Chương 4
They photographed the injuries with Emily’s consent.
A hospital social worker named Melissa sat with her afterward.
“You don’t have to decide everything today.”
Emily looked at her.
“I was supposed to get married forty minutes ago.”
Melissa nodded.
“So I’m having some difficulty with the concept of not deciding everything today.”
“That makes sense.”
Emily almost smiled.
Melissa gave her information about safety planning and local domestic violence resources. She explained options without pushing any one of them. Police report. Protective order. Staying somewhere Ethan could not access. Preserving messages and photographs.
When she mentioned preserving messages, Emily thought of the text Ethan had sent that morning.
We need to talk before you make this worse.
“Can I show you something?”
Melissa read it.
“Save it.”
“It doesn’t prove anything.”
“It doesn’t have to prove everything by itself.”
That sentence stayed with Emily.
Nothing had to prove everything by itself.
By the time they left the hospital, the wedding had been officially canceled.
Diane had handled it from the waiting room.
The villa had stopped guests at the entrance. The planner sent a short message saying there had been a family emergency and the ceremony would not take place.
No details.
At Emily’s request, no details.
That lasted approximately ninety minutes.
By six-thirty, somebody had posted a photograph online.
It showed Ethan standing at the villa entrance with a red mark on his cheek.
The caption said:
Wedding canceled after bride’s father attacks groom.
Emily saw it while sitting at her parents’ kitchen island eating toast.
She stopped chewing.
Robert read over her shoulder.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
Diane took the phone.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re breathing like you’re about to do something.”
Robert pointed at himself.
“This is how I breathe.”
“You have several kinds.”
Emily laughed.
It surprised all three of them.
Then her phone rang.
Lauren.
Ethan’s sister.
Emily stared at the name.
“Don’t answer,” Robert said.
Diane gave him a look.
“What?”
“It’s her phone.”
Emily answered.
“Hi.”
Lauren was crying.
Not loudly.
“Emily, what happened?”
Emily closed her eyes.
“Did Ethan call you?”
“He said your dad hit him.”
“He did.”
There was a pause.
“Why?”
Emily looked at Robert.
He looked away.
“Because Ethan hit me first.”
Silence.
Then Lauren said, “What?”
“He hit me last night.”
“That’s not possible.”
The words came too quickly.
Emily felt something inside her cool.
“I’m looking at the bruise.”
“I don’t mean—I mean, maybe—he said you fell.”
Emily sat straighter.
“He told you I fell?”
Another pause.
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
Emily looked at her parents.
Diane understood from her expression that something had changed.
“What exactly did he say?”
Lauren began crying harder.
“He said you two fought and you’d been drinking and you fell in the bathroom, and your dad misunderstood.”
“I wasn’t drinking.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you don’t drink before noon.”
Emily almost smiled.
It was such an ordinary fact.
Lauren had known her for two years. They had spent Christmases together. Shared hotel rooms during a family trip. Once, after too many margaritas in Austin, they had sat on a bathroom floor until two in the morning talking about how impossible Ethan could be.
Emily lowered her voice.
“Lauren, he told me last night that nobody would believe me if I said he hit me.”
Lauren stopped crying.
Emily heard breathing on the other end.
“Did he say that?”
“Yes.”
Another silence.
Then Lauren whispered, “Oh.”
It was not disbelief.
It was recognition.
Emily felt it immediately.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Lauren.”
“I have to go.”
“What do you know?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You just changed.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“Emily, I can’t.”
The call ended.
Robert was already reaching for his own phone.
Emily stopped him.
“No.”
“I’m calling Ethan.”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“Nobody.”
Robert stared at her.
“She knows something.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to sit here?”
“For five minutes, yes.”
He looked genuinely offended by the idea.
Emily took another bite of toast.
It tasted like cardboard.
Diane poured coffee.
Nobody spoke.
Five minutes became twelve.
At 6:48, Lauren sent a message.
I’m sorry.
At 6:51:
Can we meet tomorrow without Ethan knowing?
Emily read it twice.
Robert read it once.
“No.”
Emily looked at him.
“I wasn’t asking you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Dad.”
“You’re not meeting his sister alone.”
“She said without Ethan.”
“That does not make it safer.”
Diane stirred sugar into coffee she had forgotten she drank black.
“He has a point.”
Robert looked pleased.
“Don’t enjoy it,” Diane said.
Emily stared at Lauren’s message.
“I’ll meet her somewhere public.”
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Emily.”
“You can sit in the parking lot.”
Robert considered this.
“Inside.”
“Parking lot.”
“Across the room.”
“Dad.”
“Parking lot.”
They agreed.
It was the first negotiation of Emily’s new life.
There would be many more.
That night she slept in her childhood bedroom.
The room had become a guest room years earlier, but Diane had never removed the small dent in the baseboard where Emily had thrown a hairbrush at fourteen.
At 2:13 a.m., Emily woke convinced somebody was downstairs.
She sat up.
Listened.
Nothing.
Then a floorboard creaked.
Her heart began pounding.
She picked up her phone.
The bedroom door opened.
Emily screamed.
Robert jumped backward.
“Jesus!”
“Dad!”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are you doing?”
“Checking the windows.”
“At two in the morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“You nearly killed me.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
He stood there in plaid pajama pants holding a baseball bat.
Emily stared at him.
“Is that from my old softball team?”
Robert looked at the bat.
“Yes.”
“You’re protecting us with a twelve-year-old girl’s aluminum bat?”
“It’s still aluminum.”
Emily started laughing.
She could not stop.
Robert leaned against the doorframe.
Eventually he laughed too.
Then Emily’s face hurt and she pressed an ice pack against her eye.
Robert sat on the floor outside her room.
May you like
Neither of them suggested he leave.
The next morning, Emily met Lauren at a coffee shop twenty minutes from her parents’ house.
