restaurant last night. Two men tried to rob me.” I jerk my head toward the table where John sits. “He helped me. Walked me home to make sure I got there safe. Tom didn’t like it.”
“What kind of trouble?”
I tell her about the men, about what happened.
“From now on, you’re not closing by yourself. And if you see them around here again, you tell me.” Her expression darkens. “Tom hurt you, didn’t he?”
“He—It’s nothing that hasn’t happened before. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“He’s no good.”
“Sometimes he is,” I say, driven by an irrational need to defend my husband. After all, I made vows, didn’t I?
For better or worse, in sickness and in health. What’s your word worth if you take back the promises you make? But there were promises Tom made, too, ones that were broken.
What is this if not “worse”? The man I married isn’t the man I’m married to now. It’s like there’s a sickness inside him, eating away at those good parts I fell in love with so long ago until there’s nothing of the emotions I once felt for him, only fear and regret.
“He hasn’t been good since he was a boy, and even then he had a wicked streak in him,” Ruby retorts. “You couldn’t see it. Young love, and all that nonsense. He was always a wild one. Thought he could do whatever he wanted and the hell with everyone else.”
“Things have been difficult lately. Fishing isn’t what it used to be. He’s under a lot of pressure.”
“Lots of people are under a lot of pressure. And lots of men don’t beat their wives.”
“I know. When the baby comes—”
Things will change. They have to. We’ll be a family. Tom will drink less. Things will get better. I’ll stop fantasizing about my husband’s death.
“When the baby comes, nothing will change,” Ruby replies, gentleness in her voice. “Do you want your child to grow up seeing its mother hurting? Do you want to spend your days worrying that one day he’ll use his fists on them, too?”
“I would never let someone hurt my child.”
“Helen. No matter how hard you try, as long as you’re with him, you’ll be in danger. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
“It is. But is leaving supposed to be easy? He’ll kill me if I try to leave and he catches me. He told me last night that he’d take the baby away from me.”
“Oh, honey. You could go to the police.”
“What will they do? How is Tom different from other men? Do you know how many nights Tom has spent in the jail sleeping one off only to be released in the morning with a smile and a wave? Sometimes he takes the sheriff out fishing, shows him the best spots to catch marlin.”
“Is there somewhere you could go?”
“Tom would find me.”
After all, there aren’t many places I could hide. Nearly all of my childhood friends moved north when things got bad, when tourism dried up and the fishing industry changed and the only money to be had was smuggling booze or running guns.
“No one can tell you what to do, Helen; you have to decide for yourself. But he’s got you thinking you’re backed into a corner, that you have nowhere to go, no options but him, and that’s not true. You have friends, people who would help you, and most importantly, you’re smart and you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. No one could live the life you’ve been living and not be brave.
“Before I met Max there were men. Some good, others not so much. The bad ones will make you believe you’re nothing. They’ll make you small because that’s the only way they’ll ever see themselves as amounting to anything. It’s a lie. The second you stop believing the lie is the second you take their power away from them.”
“I’m having a baby. Tom’s baby. If I leave, he’ll come after us. I’ve seen what he’s capable of when he’s angry—I don’t want to consider what he’ll do. Even if I could leave, if I could escape somewhere, how would I support us?”
“You’re doing a pretty good job of it now. How much of the money you make here does Tom drink away in a bottle? I didn’t say it was easy, but, honey, nothing about life is easy or ever has been. You got steel in you, and it’s time you believed it.”
This baby inside me is a ticking clock, and where I’d almost convinced myself this