“Who…is…she?”
Dallin turned, slipped his hands into his pockets, and gazed out the window at Puget Sound.
Hannah crossed her arms, stared at the floor, and willed herself not to cry. She looked over to Zoo, who, while not whining, was wide-eyed and alert, his muscles tensed in rapt attention.
“Why would you do this to me?”
“It’s nothing,” he whispered to the window.
“How long, Dallin? How long have you been cheating on me?” Now she approached him and spoke to the back of his head. “How many other web girls have there been? And what the hell kind of fantasies are you into that you can’t tell me about them? When did I become not enough for you?”
He let out a long breath, the sound of a parent trying to be patient with a child. “You’re too upset to discuss this right now. Let’s talk about it later.”
For the second time in two days Dallin suddenly seemed as if he was reading lines off cue cards, an actor in some stage production about love and betrayal. His voice, sounding not at all like it should, made everything dreamlike. Well, nightmarish would be more precise.
She wanted to touch him, ground herself, something she was so used to doing, but Hannah kept her hands at her side. She so desperately wanted him to tell her it was all a joke, made up, some kind of sick prank, but in her soul she couldn’t conceive of how that could even be a remote possibility.
“You’re not seeing this for what it is,” he said.
Hannah dropped her hand, the hope for any assurances or comfort dissolved. “Seeing it for what it is? Dallin, you won’t even answer my questions. We’re talking about this now. I don’t even know if there will be a ‘later’.”
Finally, Dallin turned to her. His face had the smooth plastic expression of a mannequin. “What does that mean?”
She threw her arms out. “Do you seriously think I’m just going to allow you to do this to me? What if I was talking dirty with some guy on the Internet? You’d lose your fucking mind.”
“We’ll talk later.” Dallin started to walk around her.
“Don’t leave this room. You don’t get to make that decision. You don’t get to leave.”
“Hannah, we’ll talk later.”
“No, we will talk now.”
He took another step. She grabbed his arm, and in that moment, it was Billy’s arm. Hannah was fifteen again. In her mind, her hand held a lighter with a flame that glowed in a dark room. You don’t get to do this anymore. You don’t get to hurt any of us ever again. It ends tonight.
Like Billy, Dallin looked down and yanked his arm free. Unlike Billy, Dallin then kept walking and disappeared into the other room.
Now Hannah screamed.
“I’m the one who gets to leave you!”
Silence for a moment. Then Dallin reappeared. He stood there in the doorway, hands in his pockets, perfectly still. It wasn’t that he was merely quiet, observing. He was completely motionless. The way he looked at Hannah was something she had never experienced from her husband. In that look, in that absence of life in his body, he wielded all power in the room, as if, telepathically, he commanded the sound and the air to leave the room. And Dallin just stared. He just fucking stared at her. Then very quietly he said, “What did you say?”
Her voice was coarse and dry. “I’m the one who gets to leave you.”
Dallin stormed into the room. That’s the word that came to her mind in the seconds before he grabbed her. He’s storming. The twisted face of rage, the anger at the inconsideration of someone defying him, the need to punish the insolent, the disobedient.
She heard his sharp, fast breaths—jackal—as she saw him raise his hand.
Then it was around her throat, and he used that hand to shove her against a wall. The pain in her throat as he squeezed dwarfed the concussive slam of her head against the sheetrock. A framed picture from their honeymoon fell and shattered on the floor, shards of glass scattering around her feet.
Zoo roared to life, barking furiously, the yapping piercing Hannah’s brain. Bite him! her mind screamed, as her voice was unable. Fucking bite him! But Zoo only barked.
“Leave me?” Dallin said. His voice was calm, controlled, as his fingers squeezed her throat. “That’s what you’re going to do? You think you can leave me, Hannah? Just like that? With everything I’ve done for you? Saved you from a shitty white-trash existence. Made you wealthy. Given you everything you wanted, just so you can sit here and drink all day. And you get to leave me? No, I don’t think so.”
His fingers squeezed into her neck. Hannah reached up and grabbed his forearm with both hands and dug her nails in as hard as she could.
Dallin’s eyes widened barely more than a hair. “You have no idea what’s good for you,” he whispered.
He wasn’t squeezing hard enough to block her air passage. Yet. She sucked in a shallow breath and asked the only question that existed in her mind at that moment.
“Who are you?”
Dallin studied her. There was no joy in his eyes, yet neither was there menace. There was just a complete sadness, a resignation, the look of someone lost deep in the woods who finally realized they weren’t ever going to make it out. He leaned in and Hannah felt his breath on her ear as he spoke. The words came on such a light whisper she wasn’t even convinced she heard what he said.
“I’m so sorry.”
Then, without saying anything else, he released his grip. She fell forward, almost to the ground before catching herself, regaining her balance just as she saw Dallin turn and walk into the living room. Hannah stared out vacantly in that direction, unable to move, gasping. Zoo came up and whimpered softly as he licked the top of her right foot, the small, wet tongue rolling over the ridges of her bones.
