“No. No, of course not.” Is that true, Hannah? “I mean…I don’t know. Sometimes he can get a little rough with sex, but I encourage it. It can be fun.”
Dr. Britel wrote in her notepad, and it made Hannah feel like she was giving a confession to the police.
“Rough in what way?”
“Nothing, really. I mean, I think I’ve mentioned it before. Sometimes he bites, but not too hard. Or wants to try something a little more experimental.” Hannah sucked in a deep breath and let go in one short, fast burst. “A couple of years ago he wanted to try choking me during sex. It’s supposed to increase the intensity of the orgasm. I actually researched it. But…but I just wasn’t comfortable with it, so he let it go. It was no big deal. He asked a couple more times, but not in a while.”
“I see.” More note scribbling. “Did he ever ask you to choke him?”
“No.”
“And this dream last night. The talking in his sleep. Did you ask him about it?”
“No. I haven’t seen him today. He’d left for work by the time I woke up.”
“Are you planning to?”
I don’t know.
“Yes,” Hannah said.
“Okay, then I suggest we move on from this subject for now. Let’s wait until next week to explore this much further. I would like to see how you two discuss this first.”
Hannah nodded, relieved to be able to move on. Though she felt a twinge of panic. Now I have to ask him about it. She truly wanted and intended to, but the idea of actually asking him filled her stomach with ice. If she asked him, he might tell her an answer she didn’t want to hear.
The remainder of her session was filled with the usual back and forth that seemed routine but was the essence of why Hannah had started her weekly therapy. After Billy went to prison, Hannah had left her tiny Kansas town and had matured immensely, but perhaps too fast to be healthy. Dallin’s company had grown at light-speed pace, and by the time he’d proposed to Hannah almost six years ago, his net worth approached a million dollars. Today, that number was nearly forty times that, at least on paper. Growing up, Hannah’s understanding of money came from Billy’s profane outbursts about how they didn’t fuckin’ have any. Forty million was an incomprehensible number to Hannah, and the richer they became, the more detached she became from all of it. Now they had people to tend to the finances. Accountants. Advisors. And she had her sister nearby, who hadn’t been nearly as prosperous. Their relationship strained as Hannah’s wealth rocketed.
She could hear Billy in her head in these moments, saying she should have turned out more like her sister, Justine. Single mother of two kids from two different fathers. Decent job but hardly what one would call successful. Outward bitterness towards life.
But Hannah was not Justine.
“We’re nearly out of time,” Dr. Britel said, “and I want to resume next week with our discussion earlier today. But let me ask you one last question before you leave.” Dr. Britel stared at her, those cold, clinical eyes framed by wrinkles of years asking a thousand patients a million questions about their most desperate thoughts and feelings. “Do you feel safe at home?”
“Safe?”
Dr. Britel nodded.
Hannah hadn’t thought about that. For all the horrible things that her imagination let her paint in her mind, she had never questioned her own safety. Until now.
“Yes,” she said. “I feel safe. Dallin would never hurt me.” As if to convince herself, she then added, “Ever. Why?”
A small, polite smile from the doctor. “It’s just something I need to ask.”
Throughout the rest of Hannah’s day, the question kept coming back to her.
Am I safe?
Of course she felt safe. Even though everyone had a side darker than they often let show, she knew Dallin. They knew each other.
Then she heard Billy in her head.
Ain’t true, Hannie. Everyone has secrets. Tra-la-la, is what I say. Tra-la-fuckin’-la.
Hannah looked down at her left forearm. She just realized she’d been unconsciously scratching at it all day, and now it was red with fingernail tracks.
Of course I feel safe.
CHAPTER THREE
DAY 3
Hannah stood on the balcony of their downtown Seattle condo, watching Puget Sound fade slowly into darkness. The half-hour before the sun disappeared always seemed the loneliest to her. There was something about how the waning sunlight turned the Sound gray that made everything feel cold and empty to her. Hannah preferred even blackness to gray. Blackness could at least be defined. She could hide in black. Wrap it around her. Disappear.
She took a sip of her wine. Really, a gulp. She was on her second glass, which, most likely, would be a full bottle by the end of the night, followed by a small headache but larger sense of regret in the morning. But tonight she wasn’t thinking about conceiving a child. She was wondering about secrets.
The sliding glass door slid open. Dallin was home.
“There you are,” he said.
She didn’t turn around. A few moments later she felt his hands slip around her waist and grasp around her belly. She kept her gaze straight, watching the gray mercifully turn to black.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He leaned his face around to hers, and she saw his blue eyes shine brighter than they should have in the faded light coming from in the condo. His intentionally disheveled brown hair faded into a smoky five o’clock shadow that accentuated his jawline. She smelled him, breathed him in. He didn’t smell like the Dallin from two days ago. She didn’t know why, but he just didn’t smell the same. In fact, he seemed completely devoid of any scent at all.
“When you say nothing, it’s always something,” he said, a thin smile on his mouth. “You’ve been distant for a couple of days. What’s going on?”
