The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,9

want to push the envelope. That was one of his favorite expressions. “That Dale Earnhardt— he knew how to push the envelope.” Or, “Come on, baby, let’s push the envelope tonight.” Once, when they had been married just a few months, he had pushed the envelope too far, and she had bled for two days. After that, she started to become unavailable. Always sleepy. Or sick to her stomach. Not that she had to pretend to be reviled by him; the thought of his touch was enough to revolt her, to disgust her. Little by little, he asked her for it less often, and by the time she realized what was happening, it was too late. She had pushed him away. Driven him to the sluts and whores he now used to satisfy himself.

They had been married two years when she found the first evidence. She had gone out to the old Buick for the checkbook (she was always leaving it in the glove box), and when she opened the driver door, something peeking from beneath the back seat caught her eye. She pulled it out and stared at it. It was a pair of pink panties with a lacey waistband. A size smaller than her own.

That night, when Wade returned home from work and two-year-old Derek was safely in front of the TV in the other room, she flung the panties onto the dining room table. Wade was nursing his second beer of the evening, and it took him a moment to register what he was seeing in front of him. He stared at them. Took another sip of beer.

“Whose are those?” Marla said, her voice quivering with anger.

He looked at her, his gaze steady. “None of your goddamn business.”

Her breath left her, and she stared at him. “It is my goddamned business. If somebody else is fucking my husband, I want to know who it is.”

She never saw the fist coming until it connected with her jaw. She was suddenly sitting in the floor, dazed, the room spinning away, blood dripping from her mouth. She held out both hands to steady herself, not believing he had actually punched her. She moved her tongue, not surprised to discover that a couple of her teeth were loose.

He towered above her, his chest heaving. “I said it’s none of your goddamned business.”

Later, when he rolled into bed beside her, he said softly, “I’m sorry. But you hardly ever let me touch you anymore.” She lay there with her back to him, silent. In a few minutes, he was snoring, and she realized she had been holding her body rigid since he had come into the room.

It was not the last time he exploded. Over the years she had learned to stay out of his way, to not provoke him. She had learned how to hide bruises and cuts, how to lie about how clumsy she was and how she kept bumping into things. She had learned how to pretend everything was fine. People were always asking how she was—at church, at the supermarket; she learned how to say, “Fine.” She could even smile when she said it.

There had been a few times when she thought of leaving, when she thought of driving away some day while he was at work, but she knew she could never do that. She couldn’t do that to Derek. As much as she feared Wade, she knew she was the only buffer between his temper and their son, and if she weren’t there to take the blows, Derek would be the only other target. And even though he was a big kid, more than capable of defending himself, she did not want to put him in that position.

And what kind of life could she make on her own? She was a high-school dropout with no marketable skills and no money of her own. What little she had managed to save (socked away for Derek’s college education), the asshole had blown on that damned Mustang.

She knew she certainly couldn’t go back to her parents; they had made that perfectly clear when she became pregnant. “If you’re gonna lay with a dog, you gotta live with his fleas,” her father had told her.

But she did have a choice. She looked at the gun and took a sip of coffee, not tasting it. She could be ready when he came home. She could be sitting right here at the table, pointing it at him when he came through the