by Leah Konen
Vera shook her head. “It’s about a half mile more, but this is the, well, the spot.”
“What spot?” I asked.
She scratched at the strap of her tank, exposing her sports bra—neon green, this time. “Where that poor girl fell. They say she stepped out to take a photo, and the rocks just crumbled. The river’s just below.”
“That’s why I like to be careful,” John said. “With my GPS and all that. It’s easy to disappear on a hike. You read stories in the news all the time. