Chương 4
“Any dizziness?”
“No.”
“Headache?”
“No.”
“Did you lose consciousness?”
“No.”
“Are you taking blood thinners?”
“Just aspirin.”
“Daily?”
“When I remember.”
He smiled slightly. “Most people say that.”
The normality of the exchange made Eleanor want to cry more than the arrest had. She did not. She watched him peel the wrapper from a small bandage and thought about the unopened box of cornflakes in the pantry.
Anna collected the papers from the floor without touching them directly. Torres gave her evidence bags and watched as she pointed out the recorder, the property-transfer documents, the bank statements, the phone, and the cash in Calvin’s pocket.
“That money is mine,” Eleanor said.
Torres nodded. “We’ll document it.”
“Will I get it back?”
“Not tonight.”
Of course not tonight. Eleanor almost laughed. Freedom, she discovered, began with paperwork and missing grocery money.
At one thirty in the morning, the house no longer belonged to her in any meaningful way. Police moved through it. A crime-scene technician photographed the window, the spilled bag, the drawer containing the phone, the bruises on her arm, and the cut on her face. Anna stood near the doorway answering questions about when she had arrived and what she had heard.
Eleanor went upstairs to change her cardigan.
In the bedroom, Calvin’s side of the bed was unmade. He slept badly and blamed the mattress. His reading glasses rested on the nightstand beside a half-finished biography of a president he claimed to admire but had been reading for eleven months.
Eleanor opened the closet.
Her clothes occupied less than half the space. Calvin’s suits hung in shades of gray and navy, each shoulder shaped by expensive wooden hangers. She had once enjoyed choosing his ties. The memory embarrassed her, not because the pleasure had been false, but because it had been real.
She changed into a blue sweater and folded the stained cardigan over her arm.
In the bathroom, she studied the bruise blooming near her mouth. The woman in the mirror looked older than she had that morning. She also looked familiar in a way she had not for some time.
Anna appeared behind her in the doorway.
“We need to go.”
Eleanor adjusted the sweater cuff.
“Where?”
“My hotel first. Tomorrow we can talk to an advocate about emergency housing or a protective order.”
“I can stay here.”
“No.”
“He’s in jail.”
“For tonight.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I asked.”
The certainty in Anna’s voice irritated her.
“You always ask,” Eleanor said. “You arrive and ask the right person the right question, and suddenly everything has an answer.”
Anna’s face tightened.
“That is not what’s happening.”
“It feels like it.”
“Mom, he threatened to kill you.”
“He was drunk.”
“That does not make it safer.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“You’re defending him.”
“I’m explaining.”
“You have been explaining him for twenty-six years.”
The words landed between them.
Anna looked away first.
Eleanor set the cardigan on the sink.
“I didn’t ask you to come here and punish me.”
“I’m not punishing you.”
“You think I don’t know what you see when you look at me?”
Anna rubbed rainwater from one sleeve.
“I see my mother with a cut on her face.”
“You see someone who should have left sooner.”
“I see someone who is leaving now.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” Anna said. “It isn’t.”
Downstairs, a drawer closed. Someone spoke into a radio.
Eleanor sat on the edge of the bathtub.
“I need my hairbrush.”
Anna found it in the top drawer and handed it to her.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
At the hotel, Eleanor could not sleep. The room smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and old air-conditioning. Anna gave her the bed and took the chair near the window, still in uniform trousers and a white undershirt after hanging her jacket in the bathroom to dry.
“You cannot sleep sitting up,” Eleanor said.
“I have before.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is technically an answer.”
Eleanor looked at her.
Anna’s mouth almost smiled.
The clock between the beds read 3:18.
Eleanor lay down fully clothed. She had forgotten pajamas. Rainwater moved in silver lines across the window.
“Did you tell your commander?”
“That I was coming?”
“Yes.”
“I requested emergency leave.”
“Did you tell them why?”
“I said it was a family crisis.”
“That sounds dramatic.”
“It was accurate.”
Eleanor pulled the blanket higher.
“When do you have to go back?”
“Sunday night.”
“That soon?”
“I can ask for more time.”
“No. Don’t do that.”
“We’ll see.”
“You have people depending on you.”
“So do you.”
Eleanor stared at the ceiling.
“Calvin used to say that about me.”
Anna’s head turned.
“He said he depended on you?”
“He said I was the only person who understood how difficult things were for him.”
“That’s not the same.”
“At the time, it sounded important.”
Anna looked back toward the window.
“When I was sixteen,” she said, “I waited in the garage for an hour because he was yelling at you.”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“I remember.”
“I had a softball bat.”
“I know.”
“You knew?”
“I saw you through the laundry-room window.”
“I thought if he hit you, I would go inside.”
“He didn’t.”
“Not that night.”
The air-conditioner clicked on.
Eleanor remembered Anna at sixteen: strong shoulders, scraped knees, dark hair pulled through the back of a cap. Calvin had called her unfeminine when she refused to wear a dress to a wedding. Eleanor had told her to change, not because she agreed, but because she wanted the afternoon to remain peaceful.
Anna had changed.
“I’m sorry,” Eleanor said.
Anna’s eyes remained on the window.
“For what?”
“For making you wait in the garage.”
“You didn’t make me.”
“I knew you were there.”
“That isn’t the same as making me.”
May you like
“No,” Eleanor said. “It isn’t.”
At four twelve, Anna moved from the chair to the floor and slept with her back against the wall. Eleanor watched her for several minutes, then placed one of the pillows beneath her head. Anna opened her eyes instantly.
