said quietly, “no one ever deserves to be struck. Abuse is not your fault, no matter your internal thoughts. Violence is not acceptable.”
I sat silent.
“How badly did he hurt you?”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Why?”
Because I won’t fuck up again. I won’t get drunk again. I won’t take pills again. “I won’t let it.”
“You need to go to the police.”
“I . . . I will. If he does it again, I will.”
The intensity in her eyes turned hot, and I sensed the shift in her energy. She looked like a tightly coiled spring ready to explode. It made me uneasy. I hated confrontation. She was going to insist on bringing in the law, and I wanted to be careful and make sure I was ready and in a place where he couldn’t get to me if and when I did.
“I will,” I said again. “But not here, not now. I want to go to the police back home. I want to file for divorce from home. Where he can’t hurt me. And I need to be off the meds. I need your help, Willow. Will you help me get off the lorazepam? I need to taper. I flushed most of the meds down the toilet, but I kept just enough for a week or two. I want you to keep the pills for me and give me only enough for each day, should I need them.”
She stared at me. I could see her brain racing.
“And this is why you think he won’t hurt you again—because you’ll be clean?”
“He’ll see that I’m trying. I’ll tell him. I’ll show him.”
“Ellie, if you think he’s drugging you—how’s that going to help?”
I leaned forward. “Because if I’m not drinking, and not taking meds, and then if I do have another episode, I’ll go straight to a doctor and have my blood tested.” I paused. “I will have evidence of what is in my system. It could be the proof I need that Martin is drugging me.”
“So you think your abuse of substances is making it easier for him to mess with you.”
“He could be using it to veil whatever he’s doing to me.”
“Once a guy hits you, it’s—”
“No.” I raised my hand. “I need a clear head in order to properly assess my situation. I want to be one hundred percent certain I’m not imagining all this stuff out of some drug-induced paranoia. And if I go to the police here, Martin will use my public episodes to explain away my ‘mad’ accusations. I can see it—he’ll say any bruises on me are because I fell when I was drunk. Everyone at the boat launch saw a drunk, Willow. They saw the blood. They saw the rage in my face. He told the doctors at the hospital his drugged wife cut him. People saw me at the Puggo—even you saw me there. The cops will believe his story over my story. They will side with him.”
She eyed me, nodded slowly. “Do you want to tell me how the pills started?”
I told her. Everything. From how I’d lost Chloe to what grief had done to me and how I’d struggled to cope with that, right up to how I’d come to be institutionalized. She listened patiently while the rain fell.
“See?” I said. “I have a history—drug abuse, mental illness, violence, memory loss. He can use all that against me if I lodge a complaint or file a charge. Doug sure did when he filed for divorce. Martin could even have me locked up again, maybe even get power of attorney because we’re in business together and he’d need my signature on things. He’d have full access to all my funds.”
A look of doubt creased her brow. “You don’t think that’s a stretch?”
“Honestly, I don’t know anything for certain right now.”
She watched me, her face tightening into something that looked like anger. I felt it, too, coming off her in waves. I feared that now I’d armed Willow with information against a man who’d assaulted me, she’d take actions on her own initiative—actions I wouldn’t be able to stop. Things would avalanche out of my control. She swore softly, got up abruptly, and put a kettle on. “Have you spoken to anyone, Ellie—called a friend? Family? Told anyone else?”
“This morning I called my friend Dana.”
She glanced up. “In Canada?”
I nodded. “Right after I flushed the pills. My call went to voice mail. She won’t return it.”
“Why not?” She poured hot water over tea leaves in china cups. Her