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“You’re still here?” she said when she woke.
“Yes,” I replied, choosing not to say I’d found it harder and harder to be away from her, that seeing her first thing, her body soft and ripe with my child, her eyes bright with affection was the fuel I needed to get through the hours that would pass before I saw her again.
She kissed me, her touch still sweet, almost shy, but her comfort with me real. Her eyes darkened with something but she smiled it away.
“I guess I should get up. I’m seeing Esther today.”
“Wait,” I said, and she paused and looked at me. “What were you just thinking?”
Her smiled dropped an increment, but I didn’t press, just waited.
“I just… That day. Why did you…?”
“Take you?” I asked.
She nodded.
I’d considered that question a thousand times and had finally settled on an answer. “You reminded me of someone. My turn,” I said.
She nodded again.
“How did you find him?”
She chuckled grimly. “You mean how was I stupid enough to get captured by him? To allow myself to be broken by him?”
“Fawn—”
She turned her eyes toward me. “What? It wasn’t my fault? I couldn’t have known?”
I went silent, but then grabbed her hand and squeezed it, urging her to go on.
“Vanity,” she finally said.
I squinted in question, but she wasn’t looking at me, didn’t see me. Was lost in those horrible memories of the past.
“I graduated high school and I needed a job, decided I was going to be a real professional. I ended up at a temp agency, and they sent me to David’s office. It was his father’s back then, but I didn’t know that, didn’t know anything. Was just a stupid kid pretending to be an adult.”
She looked at me then, but I still didn’t think she saw me. “Don’t know how I caught his attention, but one day he stopped in front of my desk, said I had a pleasing telephone voice.” She laughed derisively. “Pleasing telephone voice,” she spat. “Something as stupid as that, and I felt like the queen of the world. Important. Special.” Her voice went quiet then, and I saw the anguish in her expression.
“He was so sweet, so nice. And then one day he wasn’t,” she said on a deep sigh.
“He hit you,” I said, knowing full well the answer but needing to hear her say it.
“Hit me. Kicked me. Choked me. Whatever caught his fancy at any given moment,” she said casually.
I paused, rage making me dizzy, the desire for retribution making it almost impossible for me to stay still, sadness at what she had lost, happiness at being with her now, making me stay. When I thought I could speak again, I said, “Did you try to leave him?”
She looked at me then, face twisted in disgust. At me or herself, I couldn’t tell.
“I didn’t try. I did,” she said. “Waited until he left one day and then snuck out. Went to Esther’s house.”
She looked at me again then, reading the question on my face. “So what happened?” she said.
I nodded.
“What always happened. I was stupid, let myself get comfortable. Let myself believe that he’d let me go. I was there for over a month, had almost convinced myself I was safe. And then one day…”
She trailed off, eyes turning down, face dropping. “Someone slipped an envelope under the door. There were pictures inside, pictures of Esther, her grandmother, her little brother.”
