rather calculating. But you seem the same, only quieter now.”
She seemed to be waiting for some sort of reply. I shrugged, but I knew what she meant. “Life has a tempering effect,” I offered. Strange; I expected to feel more hurt at her admission, but the blisters failed to rise, and I realized that Faith was simply being honest. Her opinion didn’t mean anything to me. It suddenly occurred to me that ice is compact and brittle and being aloof is an excellent means of protection.
“Still, I wonder what you would have done. You know, I believe I trust you.” Without waiting for a response to that rather startling pronouncement, Faith launched into a narrative I would have given anything not to hear.
“I never believed it could happen to me. Even when I was living it, I didn’t understand that I was a battered woman. I mean, everyone knows that it’s only poor, uneducated women who get beat up, right, Emma?”
Faith’s sarcasm, a recrimination—against who knew what—slammed into me like a blow. I wasn’t certain I knew what she was talking about, all of a sudden, and yet had a sickening feeling I knew exactly what she was saying.
Faith got out of her chair and filled her glass nearly halfway with whiskey. She stared at a drop that had splashed out of the glass and onto the table, and then ran her finger through it, before she turned away from me and drank deeply. “I’m still learning to deal with the fact that I was too afraid to leave.” Faith turned on me. “You told me you married that guy you were seeing in Coolidge. What would you do if he hauled off and slapped you across the face with every ounce of strength in his body?”
Chapter 4
I OPENED MY MOUTH AND CLOSED IT. THE SHOCK OF the question and what it implied was as brutal as the act she described. Faith waited briefly for some quick, easy answer she knew I didn’t dare make, before she pounced.
“Right. Can’t even get your brain around the idea. Neither could I the first time it happened.” She sat down in the chair across from me and stared at the fire. Shadows danced across her profile, which was composed in spite of the harrowing tale she was telling.
“I couldn’t leave the house for two days. Paul’s handprint was a brand on my face.” She raised the glass to her mouth, but then didn’t drink. She set the glass down. “The first time. The first time should have been the signal to pack a bag, call the cops, and run like hell, right? Only it’s not that easy. I loved him. I knew he loved me. It could never happen again, it was just that we were both so worn out, had such a bad day.
“I say afraid, but maybe I should say vain. It still stings when I think just how classic my case was. Classic.” She shrugged. “Ordinary? Me? Of course, by the time I accepted what was really happening, I was too afraid to leave. But don’t delude yourself, Emma. It can happen to anyone.”
I thought about protesting, I wanted to protest, but I knew that, in a way, she was right: It could happen to anyone. Without thinking, I reached for her, but Faith went rigid at the gesture. I wrapped my arms around myself instead.
“The trick is,” Faith was saying, “the trick is not to think about it, ever. Of course you can’t, but you try to make this perfect little shell around you, try to keep everything out. Drinking’s good. Valium’s better. But something always gets through, ruins your concentration, and you screw up. Then it happens.” She picked up the glass and took another swallow of the whiskey, savoring its bite, considering what she’d said. For a moment, I thought she was shaping the story as she told me, but then I recognized that for wishful thinking. Knock it off and listen, Emma, I rebuked myself.
“It doesn’t matter to someone like Paul that mistakes happen. Mistakes happen every day. And every action begets an equal and opposite reaction. But…it took me a long time to realize no one ever does anything to deserve…what he did to me. For so long.”
I felt ill. Growing colder and more sober by the second, I couldn’t imagine getting up and doing something as homely as adding another log to the lagging fire. Worse still, the way that Faith recounted her story