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“What thing?”

She took a long drag on her cigarette and blew it out shakily. “We kissed once, when we were fifteen? Me and Brian?” She looked over at me and chewed nervously on the side of her thumb. “Spin the bottle. But you’d think we had some steamy affair by the way Jake acts.” She ashed her cigarette. “After you guys left, I said something about him being smart to open the drive-in to supplement his income, and it went from there.”

I licked my lips. “Liz, I want to tell you something. Something I wish people would have told me once.”

She looked over at me, waiting.

I held her eyes. “I believe you. I can handle anything you need to tell me. You don’t need to protect me from the truth and I’m here to help you in any way I can. It’s not your fault. And you don’t deserve it.”

I saw the words crash over her. Her chin quivered.

There was so much power in those words, I realized. I wondered how much sooner I would have found the strength to leave if someone had been saying those things to me when I needed to hear it—and I’d believed them.

I went on. “When you’re ready to leave, we will help you.”

She sat quiet for a moment. “I can’t,” she whispered. “There’s no way.”

“I know it feels like that. Trust me, I do. But you can, and you will. Start taking the steps now.”

I dipped my head to look at her. “Are you on birth control?”

He’d get her pregnant to trap her. Make her more dependent on him. And she’d never be in more physical danger than she would be when pregnant.

She shook her head. “No. He won’t let me.” She sniffed. “I asked Hal if he could get me the pill, but he said he can’t do it without a prescription. That if Jake found out he’d get his license revoked. I can’t get away for three hours to see a doctor in Rochester. Jake always goes with me, and he never lets me go in alone. Every month I pray for my period—”

“I can prescribe something for you.”

She let out a shaky breath through her nose. “Thank you.”

“Liz, I’d like your permission to file a police report.”

She jerked away from me. “What? No!”

“Yes. You should have something on record. You don’t need to have anything to do with it. You can say you didn’t know.”

She shook her head at me, incredulous. “And what do you think this is going to accomplish?”

“They’ll investigate—”

“And then what?” she snapped. “He’s gets fired and gets twenty-four hours in jail before they let him out again? And now I’m more fucked than I already am? He’ll blame me. I already work two jobs, we barely pay the bills, and at least when he’s at work I get a break. Don’t.”

Her eyes begged me.

“Please,” she said. “I know he’ll apologize. I know he feels bad. He always regrets it. Promise me you won’t, Alexis.”

I looked at her, my eyes sad.

If I filed a report against her wishes, she would never come to me with another injury. She wouldn’t feel safe going to anyone. And she was right. Jake would blame her for the investigation, even if she had nothing to do with it.

Jake was like Neil. He couldn’t accept responsibility for himself. It would make things worse for her, and there would be no resolution anyway if she wasn’t going to cooperate. But the idea of not calling the police made me feel like an accomplice to his crime. I didn’t want to be a bystander to this, and I didn’t know what to do.

“Okay,” I said. “I won’t call. But I’d like your permission to document everything that I saw. Let me take pictures of your injuries. And I want you to write down what he’s done.”

“No—”

I put up a hand. “I won’t give it to anyone. I promise. But you need to have this. You might want it one day. We document tonight and then I want you to keep a diary of anything he does from this point on. Anything. If he punches a wall or breaks something, take a picture if your phone is safe and send it to me. Then delete it. If he makes a threat, you write it down. He hurts you, you write it down. And write down anything else that you remember, as far back as you can. You can leave it at Daniel’s, we’ll keep it safe. It could help you in court.”

She studied me for a moment, like she was deciding if she could trust me.