You don’t touch me, she thought, thinking not of her dog but her husband. The last man who had hurt her physically was Billy, and the emotion, the adrenaline, the heat from the rage, which created millions of pinpricks across her skin, it all came back in this moment. In this moment Hannah was nearly blinded from anger, and despite all the love and history she had with Dallin, she wanted to smash in the teeth of whoever that man was in the other room.
She steadied herself, breathing more slowly. Hannah reached down and patted the top of Zoo’s head, and he licked her fingers greedily.
Hannah held her breath and listened, her body tensed, ready to spring.
Silence for a minute. Then the sound of the TV turning on in the other room. Dallin was watching the news.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hannah raced into the master closet and pulled down a leather overnight bag. Zoo followed her every step, staying so close Hannah twice tripped over him. He barked and nipped at her feet, trying to get her attention. Hannah shushed him.
She turned her attention to the task at hand, frantically grabbing at clothes on the racks and stuffing them into the bag. Now into the bathroom. She snatched items off the counter indiscriminately, cramming them in the bag wherever they would fit. She risked a glance at herself in the mirror. Her face was puffy and red from crying, her eyes bloodshot. Her long blond hair, which was so fine it could rarely ever fall anywhere but straight down, was disheveled, as if she had just rolled out of bed. She leaned in and saw the marks around the base of her neck, where Dallin’s hand had been just minutes earlier. They were a sunset red, the kind that would eventually turn into a gunmetal gray as bruises flowered.
She turned away, wanting to see no more.
Leave, Hannah. Leave now.
Her purse was by the front door, and in it was everything else she needed: wallet, keys, phone. She had to go through the living room.
She slung the overnight bag over her shoulder and went back into the bedroom. She still heard the TV in the other room. Financial news. Dallin loved to watch the goddamn financial news. Loved to follow the markets. See what was happening in the various tech industry silos. Echo Systems—Dallin’s company, of which he was the Chairman and CEO—was a security tech
company, and he feasted on information. She pictured him out there, on the couch, shoes off, feet propped on the table, watching the news. As if nothing had happened.
Hannah steeled herself to make her way to the front door. What if he wasn’t on the couch? What if he was standing by the door with a knife? She only heard the TV, the sound of some talking head droning on about post-market closing corporate announcements of the day.
She couldn’t even call 9-1-1 if she wanted to. Hannah and Dallin only had cell phones. No landline. Hannah’s cell phone was in her purse.
Hannah looked at the shattered photo on the floor. The picture was from Bora Bora, when they had sailed around the Tahitian islands on their honeymoon five years ago. She had taken the picture herself: the shot was from the front of their beach villa, which had been so close to the water the morning-tide waves had licked their feet just a few steps out the door. The Pacific Ocean stretched out endlessly in the photo, the water smooth and the blue color of a robin’s egg. They had made love right before the photo was taken, and every time she looked at the picture on the wall she could feel him inside her, which always made her feel wanted.
Hannah bent down and reached out to Zoo. “We’re leaving, Zoo. Stay close.” Then Hannah picked up the longest of the broken shards of glass. The side of it was sharper than she expected, and it nipped her skin, cutting her hand. A small droplet of blood grew until it ran down her palm. She made her way back into the bathroom and grabbed a white washcloth hanging near the sink. She covered all but the top few inches of the shard in the cloth and then secured her grip around it. She held the piece of glass upside down. Dagger-like.
Hannah returned to the bedroom and again looked at the doorway into the living room. Zoo, as commanded, remained close. Again, only the sound of the TV. She could do this one of two ways. She could go slowly, peering around the door, assessing his position, and try to sneak out quietly. Or she could just go. Not even look at him. Just walk quickly to the entryway, grab her purse, and get out of there.
She took a deep breath, counted to three, and walked into the living room. Hannah’s gaze locked on the front door. Dallin wasn’t blocking it. And her purse was there, right where she had left it. She headed directly for it, not turning her head to look where Dallin was. If she saw him, she might lose her nerve. She might get scared, and maybe he would sense her fear and would pounce.
Ten steps. She counted them as she walked as fast as she could without running.
Nothing.
On her tenth step she grabbed her purse and yanked open the front door. Zoo bolted into the hallway.
Hannah chanced a glance back into the room. Dallin was exactly as her mind pictured, on the couch, back turned toward her. He seemed oblivious that she had entered the room, or was on her way out. It was as if, for him, Hannah had simply ceased to exist.
Zoo’s toenails clicked on the wood floors of the condo corridor as they walked away from her home and toward the elevator. She pushed the button to go down and waited a lifetime for the elevator cab to arrive at her floor. The whole time, she expected Dallin to come storming from the condo towards her, face twisted in rage, ready to attack.
Leave me? I don’t think so.
But he never did. The empty corridor remained empty. As the elevator finally arrived and its doors opened, Hannah looked down at the glass shard in her hand. Her grip on it was slightly loosened, and the small cut on her hand had oozed more blood onto the white washcloth, the stain spreading and growing like an oil slick on a lake.
Hannah stepped inside.
CHAPTER EIGHT
She stared out the restaurant window, through the gray of a fall day in Seattle, to the electronic readout board on the bank across the street. Fifty-two degrees outside. Just after eleven in the morning.
