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Emma laughed. “I can’t imagine the town was very big back then.”
Smiling, I turned on the lights. “Want me to build a fire in the fireplace?”
“Will we be here long enough to enjoy it?”
I raised my brows, and her cheeks flushed.
“You build the fire; I’ll get the food out and plated up. I’m glad you had paper plates in your truck.”
Getting to work on a small fire, I glanced at Emma over my shoulder. “I like to take Hadley on random picnics from time to time. I was stopping to buy them so much, I decided to just keep some in the truck.”
After getting the fire started, I sent a text to headquarters to let them know I was using the cabin in case they saw smoke. Then we sat down at the small table and ate our tuna melt sandwiches and made a bit of small talk before Emma set her sandwich down and exhaled.
“Something happened today at ladies’ church.”
“I figured.”
She gave me a soft smile. “I’ve been so nervous to tell you about my ex-husband Ben.”
“Emma, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to share.”
“I know. But I see now that my anxiety about telling you was silly. Rose told me to give myself grace.” She rolled her eyes and let out a humorless laugh.
“You mentioned earlier you didn’t want me to think less of you. Was it because you stayed with him?”
With a small nod, she wrung her hands together. “I was married to Ben for ten years. For eight of those years he was physically abusive.”
My hands clenched into fists. I wanted to track down Ben and make him hurt, just like he’d made Emma hurt.
“The first time he slapped me was after a dinner with some of his friends. One of the guys mentioned how pretty I was. Ben accused me of flirting with him.”
I nearly growled. “He hit you because hisfriendsaid you were pretty?”
Emma nodded. “He always cried afterward, in the beginning. Begged me to forgive him. A few months would go by and something else would trigger him. He’d pull my hair, or slap me, or push me to the floor. Sometimes, he…” She paused. “He wanted rough sex, so he would…”
I closed my eyes. “Tell me he didn’t hit you while having sex with you.”
She swallowed hard. “No. He would just be…rough. As the years went by, the abuse got worse. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to leave the house or be around any of his friends because I knew I’d say something wrong, or they would. When hedidforce me to go out with him, I pretty much sat in a corner and didn’t speak until I had to.”
“And no one thought that was strange?”
She shrugged. “If they did, they looked the other way. Ben was charming and handsome. If someone questioned him, he had a way of talking around them.
“Early on, I found out I was pregnant. I thought for sure he wouldn’t touch me if I was carrying his child.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “That mother?—”
My curse broke off when Emma put a hand on my arm. “He didn’t physically hurt me while I was pregnant. It was more emotional and mental, like threatening to take the baby away from me and lock me up somewhere.
“The further along I got, the more terrified I became for my child’s safety. I decided I was going to leave him before I even gave birth. I couldn’t risk raising a child with a father like that. I called an old friend of mine from college, told her I needed help,and she offered to help me start over with the baby. The very next morning, I woke up with terrible cramps. Ben didn’t believe me; thought I was just whining for attention. When I started to bleed, he finally took me to the hospital.”
Tears started to fall freely, and she quickly wiped them away. “When the doctor came in and told me the baby was gone, I cried like I’d never cried before. Ben was upset, but I was never sure if that was for show or if it was real.
“But what makes it so terrible is…I was crying because I washappy, Aiden. I was actuallyhappythat I wasn’t going to bring a child into the world that had his blood. I know that makes me a terrible person.”
“No,” I said as I took her hand in mine. “That doesn’t make you terrible at all, Emma.”
“After I lost the baby, I went to a different doctor, not my usual one. I got on birth control, and I never told Ben or anyone else. He would’ve been so angry if he knew I was deceiving him that way.”
