“Yes.”
“But you didn’t leave him? I’m not judging!” he added hastily. “I am surprised though.”
“We’d been married about seven years by that time. He’d been working on me for so long that I actually wondered if maybe he wasn’t right in his assessment. I didn’t have any girlfriends to talk to about it. The one I did have, he was fucking, so I couldn’t exactly go to her for support. Tripoli and everyone else I knew from school were scattered around the world doing their thing, and he’d effectively cut me off from them, claiming people didn’t stay in touch with high school friends. Besides, I wasn’t doing anything nearly as exciting as they were, so why would they want to talk to me? I just cut him off and went about my life. We lived in the same house, we slept in the same bed, we worked at the same place, but the marriage was over.”
“He never threatened you or hurt you, did he?”
This was where the feelings of failure began. “I married a man just like my dad. It didn’t start that way. In fact, at the beginning, like I said, everything he did was so subtle that evenwhen I finally realized what he was doing, if I’d told people about it, there would have been easy ways to explain it away, or it was wrapped up in a passive-aggressive compliment. It wasn’t until after I cut him off that things started to escalate. He was careful. Nothing to the face.
“By then, leaving would have been walking into the unknown at a stage where I was petrified. Part of me thought that even though he was abusive, it was what I knew, and it was better than the unknown. I was too afraid to try and survive on my own, and obviously, I was never sure that he wouldn’t come after me.”
“You might have to arrest me if I ever come into contact with that asshole. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. You’re doing great now,” he told her with a sincere smile.
“Maybe. But I learned the hard way how to take care of myself.”
“Why did you finally decide to leave?”
“Ironically, it wasn’t the abuse. The last straw was actually work-related. I didn’t realize it then, but he’d been sabotaging me at work for years. Again, he started small, but it infiltrated the workplace and became so toxic, I wasn’t really left with much choice but to leave.
“I was working a car-theft case. At first, it didn't look like anything that abnormal. The initial thought was that it was teenagers joyriding, but I kept poking at it because something wasn’t sitting right with me. The cars would eventually always turn up, but something would be wrong with them. One would be missing a catalytic converter. Another would be missing tires. That kind of thing.
“The last vehicle, the one that broke the case for me, was when a really fancy car was found, but the owner paid more attention than most. In addition to things being missing, parts of the engine had been replaced with a cheaper version. When I went back and looked at the other cars, the owners and Idiscovered that their vehicles were also sporting replacement parts. Turns out we had a chop shop in a storage locker on a piece of property that had been running for some time.
“When I closed the case, the chief promoted Knox, not me. I pointed out that it was me who solved the case, but he claimed the promotion was supposed to have been Knox’s from a long time ago, and he couldn’t possibly promote me too. It was bullshit.
“My case was on the docket at the courthouse, but I needed to get out of there. That was when I left Louisiana and decided to hole up in New Mexico to get myself together. I began applying to other stations, but jobs never materialized, even when interviews went well, and I was all but told the job was mine.
“It didn’t make any sense. I started to wonder what was wrong, and I was feeling a bit desperate. I broke down and called my friend, Triumph. He used to work with the NSA, so he’s good with computers. He went digging and found that the reports I had filed weren’t there. The station filed something with the courthouse, claimed I hadn’t completed the work before leaving, and the case got thrown out.”
“So when the new stations called for a reference, they had to inform them about your lack of dedication and sloppy work ethic.”
“Exactly. I wondered if maybe Knox was on the take somehow and benefited from the shop staying open.”
“Jesus. What a mess.”
“I had copies of my reports on my personal computer to show that they were complete, but there was no way to prove they’d been uploaded. I mean, Triumph could have done it, but then he’d have to admit he’d hacked courthouse and police records. I couldn’t ask that of him. And there was no way to plausibly suggest that someone had erased the files in order to get someone to look into it, so…” She shrugged.
A hand reached out to smooth back the hair from her face and stroke down her cheek. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. And I get it. Why you’re scared to be involved with someone you work with. It does leave you extra vulnerable if things go wrong. I swear on Ezra’s life I wouldn’t do something vindictive like that.”
“The thing is, I know you wouldn’t do that,” she admitted. “But Knox made a similar promise, so it was difficult to trust again.”
“Was?”
She should have known he’d be listening close enough to catch the word choice. One of his best qualities. He listened—completely—not just to the words, but to the subtext, as well as the tone and inflection of the speaker. Being a former English teacher probably had something to do with it as well.
“Yes. ‘Was.’ I do trust you not to be like Knox. Now.”
The smile on his face was huge, like she’d given him the best present he’d ever received.
“I didn’t tell you all this to make you feel bad for me or to extract some sort of promise from you. I told you because I needed to share that with you. You’ve opened up to me about what you see as your failings in relationships, but what you don’t understand is that we all come to relationships with issues. Now you know mine. Neither of us saw what was right in front of us, nor did we get out of things when we should have. We wanted things to work. Didn’t want to admit to ourselves or others that we’d made mistakes.
“You and me? There’s so much more to each of our histories. If we unleash our romantic mistakes in life without context, of course they’re going to make us look like we’re bad catches. Relationships have nuances that even people closest to those involved don’t see. If we judged each other solely on what wedid in our first years on our own, none of us would be suitable relationship material.
“Maybe you were a workaholic. Maybe you did favor your son and your job over your wife. I don’t see favoring time with your son as a detriment. One, she’s an adult. Two, she’s Ezra’s mother. Taking that into consideration, a child needs parents to put them above everything else, for so many reasons. If she didn’t recognize that he should have been first, with both of you, the failing is with her, not you.
“But we’re both workaholics, so I can’t even begin to judge you on something I’m just as guilty of. I don’t see you as a collection of red flags. I never did. There were lots of yellow flags for me—slow down, caution. What they should be is orange—work in progress.”
His face scrunched up, assessing her. “Are you sure you’re not a novelist in secret?”
