Haley and I just stood there, numb to everything. Even the spot where I’d taken an elbow to the gut wasn’t hurting as badly as it should’ve been. It was probably because I was in shock.
“So it’s true?” I asked her, studying her for a reaction. “That guy was your husband?”
“A long time ago, he was.” She wouldn’t look at me, and I hated that. I didn’t know who was standing in front of me right now. “I guess he still is, technically.”
“Okay,” I said, scrubbing at my eyes. “Okay. I’m just going to…okay.” I had no idea what I was supposed to do with this.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice halting. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
I shook my head. “That’s not good enough, Haley.”
“I know it’s not.” She hiccupped into a sob. “I know it’s not.” I’d never seen Haley completely deflated before. I’d seen her scared. I’d seen her sassy. I’d seen her in ways I never thought I would, gazing up at me from beneath her eyelashes, blond hair spread out on the pillow beneath her head, telling me that she loved me. But the woman who couldn’t look me in the eyes was emptied out, all her secrets laid bare to people she wasn’t willing or ready to tell.
Me, especially.
“Please say something,” she said, still staring at the ground. She gave me a quick glance, flinched at whatever she saw. “Don’t just stand there with that expression on your face.”
I tried my best to smooth my features out into something neutral, but I had no idea what she was seeing there, what bothered her so terribly.
I knew what bothered me so terribly.
“Haley, all this time you’ve been telling me to trust you, telling me that I needed to open up to you, and you haven’t been doing me the same courtesy.”
Across the park, Katie was pushing Jared into the back of a patrol car none too gently, and Haley wrapped her arms around herself like she was cold, even if it was a nice day. My knee-jerk reaction was to offer her my jacket, but it was so warm outside that I wasn’t wearing one. My second inclination was to reach out and try to wrap her in my arms, use my own body heat to try and stave off whatever had chilled her, but my hands stayed firmly at my sides, pinned by tiredness and indecision.
“Can we talk about this somewhere else?” Her teeth actually chattered as she asked the question, and I worried suddenly, amid my hurt, my betrayal, that she might be in shock.
“Do you actually want to talk about this?”
“No, not really, if I’m being honest.”
I exhaled, heavy. “Okay.” I turned from her and began walking to the street, not caring if the Easter party would continue after the police cars rolled away, intent only on getting on my bike and getting out of here.
“Chuck, wait. Please. Don’t go.”
God, I wanted to ignore that voice. But ignoring Haley, no matter how badly she’d hurt me, how confused I was about what had so suddenly happened, was as easy as willing my heart to stop beating.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, not bothering to turn around. “What do you want from me?”
“To stay. Stay with me.”
“I think I really want to go, Haley.”
“Is that what you really want?”
“Yes. I think that would be best.”
“Are you…are you angry at me?”
“Just tired.” I was. I felt tired enough that it lessened the hurt, the isolation, and maybe that was a benefit. A gift, even.
“I wish you would stay.”
“I wish I could, too.”
“Then stay.”
But it was better to put some distance between us right now. I knew that, and I was pretty sure Haley knew that, too. Maybe a weaker man would’ve stayed. If I stayed, though, I was pretty sure I would say things that I would regret, things I wouldn’t be able to take back. Things maybe I wouldn’t want to take back.
“I really want to go home,” I said, as Haley sidled around me.
“Can I come?”
“I think it’s best if I go alone.”
“Are you leaving me?”
The question was so plaintive that I wished I could swallow down all my feelings and forget about the way her omissions had made me feel. The trust I’d lost in her. I wished I could just box that up and compartmentalize it and never have to examine it again, but I wasn’t that kind of man.
“Just for right now,” I said. “But we can talk later. Tomorrow, maybe.”
Her arms tightened around her body before they shot out, hands clinging to my body, fingernails cutting into my skin in a desperation that stunned me and almost startled me into jumping.
“Please. Please don’t leave me. I can’t please don’t leave me.”
Fuck. “Okay. Okay, sweetheart, don’t cry.” God, I couldn’t stand to see her cry, no matter how I felt about all of this. “Everything’s fine, let’s go. We’re going together. Let’s get out of here.”
The only reason I felt confident to take her on my motorcycle was just how tightly she was gripping me. I was sure she wasn’t going to even think about letting go. I’d been honest with her, though. I would’ve preferred not to be around Haley right now, but I just couldn’t walk away from her like that, crying and desperate and reeling just as much as I was.
My place wasn’t far from the park, and the ride flew by since I dreaded arriving, dreaded having to face Haley to try and unravel the mess we had suddenly become. How had everything about this day started off so perfectly? It had been too good to be true, hadn’t it? I had been too happy for too long. A person like me wasn’t supposed to end up happy. That just wasn’t in the cards for me.
I escorted Haley to my door like she was a stranger, letting her in reluctantly, out of politeness.
