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The countertops were white quartz. The bowl full of apples and pears on the island was white. The lights over the island, the floors. Everything white. Big. Roomy. Airy. A place you felt like you could take a deep breath.
But that wasn’t necessarily why it was my favorite room.
No.
It was because it was the only room in the entire house that Teddy hadn’t laid a hand on me in. Mostly because he never had reason to step inside it. And when he was home, neither did I.
The master bedroom was my least favorite room. Also the place he first hit me under this roof, held me down.
The master bath.
The guest room when I’d tried to sleep there one night.
Library.
Living room.
Great room.
The backyard.
The laundry room where I had been standing trying to get bloodstains out of my clothes before putting them in the bin for the staff.
The gym in the basement.
The second guest room that was set up as my sort of girl cave, full of the frilly things he’d never let me have in the rest of the house.
Even the downstairs powder room.
He’d beaten me everywhere.
Except the kitchen.
So hearing his footsteps moving toward this room, my safe space, the only room in the house that didn’t make my belly clench a bit when entering it, made a prickle of dread work its way up my spine, down my jaw.
“Who the fuck are you all dressed down for?” he growled at the nightie he bought because he told me he refused to be married to a woman who wore sweatshirts or plaid pajama sets to bed, spitting the words like they were expletives. When I said nothing because he didn’t want an answer, not really, because I’d learned that answering usually only made it worse, he charged at me. “You fucking slut.”
Slut.
That was his favorite pet name for me.
Bitch was a close second, but he really got his jollies off saying slut as though there could be any truth in it. Me, the seventeen-year-old virgin he had taken to bed when he was well into his twenties. The girl he’d waited eight months after that to ask to marry him.
The girl who had never known the touch of a man who actually loved her. Just liked to control her. Manipulate her. Hurt her.
Yeah, I was the slut of freaking Navesink Bank.
What was next was a blur. For those who had never been beating more than once, they usually all turn that way. Pain. Yelling. Pain. Repeat and repeat until he ran through his anger or I got sick or I lost consciousness.
I couldn’t tell you how many times he hit me. If his fists were closed or open. If I blacked out at all while he strangled me. When he managed to grab my arm hard enough to leave bruises.
All I knew was the sensation of relief when it was over, when he moved out of the room, his footsteps no less clipped than before. And I leaned back against the counter in a room I used to love, trying to process the pain that felt everywhere at once.
“That will make you think before you think you can fuck around behind my back again, bitch,” he yelled as he moved away.
And, for some reason, that was it.
The straw that broke this battered woman’s back.
I flew out of the kitchen, ramming my shoulder into Teddy as I passed him, making him stumbled, hiss, curse, demand I Come back here and apologize.
All I remember thinking was Oh, I am coming back there alright, as I went into his library, sliding open the stubborn middle drawer, dragging out the gun I knew he kept there because it made him feel manly to have it, pulled off the safety because I likely knew more about guns than he did, turned, and aimed just as he came stepping into the doorway.
“Oh, fuck off with that, Jen. You’re never going to…”
But I was going to.
I did.
Unlike the beating, every moment of this was in slow motion, in bright, Technicolor detail, everything in high contrast, every noise beside the click of the trigger and the bang of the gun, the whiz of the bullet, the thunk of it tearing through Teddy’s hollow chest was silent.
The gun felt hot in my hand as my arm lowered, as Teddy made some shocked noise as his hand clutched his chest, as he staggered. His gaze lifted to me, eyes huge, uncomprehending, before he lost his footing, falling backward, landing with a sickening crack on the hard floor.
Seconds passed before the blood started blooming out, giving him the appearance of Mary depicted on those candles my grandma always had on her kitchen counter, the bright yellow sun behind her. Only this sun was red. This sun didn’t give life, it heralded death.
And I stood there, watching the life drain from my husband, this man I swore to love and cherish and honor and obey until death do us part.
