AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, it’s okay. I’m just ashamed.” She stared down at her hands and drew in a deep breath. “I was fresh out of high school, eighteen and thought I knew it all. You know how it is,” she tried to shrug, but I could see her posture change. Her shoulders slumped, drew inward as if to make herself smaller.
“You were really young,” I said, encouraging her.
“I know, but that’s not an excuse.”
“He’s the one who did wrong, Julie. Not you. You don’t need to make excuses.”
“My counselor, the one I saw for a few weeks after I got away from him, she said I have to forgive myself. That’s easier said than done. Because after a while, you get so isolated that you start believing you’re the person he says you are. Stupid and useless and weak, and that I made him mad. It was always my fault….” She paused and cleared her throat and set her jaw.
“I was at a bookstore, of all things. Like a sidewalk sale outside a store I liked. He approached me, heaped on the compliments, and I was suckered in.”
“And he spent the next few years trying to isolate you and mistreating you?”
“Yep. And I let him. God, I hate myself for it. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. I was so happy when he went to jail, like I could get on with my life. But here he is again, making me feel just as helpless as he did back then. I hate it.”
The waiter took our order, and I tried to persuade Julie to eat some of the appetizer. She sipped her lemonade and shook her head. Little by little, she told the story like she was reciting a grocery list or the Presidents in order starting with George Washington. First, he shouted at her and punched a hole in the wall beside her head. Next time, he grabbed her and shook her, scaring her and making her teeth clack together, but he got her flowers that time and cried about how sorry he was, how it would never happen again. Then when he backhanded her, he told her about how his dad used to hit his mom, used to beat him up as a kid. That he would do better, but she couldn’t leave him. He’d die if she left him.
Eric brought home a bag full of books he knew she’d like from the same bookstore where they met, and a mocha Frappuccino. That was after he blacked her eye. He understood her, knew who she really was. They belonged together. They were meant to be. The beautiful nightgown and robe, silky and pale lilac—her favorite color—that was what he gave her after he choked her because she put onion in the meatloaf. He ripped the nightgown off her when she tried to run from him two nights later. He’d been drinking, and she asked him to stop, said that his temper was worse when he was drinking. She was trying to control him—that’s what he said.
“Then he told me if I ever left him, he’d kill me and then himself.”
“Jesus,” I said.
The waiter brought our food. I had to make myself eat something even though her story made me sick. I’d heard dozens of stories like it, some even worse. But I’d never felt like this. Never with sick rage churning in my gut, never with the nearly blinding impulse to call my brothers, to find Eric’s new address in the court database and make sure he never made it to his check-in with the parole officer because I had a shovel. I could see it in my mind, visceral and so realistic.
Julie touched my hand. “Jeremy? Are you okay? Was that too much detail?”
I gave a harsh laugh. “You’re worried you upset me,” I said in bitter disbelief. “That piece of trash abused you and choked you and threatened to kill you, and you’re making sure I’m okay. Julie—I don’t even know what to say. Except I’m sorry. I’m sorry that we didn’t keep in touch and check in on you. I’m sorry we let it go so far. I feel like as close as you’ve always been with Kendall, we should’ve looked out for you better.”
“She didn’t know. I couldn’t tell her, not after I’d gone on about how perfect he was and then, well, he didn’t like her or any of my friends, and I had to cut them off to prove I was loyal to him…then he took my phone away, and I couldn’t keep any money or anything. I wouldn’t have told her anyway, because I was so embarrassed, I’d moved in with him and let it get so bad without leaving. She wouldn’t understand. She was so independent and she—”
“Goddammit, Julie, she had us. She has family. You didn’t have anyone! That’s why he was able to do that to you—he love-bombed you and got you under his control and there was nobody to stop him.”
