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“No one noticed this?” he asked. “No one you worked with?”
“There wasn’t much to notice,” she said. “It’s not like we stand around in the ER talking about our lives much. We are too busy. If I had bruises on my arms or legs from being grabbed or bumping into something if I was pulled or shoved, no one thought anything of it. It’s part of my job or I’d say I ran into something. I was covered up well in the scrubs anyway.”
“He was smart about that,” he said.
“I guess. As I said, I thought no one noticed,” she said quietly.
“But someone was watching?” he asked.
She turned to check on the food cooking on the grill, gathered her thoughts and turned back to Christian.
“Yes. The night I left we’d gotten in a fight. Tanner wanted me to call in sick the next day and go to a dinner party at his boss’s with him. He never understood that I couldn’t just do that. I loved my job, but he felt like it was second class.”
“I’d hardly say that,” he said.
“I never felt that way. He controlled a lot. He owned his house when we met. When we married, I gave him a big chunk of my check to pay for bills but had some in an account for me. He knew about that. He didn’t know that I had another account and started putting more in it. Maybe I always knew I’d need an escape plan deep down. Every time I got a raise or worked overtime, that money went into this other account. He just got a set amount which was like seventy percent of my check.”
“I want to ask why but won’t. It’s in the past.”
“It is,” she said. “I wanted to pay for my share. It’s as simple as that. I had no reason not to give him that when we were married. It’s not like I spent a lot of money or wanted anything. I paid for my car payment myself and insurance. I kept my cell phone. Those things were always separate and it worked out. I had some spending money at the end of the month. At least in his eyes. He knew I had bills, but he covered the rest of everything with joint credit cards that I used for expenses in the household.”
“But he didn’t know about this other account, you said?”
“No. I don’t know what made me do it. In my mind, I think I knew there might be a time I’d have to leave. It slowly built up but wasn’t like a ton of money. Under ten thousand. More than enough to leave, but not live off of for long.”
“Enough to get away,” he said. “That is all that should have been important.”
“Yes. And that one night, we argued. He hit me. Backhanded me across the face. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that was it.”
“You didn’t tell him that, did you?”
“God, no,” she said. “He left the house like he always did after yelling at me for causing him to do that.”
“Asshole,” he said.
“That and more,” she said, snorting. “I was icing my face and making a plan in mind. How I was going to pull it off. And then in walks my mother-in-law, Donna.”
“Out of the blue?” he asked. “At night?”
“Yeah. It was like eight at night. I still had two hours before I left for work, but she came storming in and told me to go pack now. She’d help me.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“No,” she said. Liz told him everything that happened and why Donna did it. Then she said, “She gave me a hundred thousand dollars right then. Just transferred it into that account that I thought no one knew about.”
“How did she know?” he asked. His jaw was open, which she could understand because it still stunned her. “Did you know they had that kind of money?”
“I never asked how she knew about that account, but she told me to sign into it and there was the money, as if I rubbed a genie and it appeared. Donna had money left to her from her father. The family was upper middle class. I didn’t realize she had money like that to just hand over, but she felt like she needed to. I wanted to say no.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asked.
“It didn’t seem like I had a choice. She told me she’d make sure Tanner didn’t come after me. To just run and not come back. Take what was mine. I left everything else. She said to consider it a settlement from the divorce and that she wished she’d done something sooner.”
“Why the hell hadn’t she?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, sighing. “I’m not sure why she did that night. Other than she knew Tanner was out getting drunk and had her suspicions. I’ve touched base with her a few times after I left, but it’s been over eight months or so. She just wanted to make sure I was settled. I was pretty cordial with her. I never said much. Though I could trust her more than anyone else in Tanner’s family, I still didn’t trust anyone enough to say much.”
“As you shouldn’t,” he said angrily. “They shouldn’t have let what was happening happen.”