It was true, she had been avoiding him since the night he spoke in his sleep. She knew she needed to say something about it, but yesterday she just avoided it altogether. She had kept conversation minimal and gone to bed early while he worked in the study. Tonight, though, was different. Tonight she had to say something, or this would continue to gnaw at her until it ate her from the inside out.
“Two nights ago you spoke in your sleep,” she said.
His head pulled back, just an inch. Caution. “Did I?”
“You did.”
She waited for him to ask her what he said. He didn’t.
“You…you were talking to a woman,” she said. “I…think you were…Dallin, I don’t even know how to say this. I think you were raping and killing her.”
Dallin pushed away from her, and Hannah felt a flash of anger at him doing so. “Jesus,” he said.
She turned and searched his eyes, looking for panic. Looking for explanation. Even looking for bemusement. But there was nothing in them at all, and she didn’t know what to do with that.
“I must have been having a bad dream,” he said.
“You’ve never talked in your sleep before.”
“So?”
“So you called the woman a cunt.”
The word shocked him silent for a moment. “Are you asking me to apologize for what I said in my sleep?”
“I’m just trying to understand. You don’t remember anything?”
The normal, analytical Dallin would have asked her exactly what it was he said. The Dallin on the balcony with empty eyes did not.
“No.”
Dallin took a step back from the edge of the balcony and let his arms hang at his sides. It seemed to Hannah a studied posture. Non-threatening.
“Dallin, just…I don’t know. I realize you were sleeping, and you can’t control what you dream. But doesn’t this seem weird to you? I mean, do you…do you have fantasies that are…”
“Violent?”
She hated that the word came so quickly from his mouth.
“Yes,” she said.
“What would you do if I did?”
It was as if someone reached out and slapped her open-palmed across the face. She had asked the question so she could judge the quality of his denial, but she had at least expected a denial. Not a question directed back at her. Hannah took a step backwards.
“Please tell me it’s not true,” she said. “Don’t tell me the idea of…of hurting someone turns you on.”
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m simply asking what you would do if I said it was true.” He shifted his weight to one leg, his posture more casual than his words. “Look, Hannah, you’re asking me to defend something I did when I was unconscious. So if you’re going to stand here and ask me to justify words I couldn’t control, then I’m asking you to deal with my answers. So I’m asking you, if I had violent fantasies that I never acted upon, what would you do? Would you explore them with me?”
“God, no.”
“Then what?” His voice rose just a few decibels. “Would you leave me?”
She shook her head. “No, Dallin. I just want to understand. Why are you asking me this?”
There was a moment in his eyes, a brief flash of desperation, of pleading. The moment in the interrogation room where the suspect wanted to confess, considered it for a moment, lured by the promise of It’s okay. Tell us what happened and it’ll make things better for you.
Then the moment was gone.
“Well, I don’t have an answer except to tell you I’m the man you’ve always known. Who is not a rapist and murderer. I mean, are you even kidding me about this? You know I have bad dreams from time to time.”
“Sometimes I feel you only show me what you want me to see.”
“What does that mean?”
“Like you never telling me about your second phone.”
“The two-phone argument again? I told you it was for work.” Dallin balled his fists and then released them. “Do you tell me about every part of your life?”
She hesitated. “I tell you about every part of my life here,” she continued, quietly adding the “here” as her loophole. “You know why? Because I love you and want to share with you. You know what I do all day, because I tell you. But you come home and tell me work was good, or some meeting was great, or maybe a small piece of something that’s bothering you. Other than that, I don’t get anything from you. That’s if I’m lucky enough to see you before I go to bed.”
“Hannah, I just don’t think you would—”
“What, understand?” Hannie, you dumb rube. “I’m too stupid to understand your work?”
“Calm down. I was going to say find it interesting.”
Was there anything more enraging than to be told to calm down? Hannah felt her neck muscles tighten. “I just don’t want to feel like this.”
“Feel like what?”
“That you have secrets from me.”
“I’m confused. I have a bad dream and you think I’m full of secrets all of a sudden? Well, shit, Hannah, maybe I should start sleeping in another room. Better yet, I’ll just stay awake from now on. Would that help?”
“You basically admitted you have violent fantasies.”
“I didn’t say that at all.”
“Then tell me you don’t.”
He leaned in, almost predatory.
“I don’t.”
“It’s more than just what you said. The past two years. You’ve been distant. I hardly see you. We go weeks without sex—”
Dallin pushed his fingers up through his hair and let out a sigh of exasperation, the sigh of someone who had the same argument a thousand times before and had to have it yet once again.
“I know I work a lot. But by the time I get home, you’ve already lost yourself in a bottle of wine. You’ve replaced me with that glass. How do you think that makes me feel?”
She moved to set the wine glass down but held it defiantly, as if proving her drinking wasn’t the problem.
“Maybe I drink because I’m bored and lonely. You spend longer hours away from me as each month passes. Jesus, it’s such a cliché. The richer we get the emptier I feel.”
“Hannah, do you want me to leave Echo? Leave what I’ve built?”
