Page 65 of Justice

SKYE

Paranoia was keeping me up at night, and it was starting to show. My eyes looked sunken. My skin looked dull. Even with concealer, I had that same worn-down, half-haunted look I’d carried during the last few years of my marriage.

Back when sleeping beside Roman never meant I could actually rest.

I’d lie awake wondering what kind of argument he would start the next day. What innocent thing I’d say that he would twist into disrespect. What information involving the kids he was keeping from me just so he could watch me scramble after the fact.

Roman loved making me feel like I was losing my mind. He would move things, hide things, tell me conversations never happened. And whenever I finally broke down, whenever I cried or raised my voice, he would get calm. Almost peaceful. Like my distress was the lullaby he needed to sleep at night.

Once, my son begged me to bake my famous double chocolate chip cookies for a friend’s birthday party. I called them famous because he did, but they were good. Soft in the middle, crisp around the edges, with enough chocolate to make a child temporarily forget how to behave.

I made the dough the night before the party.

At some point, my baby girl started screaming from the other room. Not regular fussing either. She sounded terrified. I dropped everything and ran to her, and by the time I got her settled and made it back to the kitchen, Roman was standing near the counter.

He claimed he had only come in for water.

I didn’t think much of it then. I was too tired, too distracted, too accustomed to being on edge for reasons I couldn’t always explain. I finished the cookies, packed them up, and sent my son to the party the next afternoon, proud to be contributing something everybody loved.

A few hours later, the phone calls started.

Nearly every child who ate the cookies got sick. Stomach cramps. Diarrhea. Parents leaving the party early with miserable children doubled over in the back seats of their cars. Everybody assumed it was food poisoning.

And because they were my cookies, they assumed it was me.

I was horrified. I kept replaying every step in my head, trying to figure out what I could have done wrong. The butter was fresh. The eggs weren’t expired. I hadn’t left the dough sitting out. I scrubbed my counters before I started. I knew I had.

But by then, I had been married to Roman long enough to doubt things I knew.

Later that evening, I found an empty bottle of MiraLAX shoved beneath other trash in the bathroom garbage can.

I stood there staring at it until my body went numb.

There was no reason for it to be empty. No one in the house had been constipated. No one had mentioned needing it. And I knew, with the kind of certainty that settles into your bones before your brain is ready to accept it, that Roman had poured it into the cookie dough while I was distracted.

I was also convinced he had done something to make my daughter cry.

I could never prove that part. I couldn’t prove any of it. That was the beauty of Roman’s cruelty. He never did anything without leaving himself a door to escape through. By the time I confronted him, he was offended that I would even accuse him.

He called me unstable.

Said I was so desperate to blame him for everything that I was willing to invent a story about him poisoning children. Then he asked what kind of mother served food at a party without making sure it was safe.

That was Roman. He would cut you, hide the knife, then demand to know why you were bleeding on his floor.

But all of it had been punishment for something I had done.

At one of his work events, I had quietly pointed out that he’d dripped sauce on his tie. I hadn’t laughed, nor did I make a damn scene. All I did was lean toward him and whisper it because I thought I was helping.

But one of his colleagues overheard me.

Roman smiled at the time. He even thanked me. Then, on the ride home, he told me I had humiliated him. According to him, correcting him in front of other men had made him look weak. I had embarrassed him in front of people whose respect he needed. I had emasculated him over a drop of sauce.

A drop of sauce.

That was how fragile narcissists are. His ego was made of glass, and somehow everybody around him was responsible for keeping it from cracking. But only someone deeply disturbed would punish innocent children because his wife pointed out a stain on his tie.

Standing in Justice’s house now, I could feel those old memories moving through my body. Not like thoughts. Like symptoms.