“What is it? What has he done?” she asks, exhaustion already heavy in her tone. I know she’s already been through so much with Thomas, and that I have checked out of so much of it, trying to keep my distance and pretend like I don’t have a part in turning him into the man he became. But now it’s time to face what we’ve done, and all the ways we’ve protected him. Once and for all.
I toss back the vodka in one. “Did you know he was with a girl for a few years?” I ask her, and she frowns.
“I—I knew he mentioned someone a few times,” she remarks, glancing up as she casts her mind back. “But he never said anything about something serious, at least, not to me. Why? Did he say something to you?”
“Not exactly,” I admit. I’m not ready to lay out the truth of the twins and my involvement with Lila quite yet, but I can fill her in on what he’s done, at the very least.
“You remember the night he smashed up his apartment? And you couldn’t figure out why?” I remind her.
She nods slowly. “Yeah…”
“It was because the woman he was with ran away,” I tell her.
“How do you know this?—”
“I can’t get into how,” I admit. “But I can tell you that I know it for sure. I’ve met her. She told me what he did to her, Martha, and I?—”
I catch myself. It hurts to think of what she went through, but worse, that I could have done something about it. Martha’s face is drawn, eyes darkening as she waits for me to go on.
“He cut her off from everything,” I explain. “Got her to drop out of college, cut off all of her friends, everything. Made it so she had no choice but to rely entirely on him. She doesn’t have family, doesn’t have much money, and he made that place her prison because he knew that she didn’t have any other way out.”
She bites her lip, and I can tell she’s holding back a surge of emotion at being faced with it like this. I can’t blame her.
“Did he…did he hurt her?”
“Physically, on top of everything else,” I confirm. “Grabbed her hard enough to leave bruises. And even after she left, he’s tried to intimidate her. Stalked her, and her children?—”
“Her children?” she gasps, hand flying to her mouth. “Tell me they’re not his?—”
“They’re not,” I assure her, not wanting to get into exactly how I’m so sure on that matter. “But they’re just babies, Martha. And he’s been following them. Turned up at her apartment with a knife, God only know what he planned to do to her given the chance…”
I trail off, and she swallows hard, shaky hand lifting the vodka to her lips as she takes in everything I’m saying to her. She doesn’t make any move to argue with me or accuse me of lying, which tells me everything I need to know. No doubt she’s heard worse from Thomas himself when it comes to his anger issues, but knowing that there’s someone out there who has been at the other end of them, a woman with children, at that…
“That fight he got in,” she remarks at last. “When you had to go patch him up at the hospital. Was that about the same woman?”
I nod. It’s not something I’d given much thought to, but I suppose he must have been looking for me, whether he knew it or not. He would never have suspected a man my age to be the one taking her out, clearly, and I thank whatever God is looking over me that he didn’t find me there that night. I can only imagine what kind of hell would have rained down on me if he had exposed me in public, what little grip I had on my reputation entirely lost.
“So he’s been doing this for…”
“For months,” I reply. “And years before that, before she got away.”
She pours herself another vodka and takes a long sip before she speaks again.
“Martin, why are you coming to me with this now?” she asks me softly. “You know that I hate the way he is. What he’s become. I’ve done everything I can to try and stop him, but nothing is ever enough—it’s a miracle we’ve managed to keep him out of prison for as long as we have, but…”
“I know,” I agree gently. I don’t want her to feel like I’m blaming her for all of this, because I’m not. I’m just as much responsiblefor everything that has happened as she is, and I’m not going to try and duck and dive to avoid that fact. “But I think it’s time we stopped protecting him. And started letting him face the consequences of his actions.”
Her gaze returns to her drink, like she wants to dive right into it. It hurts me to see her like this, no matter how much time has passed since we were involved. We might not be married anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t value her friendship or how welcome she made me feel in this country when it was new to me. She doesn’t deserve to have to live with the guilt of having a son like the one we share, but that doesn’t mean she can continue to turn her back on the people he’s hurt to avoid a blow to her social status.
“There are so many people out there who have suffered because of him,” I go on. “You know it as well as I do. Back when he was in high school, I thought we would be able to take him in hand. I thought therapy would do the job, I thought if we were just open enough and willing enough to listen, it might change things. But?—”
“But it never did,” she fills in for me before I can say a word. “I know, Martin. I thought it would change too. I thought he would get better. God knows, we’ve all had those moments, being a teenager isn’t easy for anyone, and especially with what you told me about your youth, I thought he might grow out of it.”
“I know,” I agree. “I thought that too. I’ve been telling myself that for a long time, longer than I should have. And I’m sorry I put it all on you to manage when I should have been there, even after the divorce. It was just that, whenever I looked at him, all I could see was how much he was hurting people, and I felt like if I turned my back on it, I could just pretend that it wasn’t happening.”
“I wish I could have done the same,” she admits. “Sometimes I thought about it, just how easy it would have been to disown him and leave him to clean up his own messes, but I knew what people would have thought about me. And I believed, God, I believed for so long that underneath it all there might be that little boy I loved so much when he was young. Who was kind, and decent, and capable of doing the right thing.”
She catches her breath, clearly surprised at her own candor. “But I suppose I’ve been deluding myself to trust that it’s even possible after all this time,” she adds. “That girl, her children…”