“I think I’m going to go lie down,” I said, closing the door behind her. “I’m feeling really tired. Exhausted. Maybe I’m coming down with something. I’m going to take a nap.” A nap sounded good right now, a blank expanse of nothingness stretched out in front of me. A place to escape from all the feelings at war within me. The only problem was that I wasn’t sure I could sleep. “Do whatever you want. Make yourself at home. There’s probably food in the fridge. I’m guessing you didn’t get to eat at the Easter party, with everything that… Beer. There’s probably beer in the fridge, too.” My thoughts and words were disjointed, and I wondered if Haley even understood any of this. I certainly didn’t.
She stepped in front of me, and I realized I’d just been standing there, in the middle of the kitchen, like a man concussed. I had hit the ground awfully hard when I tackled Jared away from her. Maybe I did knock my brain loose a little bit.
“Kiss me,” she begged. “Let’s just forget about all of this for right now. Just kiss me.”
I did what she asked, but when her hand reached for me, lower, I stopped her.
“Haley, we need to talk about this,” I said. “I’m sorry if you don’t want to, but unless you want me to take you home”
“No, please! Don’t send me away, Chuck. I couldn’t bear it.”
Why did I feel like such an asshole right now? Was I the asshole? What was I missing?
“All I’m saying,” I started again, after a deep breath, “is that we should talk about what happened. I know that it must be painful for you to talk about, but I would really like to understand. Can you help me understand?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what you want to know.”
“Just help me not be so confused right now. Please.”
We were standing there like fools, begging each other for things that probably weren’t possible. Everything felt like it was spiraling outward, spiraling out of control, and the only way I could think of to try and stop it was to talk our way through it, as painful as it might become. As much as I maybe didn’t want to know the truth.
“Start at the beginning,” I said, keeping my voice light. I took Haley by the hand and led her to the sofa, getting her to sit o
n one end so I could take the other, have a little bit of objective distance from the situation.
“I’m not sure what the beginning should be,” she said. “I can’t tell you when it all started.”
“Tell me when you met him. Jared. That’s his name, right?”
“Yes. That’s his name.”
“You married him.”
“I was young,” she said. “And stupid. God, so stupid.”
“It’s okay. Just tell me the facts. Like you’re making a list, okay?” I remembered talking a woman who had been in a car wreck through the circumstances of it just like this. One step at a time. How did you get from point A to point B? How would Haley and I ever get past this? No, that was about point Z, if not beyond. I couldn’t think about that right now. Right now, I just needed to stop thinking and listen.
“I had just graduated high school,” she said, shuddering. “I met Jared at a bar. I had a fake ID, and he was very charming. I…fell for him. Hard. Didn’t think anything of it when he shoved me around a little bit. My dad shoved my mom around all the time, and she’d hit back, and they’d scream at each other, but everything would be okay in the morning. I thought that was just how those things worked. Every time it happened, Jared would apologize. Tell me he wouldn’t do it again. Buy me presents, tell me how much he loved me, what would happen if he ever lost me. God, I must sound so stupid to you.”
“You don’t sound stupid. Just keep thinking about the list, sweetheart. One thing happened, then another thing happened. That’s how we’ll get through this.” Because I needed that list. I needed to listen, and not think about the implication of everything.
“The first night he hit meand I mean really hit me he cried. Sobbed. Wept so much that even with a bloody nose, I ended up being the one who was comforting him, when it should’ve been the other way around. We were married within the month. Eloped, really. And the hitting… It never stopped.”
She looked down at her hands for so long I wondered if she forgot she was talking.
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked her. “How about that beer?”
“Whatever,” she said. “I don’t care. Whatever you have.”
I stepped away from her and stood motionless in the kitchen for a while before deciding to fix coffee. It would take a few moments to brew, give me more time to process this, to figure out what to do in this situation. Why had Haley refused to disclose any of this to me? It was such an enormous secret that it almost didn’t seem real, but what would be the motive for making up something like this? Everything was backward, and all I could do was pour steaming coffee into a pair of mugs and carry them back to the sofa.
Even with the beverage in her hands, Haley was silent. Maybe she needed a break from all that talking. I was about to give her a gentle prod, remind her that all she needed to do was continue from point A to point B, keep going with her list, when she began to speak again.
“I didn’t want to be that woman. I never wanted to be that woman.” She stared into her mug of coffee like it might give her the right words to say. “I moved away from Jared…from my husband…because I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to forget about the things he’d done to me, about the person I had become. I wanted to be someone who didn’t take shit from anyone. I never wanted any of you to know who I really was.”
“And who are you, Haley? Who are you, really?”
She shrugged, eyes not leaving the coffee. “A woman who let her husband beat on her. A woman who didn’t leave.”
“But you did leave.”
“Not nearly soon enough,” she said, shaking her head. “It went on and on. I should’ve left the first time he did it, and I didn’t. I never thought I would be that woman. I thought it was impossible to be that woman, and then I woke up, a year after the first time he’d hit me, and I realized I was.”
Haley was trembling and I gently took the mug from her and set it on the table in front of us.
“You think less of me, now,” she said. “I can see it on your face. You think I’m weak. I’m stupid.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, my voice soft, the wheels in my head turning. “You’re not weak, and you’re not stupid. And I don’t think less of you.”
“But you’re angry.”
“I’m upset,” I allowed. “Can I tell you why?”