Echo. His company. Everything was about Echo.
“Actually, sometimes I do,” she said. “We have more money than we’ll ever be able to spend.”
“If I left, the value of our stock goes with it. And how could you even want me to leave? You know how passionate I am about it.”
“I want you to be passionate about more than just Echo. About us. About our life together,” Hannah said.
“I am. The other night was great. And we’re…we’re trying, you know?” He reached out and stroked her hair, and she suddenly felt like a trophy being admired on a shelf. Then his thumb lowered and traced the faded scar above her right eye, the scar Billy put there when she was fifteen. Hannah pulled his hand down.
“What about when you wanted to choke me during sex?” she said. “Why would you want that?”
“That was years ago.”
“But still, you wanted it. You wanted to choke me.”
“That’s supposed to be pleasurable for you, not for me.”
“I can’t see how that would be pleasurable.”
“And you’ve used handcuffs on me before,” he countered. “Does that mean you secretly want to restrain men, fuck them, and then slit their throats?”
The coarseness of his words attacked her. He wasn’t just trying to make a point. He was trying to make her mad. It was working. She couldn’t let herself be baited, because she would lose her temper completely and he would win. He would win because he could then say she was irrational and he could no longer reason with her.
“Those were…stupid fuzzy handcuffs. I thought it would be fun. Different. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” She felt the warmth of tears spilling over her face and she hated it. “It was more than a dream,” she continued. “You were talking. You were enjoying yourself. You were causing pain and it made you happy. I heard it make you happy. Do you have any idea how awful a feeling that is? What if it were me saying things like that in my sleep? Wouldn’t that make you wonder things about me?”
He took a step forward and jabbed his finger toward her face. “It wouldn’t make me question the nature of who you were as a person. I would see it for what it was. Your subconscious taking over. This whole thing is ridiculous.”
These last words were spoken with a voice that seemed not her husband’s and with a facial expression more of an amateurish actor than someone who believed in what he was saying. Dallin was suddenly distant, as if reading the lines off cue cards placed behind Hannah.
“Don’t call me ridiculous,” she said. “And don’t just dismiss me.”
“Hannah, I’m not.”
“Dallin, what the hell is happening here? None of this makes sense. What’s going on with us?” She looked in his eyes, searching for a flicker of change. “What’s going on with you?”
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then slowly exhaled. When he opened his eyes again he appeared more focused, more committed to the moment. Calm face, but body tensed to the point of explosion.
“You tell me, Hannah. You brought this whole fucking thing up.”
There was a tipping point here. Hannah knew her husband would either escalate things or remove himself from the situation. Nine times out of ten Dallin chose to back down, apologize, or extract himself from an argument. He either knew he was wrong or, she conceded, sometimes it wasn’t worth the effort to him. He’d told her as much before. Then there was the one time out of ten he pushed on, harder, with conviction, not letting go until he felt his point was very clearly made. That’s when he shouted. Three months ago he had even punched a wall.
She had never seen that side of him before, the sudden violence. It had been the low point of a hard year, a time of seeing him less and less as his company grew astronomically. Their happiness strained as their fortune blossomed, and the stress was tearing at him. She could see it in his eyes,
hear it in his voice. Late nights, early mornings, meals alone. He hadn’t been the same Dallin. But the past month he had changed, as if he recommitted himself to their happiness. Things had been better. Good. Until the moment he had talked in his sleep.
Hannah looked in his face and wondered if this was going to be a one-in-ten moment.
“I’m going to get a drink,” he said. Dallin turned and walked into the condo, sliding the glass door behind him.
She watched him walk up to the bar and pull out the scotch. She was relieved. She didn’t want to talk more about the dream now, anyway. Hannah had to process what little he had already said. She would have to replay the evening over and over in her mind, combing through his words and his gestures, finding those bits that assured her and the pieces that made her want to ask him more questions.
Hannah turned and looked back at the water in the distance. Things were darker now, but there was still a dusting of gray. She no longer wanted to be out on the balcony. As much as she preferred the darkness, she suddenly sensed how long a fall it would be if she went over the edge.
CHAPTER FOUR
DAY 4
Hannah woke to a tongue on her face and the smell of dog breath pushing up her nostrils. Zoo stood over her, his body shaking in canine excitement, acting as if Hannah had finally awakened from a month-long coma. She reached out, simultaneously giving herself a long stretch and scratching his rump, which stirred him into a small frenzy. Finally, she pushed him away and sat up. Dust danced in sunbeams streaming through the bedroom window. She looked over and discovered Dallin’s side of the bed empty. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Five after nine.
That was the second time in three days she’d remained in bed longer than usual. The bedsheet could have been lead-lined considering how heavy her body felt. She forced her bare feet to the floor, stood, and headed to the kitchen where the coffee maker seemed to shine like a beacon of hope. Zoo pursued, his nails click-clicking on the hardwood floors.
She saw the Post-it pressed against the coffee machine.
I really love you.
The Comfort of Black Page 3