The waiter set a glass of ice water in front of her and Hannah shivered, wanting nothing to do with anything else cold. She noticed the wedding band on the waiter’s finger and wondered what kind of husband he was, then decided she didn’t care.
Justine, sitting across the booth from her, ordered them both coffee while Hannah stared at the top of the table. When the waiter left, Justine leaned in.
“Hannah, what’s going on?”
Hannah had told her nothing on the phone, not because she was worried about privacy, but because she didn’t think she could do it without crying. She cried now.
Justine came to Hannah’s side of the booth and held her. Hannah didn’t want to cry any more, not because she was stoic, but because it exhausted her. Justine squeezed her sister.
“It’s okay, Hannah. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
No it won’t, Hannah thought.
Hannah wiped her face and then eyed the waiter coming toward them with their coffee. She felt embarrassment for her tears and then anger at her embarrassment. She looked down as he set the coffee on the table and walked away without saying anything.
Hannah lifted her head and looked into her sister’s eyes. “I don’t know. It’s just…Jesus, you left work and everything.”
“Screw work. What’s going on?”
Deep breath. Then tell it straight. Just as it happened.
Justine’s eyes widened as Hannah’s words came forth, and her mouth opened to interject, but Hannah stopped her.
“Let me just talk. Please.”
Justine nodded.
When she finished, Hannah stopped crying.
“What a fucking monster,” Justine said.
Hannah let her gaze fall to the table.
“I can’t believe this,” Justine added.
“I know,” Hannah said. “It made me think…you know. Of the night with Billy. I don’t think I’ve been this mad since back then.”
“You need to go to the police. He assaulted you.”
“I…I know that. But then I was thinking how that never did any good for Mom.”
Three times the police had come out to their small Kansas home when Hannah and Justine were just girls. Three visits, all from phone calls placed by Hannah. Three raps at the door, three light interrogations of the man of the house, asking if everything was okay. Always talked to Billy, never to Hannah’s mother, who remained in sight but never spoke unless spoken to. And each of those three times the police walked away without doing a goddamned thing.
And why should they have, Hannie? There weren’t no bruises on her face. No blood to be seen. Just one big happy family. Well, maybe not happy all the time. I was the only rooster in that henhouse, and that means I had to keep order, didn’t I? You was way too eager to call 9-1-1. But it didn’t do you any good, did it?
“That was in Kansas,” Justine said. “Not here. And that was a lifetime ago.”
“Justine, I don’t know what to do.”
“He hurt you, Hannah. If he’s capable of that, who knows what he might do next.”
Hannah knew.
“You have to leave.”
The words made Hannah dizzy with disbelief. “I’ve…we’ve been married five years. Together for longer. This isn’t him. I know him.”
“Apparently you don’t. He’s cheating on you, Hannah. And he hurt you. He strangled you. Are you fucking kidding me?”
The family in the booth behind them spoke excitedly of a trip to Disney World they were planning for Christmas. The boy wanted to go on the Haunted House ride. The little girl: Teacups.
Hannah flagged down the waiter and ordered a Jack and Coke, and Justine thankfully said nothing about it not even being noon yet. Coffee just wasn’t enough right now. “I feel like I’m not even sure this really happened.”
“I can see the marks on your neck, Hannah. It happened.”
Hannah looked outside and toward Zoo, who was leashed to a small tree in front of the restaurant. He caught her eye and gave her his vacant stare, but was soon distracted by a passerby stooping to pet him. Hannah hadn’t taken his leash when she left the condo, so her first stop was a boutique pet store two blocks from her building. S
trange how her whole world disintegrated in minutes and the first thing she thought of when leaving was needing a leash for her dog.
“Can I stay with you, just until I figure things out? I know I could afford a hotel, but I don’t know what to do with Zoo. And I don’t think I want to be alone. I know Aikman is allergic, but maybe we can—”
“Of course you can stay with us. Don’t worry about Zoo. We’ll think of something. Hell, he’s small enough we can keep him in a bag or something. Aikman won’t be able to pet him that way.”
Hannah laughed, not because the thought of her dog suffocating in a bag was particularly funny, but because laughing was cheaper relief than crying.
Justine gave her another squeeze and then returned to the other side of the booth. “Hannah, this is not a marriage-counselor kind of situation. This is a get-the-fuck-out kind of situation. It’ll be messy because of all the goddamn money you two have, but you need to get out.”
“This is crazy. We have a good marriage. We’re planning a family.”
“Hannah, how many times over the past two years have you told me about fights you’ve been having? About the second cell phone, the late nights, his lack of communication? It seems like every month there was something new.”
Hannah squeezed her temple with her right hand. “Things were good for the last few weeks. It felt like it was at the beginning. Before—”
“Before the money?”
Hannah felt her back muscles tighten.
“I was going to say before he had to start traveling so much. Right after we got married, it was perfect. It was feeling like that again. He’s been leaving me notes, we finally had sex after six weeks, and we—”
“You’re trying to rationalize an irrational situation, Hannah. Mom did that for years. If she was here, she would tell you the same thing. Get out before it gets worse. Hannah, he could be Daddy.”
The Comfort of Black Page 5