I got home to a deserted street and darkness. Dawn didn’t break in January until much later. The sweet smoke of the fire we’d made lingered in the air, and the driveway was covered with snow, so I parked on the street. As I walked toward the front door, as I let myself into the house, part of me was still floating. I didn’t turn on any lights. I hung up my coat. I didn’t — and this is important — I didn’t have my gun with me. It was upstairs, where I’d left it with my uniform.
I went into the living room. Blindly, without seeing anything, I gathered up the clothes I’d shed there, as well as the robe and the blanket from Tom. I inhaled the scent of the robe as I held it. So many thoughts raced through my mind: thoughts of Tom, thoughts of my body and the things I’d been missing, thoughts of my job, my childhood, my mother, my father, my brother. The one thing I didn’t think about was the danger I should have remembered. I didn’t think about Ricky. I’d forgotten all about him. At that moment, my husband didn’t exist. I hadn’t left the lights on or checked the lock on the door or any of the windows.
Of course, that was a terrible, terrible mistake.
He came at me from nowhere, an invisible man bursting from the shadows. One moment I had clothes in my arms, and then the next moment I was literally flying through the air as Ricky threw me across the room. I’m not heavy; he had no trouble launching me off my feet. I hit the wall and smashed into a glass picture frame that broke, spraying shards that sliced open my face and arm. Before I even fell, he grabbed me and threw me again, this time full speed into the brick hearth of the fireplace. My head struck stone. Pain erupted like the burn of a flame behind my eyes. I slumped to the carpet, tasting blood in my mouth.
“You whore! You goddamn whore!”
He bent over me, shouting in my face. I was on my back, but I couldn’t focus on the dark shape over me, because I was caught in a tornado of dizziness and hurt. I put up my hands in a feeble effort to push him away, but he twisted my left wrist hard, and I heard the bone snap like a broken pencil. I couldn’t help myself; I screamed in agony. He drove his knee into my chest, making me choke, and then he leaned his whole weight into me. Next he used his fists on my face, over and over, and with each blow, my skull slammed into the floor. He broke my jaw. He broke my nose. Blood from my head ran into my eyes.
I wanted to die to make the pain go away. I begged for mercy, pleading with him to stop.
He just hit me harder.
He hit me and hit me and hit me and hit me until I finally lost consciousness there on the floor. That emptiness was a gift. I had no dreams. I had no awareness of what he was doing to me.
Thank God.
By the time I awoke again, hours had passed. The sun had risen. Outside, it was a beautiful morning, the snow and clouds forgotten. A winter cardinal trilled at the feeder beyond the window. Bright light streamed through the living room and across my body on the floor.
I was alone. The house was silent. Ricky had gone.
Everything in my world was pain; every movement stabbed me like a sharp knife. I tried to push myself up, but I’d forgotten my broken wrist, and my arm collapsed under me as another shiver of lightning seared through my nerves. I lay on my back.
For a long time, all I could do was cry.
Cold air through the chimney chilled my skin. I managed to sit up, swallowing down nausea as my vision spun. My eyes were practically swollen shut, making me squint. I could see just enough to realize that I was naked. My clothes, ripped and torn, lay around me, along with buttons that lay on the floor like acorns. I was completely covered in bruises that made me into a horrible rainbow. Blood had dried on the floor around me and all over my face and chest.
There was so much pain it was hard to isolate any one area, but one thing I knew was that the hurt was between my legs, too, a hurt that went deep inside me. When I touched myself down there, I winced, and I knew what he’d done. That was the final insult. The final humiliation.
I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so, so sorry to lay this burden on you. I didn’t want to tell you any of this. I thought I could leave it out, thought I could spare you the ugly details, but you have to know the whole truth of what happened that night. You need to know the horror I faced. Otherwise, how can you understand?
That was the night you were conceived, the night that brought you into this world. That’s where your story began.
Were you brought to life in love? Were you the product of those few blissful hours I spent with a man I’d just met?
Or were you born out of a violence that changed me forever?
I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I never wanted to know, never wanted to find out. Maybe I couldn’t bear to hear the wrong answer. I can’t tell you whether your father was Tom Ginn or Ricky Todd. Sadly, you weren’t in my life long enough for me to see the answer as you grew up. The only person I ever saw in your eyes was me. When I held you in my arms for the first time, I saw this perfect, beautiful, miniature version of myself looking up at me.
You were my daughter.
I knew that, I felt that, I sensed the connection we had. I loved you with all my heart, a love that seemed impossible to me because it went so deeply into my soul. I loved you more than I’ve ever loved another human being, then or since. You have to believe that, sweetheart. I loved you.
But I had to send you away.
Part Two
Your Mother
Chapter Twenty-One
I spent two weeks in the hospital after Ricky’s assault and then another three weeks at home recovering. It was mid-March before I was really up and around. I’m right-handed, so even though my broken left wrist was in a cast, it didn’t slow me down too much. My cuts healed, and to my relief, they left no noticeable scars. The bruises began to fade. Miraculously, for the blows my head had taken against the floor, I’d escaped having a concussion. As we neared spring, I was feeling healthy and more like myself again.
My brother called several times while I was recovering, but he had a job in New Mexico and couldn’t leave. My father took a few weeks off from the road and practically lived with me during that stretch. He was mostly worthless around the house, with absolutely no experience cooking or cleaning, which meant that most of the time I took care of him more than he helped me. But I liked having him with me for a while, even though we had a way of getting on each other’s nerves. Eventually, though, he had to get back in his truck and start making money again, and the house felt empty after he left. Given what would happen soon, I was grateful for that time we spent together.
Others in town helped, too. For all their many shortcomings, people around here come together when someone needs them. Ben Malloy insisted on giving me five hundred dollars to help with my expenses while I was out of work. He gave it anonymously, but I heard through the grapevine that it was him. Darrell, his wife, and daughters were always bringing over meals. Norm shoveled my driveway. Will, who’d mostly recovered from his own injuries, made me a couple of pieces of new furniture to replace ones that had been damaged in the fight. He talked and walked a little slower than he had, but he was alive, and his charming smile was back, if tinged with more sadness.
As for Ricky, he left town. Rather than face criminal charges, he vanished, taking his truck and the clothes he was wearing and nothing else. No one was sure where he’d gone, but I heard a rumor that he was in Pennsylvania under a different name. With Norm’s help, I filed for divorce, which went uncontested because Ricky didn’t show up in court.