Quite often, truth hurts too much.
When Nancy Mulligan stands on my porch just a few months later, both her eyes are bruised black and blue.
Her pretty face is marked with scars I’ve never seen before, and her once-beautiful hair hangs in limp, greasy strands. She holds her arm tight against her chest, as if it’s hurting, and the closer I look, the easier it is to see the green bruise on her wrist—a bracelet of fingers that once gripped her too hard.
“Is she here?” Her words are soft. Shaky. She looks like she thinks I might strike her.
“Is who here?” We’ve never acknowledged the child shared by our homes, by my husband, but of course I know whom she means. Try as I might, I can’t stop staring at the cuts on her face. “What happened to you?”
She scowls so fast it must hurt because she immediately winces. “Like you don’t know.”
I stare at her, but I can’t bring myself to ask. I can’t.
“Is she okay, Hazel? Just tell me that.”
“She’s…” My voice breaks when I picture the little girl currently sitting on my kitchen floor, fingerpainting with her sister. “She’s perfect.”
It’s not a lie.
She swallows, looking away as tears fill her eyes. “Please let me see her.”
“You didn’t want to.” I repeat the lie Charles told me, though maybe I knew it was a lie even as he said the words. “You didn’t want her.”
She doesn’t bother arguing, and I guess she doesn’t need to. Eventually, I look away, stepping back so she can come inside.
She rushes past me, gathering her daughter in her arms in a rush. “Oh, my baby. My baby.” She kisses her cheeks. Violet, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to know who her mother is. She pushes her away, whining, and it breaks something inside me. Something raw and wild.
“How long has it been since you saw her?”
“Since she stopped nursing.” She clears her throat, not forcing herself on her child again, though I can see it’s killing her. She sits and watches her as if she’s the most fascinating thing in the world. “He locked me in my bedroom after that. And…she was gone.”
“Charles wouldn’t do that.” He wouldn’t. My husband isn’t a monster. She must’ve done something. She must’ve.
She closes her eyes, squeezing them shut. “Is she happy? Is she…is she safe here?”
I study Nancy, looking for a hint of the villain I want her to be. The homewrecker. The woman who abandoned her child. This would all be easier if she is who I’ve told myself she is. “How long did the affair go on?”
She sniffles, looking down, and from where I am, I’m towering over her as she remains on the floor between our girls.
“It was a mistake,” she says finally. “After William died, I was lost. I was drowning. And…” She smiles, but it’s bitter. “And Charles was there. He was kind to me at first.”
She makes eye contact with me but breaks it in a flash. “I thought he would leave you, and I’m sorry for that. I wanted a family. I wanted my family to be whole again. Charles…he let me believe that would happen.”
She sniffles, adjusting her feet against the dirty floor, pulling them under her. “But once Violet came, once she was here, it was different. He was colder. He took her from me and locked me in my bedroom. He said I was hormonal. I was tired. And maybe I was. But I needed help, and he just…he left me. Me and the boys.”
She looks away. “And then he started hitting me. Some days, I think he wishes he could kill me. Some days, I think maybe he tries to.” She coughs, and the cough turns into a fit.
“My husband has never laid a hand on me.” The one time he tried—he’d been drinking, and we argued—I pulled a frying pan out and promised to kill him if he ever tried again. I was a different woman then, younger and bolder, full of fire, but I think he saw in my eyes that I meant it.
“Well, goodie for you,” she mutters, holding out her palm to the little girl. Carefully, Violet places her hand into it.
“She loves high-fives,” I say.
They look up at me—first Violet, then Nancy—and I see it for the first time.
Their resemblance. It’s in the eyes.
“You have to know… I didn’t, um, I mean, I had no idea he was… Charles…”