“I can guess why.”
“You can. But I’d like to explain, if you want to hear it.”
Haley stayed quiet, and I took that as an invitation.
“The reason why I’m upsetwhy I wanted to spend a little time apart from you was because I was shocked.”
“Shocked that I’m an idiot.”
“No. Shocked that you thought you needed to hide something like this from us. From me.”
“I told you.” She fidgeted and picked up the coffee mug again, probably just to have something in her hands. I was afraid she was going to spill it and burn herself, but I tried to trust her to know what she needed, even if she’d kept all of this from me. “I didn’t want to be judged to be that kind of woman. The one who wouldn’t leave the source of her pain. The one who was too weak and stupid to do it.”
“Haley, I’m going to say this thing one time, okay? And one time should be enough.” I knelt on the floor in front of her, mindful of the coffee, and looked at her until she met my eyes. “There is exactly one person, and one person only, who is to blame for any of this, and that man is the one Katie put in the back of a police cruiser. Do you understand me? You are not responsible for his actions. Only he is.”
“Then why do I feel so bad about it?”
“Because it was a bad thing that happened. No one should have to go through that, the person they love betraying them like that.”
Haley took a small sip of the coffee, and it seemed to fortify her. “But you’re still upset.”
“Upset that you didn’t trust me. That you don’t trust me.”
“I’m trying, Chuck. I’m trying. It’s so hard.”
“The thing is, though, Haley, that this is a two-way street, you and me. You’ve been encouraging me to open up to you, to tell you things I might otherwise would’ve kept to myself, and you haven’t placed the same kind of trust in me.”
“It’s different. Everything is different.”
“What’s different about two people being honest with each other?”
“Your situation is different from mine.”
“Not so very much,” I said. “Not very different at all.”
“I never told anyone because I wanted to get away from it,” she said. “And when you told me about your sister, and we continued to grow closer, I knew that I would never tell you.”
“That’s not fair to either of us, sweetheart.”
“I don’t know how to make this right. I don’t know what to do, Chuck.”
“Trust me. Put your trust in me. Let me help you in the same way you’ve helped me.”
She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes, unseeing. “I haven’t helped you. You’re wrong. I blundered along, hurting you with every turn. I should’ve known better because I couldn’t even help myself out of my own situation, but I just kept staggering along.”
“Haley, you did help me.” I took a deep breath, let it out again. Did a few more times, for good measure. “You got me to go to the prison, to speak with Rob Shepard. That was a step I hadn’t thought to take for myself, and it helped.”
“It hurt you. I remember.”
“It gave me perspective. It gave me hope that Chelsea’s death wouldn’t be for nothing. That something in her had stuck with him enough to make him a better person, the next time he gets a chance to live outside of those prison walls. And it made me get back in contact with my parents, all of those feelings I was sorting through. And we’re speaking again.”
Haley blinked at me, a twin trail of tears coursing down her cheeks. “You’re back in contact with your parents? I didn’t know that.”
“I’m sorry I
didn’t tell you,” I said. “It’s a recent development.”
“That’s…that’s wonderful. It’s really good.” She dabbed at her eyes with one hand, and I took the opportunity to slip the coffee mug out of the other hand again.
“It’s a start,” I allowed, careful not to be overly enthusiastic about it. “And something I wouldn’t have without you.”
“When I asked him for a divorce, he nearly killed me,” Haley said, picking up the thread of her narrative again without warning. Like it was simply time for her to finish her story. “That’s when I left. When I knew it really wasn’t going to get any better. That he wasn’t going to change like he promised he would. I knew he’d never let me have the divorce, that he’d kill me before granting it. And I just wanted to be someone else. Somewhere else. And I found a good life here in Rio Seco. Good people, too.”
“I understand why you didn’t tell people,” I said. “That kind of thing is really hard. I just wish you would’ve told me sooner. That’s all.”
“I get it, Chuck, if you don’t want to be with me anymore.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
She shrugged. “I understand it if you don’t want this. Our relationship.”
“Haley, I love you.”
“And I love you. But being with me, now that you know…that would be a lot to handle. A lot for you to deal with. You didn’t know what you were getting yourself in to at the beginning of all of this, so it’s not fair to hold you to anything. If you want out, there’s no hard feelings. I would still like to be friends, if you think it’s possible, because you’re an important person in my life, but”
I had no idea what she said next, because I lunged forward and mashed my lips against hers if only to halt the flow of regret streaming from her mouth. When we parted to come up for air, both of us were panting with something between exertion and emotion. It was difficult to tell.
“Is that…is that the best you can do for a goodbye kiss?” she asked, touching her lips with a trembling hand.
“That wasn’t a goodbye kiss.”
“Chuck …”
“You’re missing the big picture, Haley. I don’t know if you really don’t see it or if you just don’t want to see it.” I took her hands in mine. They were still shaking. “It’s like I said before. It’s a two-way street. Or the door swings both ways. Pick whatever analogy you’d like. Whichever one makes better sense to you. Because there you were, aware that I’d lost my sister to domestic violence when you had experienced it intimately, on a firsthand basis, and you loved me all the same.”
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