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“I wanted to be here to introduce you two. I thought we could hang out tomorrow night and order pizza, but you’ll be at Dear Evan Hansen now, which is fine,” I say, emphasizing the word fine because I don’t want to guilt trip her. It’s that this is not how I imagined things playing out. “It’s just that I work Monday, Sienna. You and Nat will both be at home without me.” I don’t know exactly what time Nat’s school day ends but it can’t be all that different from Sienna’s. I won’t be home until seven thirty at the earliest. In theory they’ll spend hours together before I come home.
“That’s so weird,” Sienna groans, and I don’t argue with her, because she’s right. I don’t like it either, but such is life. Nat is an old friend. She and Sienna will get along fine for the short time before I get home. I’m excited for them to meet because they’ll like each other, I think. I like too that Sienna can know a bit of my past, my history before her and Ben. I was once a teenager too. She forgets that sometimes.
I end the call with Sienna, telling Nat I’ll be back before carrying Sienna’s laundry basket down to the basement. Alone, in the near darkness of the basement, Declan’s texts return to me, slipping into my mind, unsought and undesired, getting under my skin and making it crawl.
You fucking bitch. ANSWER ME DAMNIT, he had said in all caps, shouting.
And then, with an almost equally disturbing placidity: I will find you. I will bring you home where you belong and once I do, I will never let you leave. I’ll lock you in a room if I have to. You are mine, Nat. Never forget that. I own you. Nothing can keep us apart.
I turn slowly around, looking into the darkened recesses of the basement to be sure I’m alone, that no one is hiding there. I throw the laundry in the wash and I leave, jogging up the stairs. I’m not gone more than two or three minutes.
Nat is standing with her back to me when I come in, looking out the dark window at the street, her hair hanging long and layered down her back.
The L has just finished passing by, the movement of it still making the apartment hum. She doesn’t hear me come in. I have the empty laundry basket in my hands, so I kick the door closed, too hard on accident. It slams, startling Nat, who wheels around. That’s when I see that she’s on her phone, which she pulls away from an ear as she comes to face me, looking guilty. Pale. She must have thought she had more time.
I pull my eyebrows together. “Who are you talking to?” I ask.
“No one,” she says. “Just a wrong number.”
But as she brings the phone to her eyes to press End, I don’t believe her. I know she’s lying. It’s not no one. I know in my heart that it’s Declan and that she called him when I went downstairs to throw the laundry in.
I’m not mad, but I am sad. My heart hurts for her. I read a statistic once that said the average person goes back to an abuser seven times before leaving for good.
Seven times.
“It was just some guy,” she goes on. “He said he was looking for someone named Justine.”
I go along with it. “He must have misdialed.”
I don’t ask right away. I wait a second. I try to be subtle, while lowering the laundry basket to the floor. “Have you heard again from Declan? Any more texts?”
“No,” she says with a quick jerk of the head, avoiding my eye. “No more texts.”
Seven times, I think again, wondering how many times Nat has already gone back to him, knowing it’s been at least once in this short time since we reconnected.
But it’s not my job to doubt her. I’m here to support her, to be a friend. “Good,” I say. “That’s good. I’m glad that’s stopped. How about some wine?”
“I’d love some,” she says, putting her phone away.
I lower myself into the armchair, which is wide and plush, the color of rust. I pull my legs into me and say, “You never told me how you and Declan met.” Nat is quiet and almost instantly, I regret that I asked. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”
“No,” she’s quick to say before taking a small sip of her wine for liquid courage. “It’s okay. It’s just that...” Her voice trails.
“It’s hard, I know.”
“Yes. It is.” She takes another sip of her wine and then goes on. “We met at the party of a mutual friend. My friend introduced us and we hit it off. We talked for hours that night and then, a few days later,” she says, “he called and asked me to dinner. By our third or fourth date, I started imagining a life for us together. It was premature, I know, but I’d never met any man like him, one who I was so compatible with. I was a late bloomer. All of my friends were married by then, and I felt a rush—the pressure—to find someone to settle down with. I was scared of being alone, but I also fell head over heels in love. We dated for only five months when he proposed. There was never any hesitation or doubt in my mind. I immediately said yes.”
“What was it like the first time he hit you?” I ask, knowing I’m close to overstepping my bounds, but I can’t help myself. I have to know.
Nat doesn’t baulk at the question. She takes a second to collect her thoughts and then says, “It was instantaneous. Blindsiding. And then it was done and he was so sorry and so full of self-loathing. He cried, sobbed like a child, and I was left to comfort him, to assure him it was no big deal and that things like that happen, though they don’t. We’d only been married a few weeks then and had an argument over something inane like household chores. In the middle of it, he was walking away and I said something stupid because I just had to get the last word in, when he wheeled around and hit me. I don’t know which of us was more stunned or appalled.”
“And then it happened again?”
“Yes. But not right away. At first moments like that were infrequent, so that I could almost convince myself that each time was the last. In time they became more regular and as they did, they changed him. He realized how powerful it made him to make me feel small, and I think it was cathartic too, taking his stress out on me.” She lifts the wineglass to her lips. She doesn’t drink from it. “Each time I came up with some excuse as to why it had happened. He’d had a bad day. He lost a trial. A client fired him or someone else was chosen for partner over him. Each time, I told myself it would never happen again.”
“Do you regret marrying him?” I ask. She must, after everything she’s been through. Except that I know she’s still in love with him too.
“Sometimes, yes. But I didn’t know who he was when I did.”
