Rupert laughs at this, his big muzzle opening wide to show off his thick, pink tongue and sharp teeth.
“I assume you have. I still want to know, by the way, how you came to be living in your car.”
I bite my lip. Did I think this would only go one way? Maybe I’d simply assumed we’d talk about Rupert all day, and I wouldn’t have to reveal to him the things I’ve tried to keep secret.
Looking back, I’m ashamed of myself, of what I allowed Andy to do to me. I would hate to see the judgment on Rupert’s face as I reveal just how much of a fool I was to slip into his vortex.
“It’s a long story,” I finally say, bringing my hood up over my head as the sun disappears into the tree branches.
Rupert tucks his hands behind his back as he gazes up into the foliage. “We have time.”
My throat closes just imagining how he might react. I never thought I’d be one of those women who finds herself trapped by a man, tolerating more and more until she’s swallowed up. But here I am with nothing, trying to piece my life back together.
“What if I ask an easier question?” Rupert asks, his tone soothing and kind, as if he understands from my silence how I’m struggling. “Why are you not working as a chef right now?”
The answer to this is easy. “Andy.”
Rupert nods like he’s listening.
“Andy happened.” I don’t realize how much venom is inside me until it all bursts out. “Mother fucking Andy Duvall.”
I ball my hands up into fists, filling up with fury when I so much as think his full name.
“He ruined everything.”
rupert
It’s clearly difficult for Peony to tell me her story, but still, she perseveres in beginning.
“He was so charming, so handsome,” she says, wincing at just the words. “I remember feeling giddy, amazed that he would even ask me out.
“He acted like the perfect gentleman. He was everything I wanted in a boyfriend—attentive, sweet, supportive. But once I was under his spell and we were discussing something more long-term…”
She falls quiet for a moment, taking a few deep breaths to steel herself for what comes next.
“He wanted to move in together,” she says. “But he lived a few towns over. Somehow, he convinced me to quit my job. I don’t even know how. I don’t know why I did it.”
And that was how he slowly peeled away her independence. Peony nearly crumbles as she recounts how he did it—first with her job, then with her family, her friends, even her bank account, until she was fully stripped of her own identity.
“I don’t know how that could have happened to me,” she says, so quietly I almost can’t hear her, even though thewoods are silent today. “After my mom left, I thought I was stronger than that. I thought I’d built up higher walls. How could anyone turn me against my own father?”
I try not to let the pity I feel show in my eyes. If she’s anything like me, the last thing she wants is pity. And yet, how else can I describe the pain I feel at hearing her story, the way I want to wrap my arms around her and then promise to find this man—Andy—and tear out his larynx the way I would a deer’s?
It is simultaneously the most tender and the most violent I think I’ve ever felt, listening to the way one man carefully, intentionally dismantled Peony’s life from the inside out. At one point, as she talks about the final fight she had with her father over Andy, her voice nearly breaks.
I reach out and place a steadying hand on her shoulder. She gives me an appreciative look, and even leans into my touch, like she wants more of it.
“I should have known by then,” she says, almost more to herself than to me. “I should have never been okay with how Andy treated Dad.”
“Please, don’t berate yourself that way.” I stroke the arm of her peacoat. “That horrible man had trapped you inside a maze.”
She nods, sniffling, but I don’t think she believes me. And I understand, to a degree, how one can end up in a place so radically different from where they started without realizing it’s happening.
“What did me in was the day he broke that bowl.” Peony seems to shrink in even smaller on herself as she reaches this part of the tale. “He was always breaking stuff when he got mad, but this time, he broke a glass bowl and cut himself on it. His hand was bleeding all over the shards. He held one up and aimed it at me as he yelled, and I knew that if I wasn’tcareful, he might just stab me with it. When I realized that yes, he was most certainly capable of hurting me…” She’s crying now, diamond tears slipping down her ruddy cheeks. “I knew I had to go. I put a pillow and a blanket in the trunk of the car and pretended I lost them at the laundromat. Then I stuffed some clothes in there and left in the middle of the night.”
It seems like she desperately needs comfort right now, so I slip my arm around her shoulders, bringing her in against my side. She seems to instantly relax there, though she is crying harder now.
“I still think he’s chasing me,” she says between sniffles. “Most nights, I dream that he’s found me, and then he kills me with the glass bowl.”
