      Imagining his brother-in-law making love to another woman caused rage to cut through Isaac’s terrible disappointment. He had to do something; he had to stop what was happening. For Elizabeth’s sake.

      “Wait here,” he said, and got out. Wrinkling his nose against the cabby’s cigarette smoke and the car’s exhaust, he pulled his coat close and strode briskly across the street. He’d teach Keith a lesson. Break his nose. Something!

      Isaac’s mind told him a fistfight wouldn’t solve anything—he hadn’t been in a fight since he was seventeen—but his heart pumped eagerly in his chest as he cleared the driveway. He wouldn’t allow his brother-in-law to have sex with this woman!

      Anticipating the satisfying impact of his first blow to Keith’s face, Isaac barely heard the rumbling motor of the waiting taxi as he slipped inside the chain-link fence that surrounded the front yard. He passed the trike with the pink tassels, stepped over a small pair of rubber boots lying near the steps and opened the screen door so he could bang on the wooden panel behind it. But then he hesitated. There was a crayon drawing taped to the door.

      He blinked, his hand poised in the air. The drawing depicted several stick figures. One was obviously larger than the rest and, judging by the hair, was a man. The other figures were as crudely drawn but they were much smaller and seemed to be gathered around the man. At the bottom, a child had written, “Welcome Home, Daddy. We missed you. Jennifer, Angela and…” He couldn’t read the last name. Whoever had signed the drawing had attempted to write in cursive, which he or she obviously didn’t know how to do.

      Welcome home, Daddy….

      Chills rolled down Isaac’s spine as he slowly lowered his hand to his side. Was this woman also married? Was her husband away on business? Could Keith have been driving her husband’s car?

      Isaac wanted to knock and demand the truth. But the tricycle with the pink tassels, the little boots and the childish note stopped him. There were children inside….

      God, what was going on? How many lives would Keith’s affair destroy?

      Taking a bolstering breath, Isaac glanced back at the waiting taxi just as the cab driver finished his cigarette and tossed the butt carelessly away.

      He had to think, gain some perspective.

      Suddenly the porch light winked off, leaving Isaac in the dark. He froze where he stood on the front step, waiting to see if whoever had turned off the light had heard his approach or spotted the green-and-white taxi parked in front.

      But the next several seconds ticked by and nothing happened. Keith and the woman were probably too involved with each other to notice anything less than a sizable earthquake.

      The rain began to fall more heavily, but Isaac couldn’t move. Most of his life, he’d done his best to protect his little sister. She’d had no one else.

      But, heaven help him, there wasn’t anything he could do to protect her from this.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      RELUCTANTLY, ISAAC LEFT Dundee behind and had the cabdriver drop him at a motel next to the Boise airport. He would’ve liked more time in the small town where Keith had spent the night. But he couldn’t haunt Dundee while his brother-in-law was around. He didn’t want Keith to know he suspected the affair. Not until he had a better sense of what was happening. Besides, his luggage had gone on to Chicago when he missed his plane and he wouldn’t have had any transportation in Dundee. The town wasn’t large enough to offer car rentals or bus service.

      He had to go home. But what he’d witnessed didn’t make it easy to leave. At least a hundred questions crowded to the forefront of his mind as he lay in the double bed, staring down the alarm clock on the nightstand beside him. Did folks in the area know Keith? How often did he appear and how long did he stay? Who was the woman he’d taken in his arms? Where had he met her—and how? What plans did he have for the future? Surely Liz’s husband didn’t feel he could continue lying to her indefinitely.

      Or did he?

      He’d come back later, when Keith was in L.A., he decided. Then Isaac wouldn’t have to be so discreet. He could poke around, ask whatever he wanted.

      Now he needed to sleep, so he could get up early and fly out. He couldn’t make his interview, but he was anxious to be home.

      Problem was sleep wouldn’t come. Traffic rambled by; the television in the room next door blared too loudly. He was still getting used to such noise after spending more than a year cocooned in the deep jungle.

      The ice machine not far from his door clattered, and he swore softly under his breath. But it was the memories that really bothered him—the memories he hadn’t let himself think about for years. Elizabeth repeatedly waking in a cold sweat, shaking from some terrible nightmare. Luanna, their stepmother, who was the cause of those nightmares, constantly belittling her. Can’t you do anything right?…You clumsy idiot…My hell, if you had half a brain you’d be dangerous…Look at the way you did these dishes. You’re not worth a damn, you know that?

      For some reason, Luanna had been kinder to Isaac. He’d grown up feeling guilty for getting away with the little things Elizabeth would be punished for doing. Things like leaving his clothes on the floor, or forgetting to put his plate in the dishwasher. Maybe it was because he didn’t need Luanna as much as Liz did, because he didn’t really care whether she liked him or not. There was a certain amount of safety in indifference.

      But Liz had been younger and much lonelier. She’d desperately craved the love they’d lost when their mother died, and it seemed to be that neediness that made Luanna so harsh. At any rate, Liz’s vulnerability gave Luanna her power. The more Luanna punished Elizabeth, the more insecure and forgetful the girl became. The more insecure and forgetful she became, the more Luanna found reason to punish her. It grew into a never-ending cycle, one which Isaac could not stop. Whenever he tried to defend Elizabeth, Luanna would turn on him, and he’d run away from home. A day or two later, he’d go back because he couldn’t leave Liz there alone.

      He’d built up a deep resentment of his father for not putting an end to the petty meanness. To this day, they weren’t speaking.

      Fortunately, Elizabeth had slowly gained the strength she’d needed to stand up to their stepmother. When she was seventeen,