“About six months into our relationship, Eric was involved in something pretty big. He and some other officers were providing support to the Secret Service for this rally for one of the presidential candidates running for office that year.”
I knew instantly what Ethan was talking about and what would come next because it had been big news at the time.
“Eric intercepted a guy who’d managed to get past security and was running towards the stage. He…he had a bomb strapped to his chest. Eric tackled him and kept him from detonating the bomb. It was…it was a big deal.”
“I remember that,” Ronan said softly. “It was all over the news.”
Ethan nodded. “Everybody called him a hero. And he was,” Ethan murmured. “He saved a lot of lives that day. No one…no one knew what he was really like.” I saw Ethan dash at his eyes. Even though he’d only mentioned the one violent episode, I knew he’d left countless more out.
“The press was how I found out he was married…to a woman,” Ethan said softly. “I’d had no idea. But things started to make sense after that. Why he never wanted to go out in public with me, why he rarely spent the night. I confronted him about it and told him I didn’t want to see him anymore. It…it didn’t go well for me.” Ethan fell silent for a moment before continuing.
“I found out his wife was actually his second wife. His first had died about a year after Eric married her – some kind of drowning, I guess. His second wife was named Patricia Fields and I guess she was a pretty big deal. A lawyer for the White House or something.They’d been married for three years. Patricia had a daughter from a previous marriage.”
“Lucy,” Ronan murmured.
Ethan nodded. “She told me later that Eric adopted her about a year after the marriage. Lucy’s dad died of a heart attack when she was nine. I guess Patricia was well-off – family money or something. After I found out about Patricia, Eric would talk a lot about how she never let him forget it was her money and not his. The things he said about her…” Ethan shook his head.
“Do you think he was abusing her too?” I asked.
Ethan glanced at me and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Lucy said he never laid a hand on her. They fought a lot, but for some reason, Eric never went after her like he did me.”
Yeah, because Eric had had Ethan to use as a punching bag. I had no doubt the fucker had taken every violent thought he’d had about his powerful wife and vented it on Ethan instead. A glance at Ronan told me he was thinking the same thing.
“The episode with the bomber got Eric a pretty big promotion at work. He became some kind of liaison with the Secret Service. It meant meeting a lot of important people. He…he was on cloud nine,” Ethan murmured. “Which meant things got better for me for a little while and I thought maybe the worst was behind us. He’d told me he was planning to divorce Patricia all along but that now he needed to wait until the press died down. He said he’d come out too…that he’d proudly tell the world about us. He became that guy who’d swept me off my feet again and we were really happy for a few months. But when the attention started to wear off…”
“The abuse started again,” Ronan said softly when Ethan seemed reluctant to continue.
Ethan nodded. “It was worse than ever,” he whispered. “He began controlling everything in my life. He tracked my phone, my car. He took over my finances and monitored my email. If I went somewhere I wasn’t supposed to, he accused me of going to meet a lover. If I spent money on something he didn’t authorize, he wanted to know what it was. If someone from work called me, he wanted to know why. My work schedule was always unpredictable, but heaccused me of lying about the extra hours I’d work. He was sure I was cheating on him,” Ethan whispered.
“But I wasn’t…even if I’d had the chance, I wouldn’t have. I…I wouldn’t do that,” he said as he looked at me and then Ronan.
“I tried to leave him a few times, but he wouldn’t let me go. I think people at work started to figure things out. I couldn’t always hide the bruises. I started calling in sick when the beatings became too much, but when my boss said he’d have to let me go if I kept doing it, I knew I needed to do something. Work was all I had left…I couldn’t…I couldn’t lose that too.”
Ethan paused for a moment and I saw Ronan get up and go to a small refrigerator that was part of a built-in bar along the far wall. He returned with a bottle of water and set it in front of Ethan along with a box of tissues.
“Thank you,” Ethan whispered. His fingers were shaking as he tried to open the bottle of water. It took him a few tries before he managed it. He wiped carefully at his face with a tissue before he continued.
“I started planning my escape about eighteen months ago. Eric would only give me a certain amount of money each week to live on. He’d forced me to add him to my accounts so he’d be able to see if I took any money out of them, so I never did. Instead, I began shopping at places where I’d be less likely to get receipts…like farmer’s markets. I bought as much of my food there as I could and then kept the leftover money. Eric believed me when I told him that I wasn’t able to get receipts for the things I’d bought and he wasn’t around often enough to see that I wasn’t buying as much as I said I had. I took the change and opened a safe deposit box at a bank a few miles from my work. I only ever took the bus to that bank and I left my phone at work when I would make my weekly runs so Eric never found out about it. I…I started hiding proof there too.”
“Proof?” Ronan asked.
A quick nod from Ethan. “Um, yeah, I started recording Eric when I knew I was in trouble for something. They had these small digital recorders at work that we used to use for transcription before the electronic charting system was implemented. I…I took one and I set it up in my room…I taped it to the back of my bookshelf. I’d turn it on when I knew Eric was coming over. Most of our fights ended up in my room,” Ethan said softly before dropping his eyes.
I stiffened at that because I knew what he meant. The idea that he’d been repeatedly sexually assaulted broke open something so deep inside me that I barely managed to stifle a moan. I noticed Phoenix watching me with curiosity so I forced myself to focus on Ethan while trying to school my reaction.
“I’d use the computers at work to transfer the recordings to CDs…I didn’t store them electronically because I was afraid Eric would somehow be able to find any kind of cloud account. I put the CDs in my safe deposit box. I put medical proof in there too.”
“What kind of proof?” I asked, though I already knew.
I could see the shame creep into Ethan’s eyes and I hated that he couldn’t look at me as he spoke.
“Mostly just pictures I took of my bruises in the mirror, but one night after a particularly bad fight, I had to go to the hospital because I knew he’d done damage that I couldn’t treat myself. I went to a hospital in Maryland because I knew they might call the cops even if I told them not to. I convinced them not to, but asked them to take pictures and document my injuries-”
“What kind of injuries?” I asked.
Ethan’s eyes flashed to mine and he shook his head.
“What kind of injuries, Ethan?” I asked, softening my voice. He held my gaze for a long moment before speaking. But he refused to keep looking at me.
