I eventually found out that was the first red flag. He hadn’t accepted me. He’d selected me. A single mother, broke and desperate, who’d be grateful for his “stability.”
His opinions soon turned into nagging demands to conform to a conservative aesthetic while he was running to become mayor of Saint Everette Park—a small Minnesota city he’d eventually end up bankrupting with a string of money-laundering schemes for the Del Gotti mafia family. Then, after Noelle was born, his opinions became my new laws. Ones I was punished for disobeying.
A familiar nausea churned in my stomach, remembering the years that followed me naively falling for Dennis’s “I’m such a nice and stable guy” act.
But that was a long time ago. I’d turned my life around in the ten years since my hard-won divorce.
I had my freedom, my dreadlocks—a hairstyle Dennis’s opinion would never have allowed—my gallery assistant job at the small-but-important Black Heritage Museum, and a tiny apartment within walking distance.
Sure, I lived paycheck to paycheck, and no, that art voice never came back. And yes, I felt lonely sometimes, but like West Nygard and Reina Smith were currently singing for one last chorus…“I count my blessings. Yes, I do.”
I unlocked the building door and pulled out my phone to text Noelle as “I Count My Blessings” faded into Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”
The first lie to Noelle was unintentional.
“Home safely!”I texted her before I’d even made it to the stairs leading up to my second-floor apartment.“Thanks for hosting me. Love you so much!”
I wasn’t trying to lie to her. I was so tired after a day of making Thanksgiving dinner and traveling by bus back to Minneapolis, I knew all I’d be doing would be falling into my own bed with my suitcase still unpacked as soon as I walked through the door.
But I was wrong—both about getting home safely and falling asleep right away.
When I opened my door, still humming along to Joni Mitchell, I froze.
My apartment was dark, but the expensive cologne I hadn’t smelled in years hit me before my eyes could adjust.
Dennis.
I found the ex, who still had five years left on his sentence for embezzlement and money laundering, waiting at the cute round yellow table I’d thrifted. A black gun with a silencer attached to its long barrel rested in front of him.
Just as Joni Mitchell reminded me, you don’t know what you’ve got…
Until it’s gone.
2/
are you serious, mom?
BELL
december
“Are you serious, Mom?” A few weeks after Thanksgiving, Noelle’s voice squawked out of my phone’s speaker. “I just told you Bradford cheated on me and got me put on leave for unethical conduct—which is totally not true. And now you’re saying you don’t want me to come for Christmas? Because you’re back together with the guy who made your life miserable for years?”
Noelle sounded like she was on the verge of tears, but I refused to budge.
“I’m sorry,” I answered, voice flat. “But I owe it to Dennis to give our relationship another chance without any distractions.”
I looked at the ex who’d shown up without warning over a week ago.
“You think I’m a distraction?” I couldn’t see Noelle, but I could hear the hurt in her question—then her anger when she said,“What do you think Dennis will be then? You’ve finally gotten your life together. How long before he ruins it again?!”
“That was a huge misunderstanding,” I insisted. “And I overreacted. I never should have divorced him. I should have tried to work things out, and now I…”
I had to swallow a couple of times to choke out my next words. “I finally have a chance to make up for what I did to him.”
“Whatyoudid tohim.” Disgust filled Noelle’s voice. “Mom, he hit you, and he would have started hitting me, too, if you hadn’t left him when you did. I can’t believe you’re actually going back to that ass?—”
“Don’t talk about Dennis like that!” I cut her off before she could say something we’d both regret. “He is a good man. And he deserves our respect.”
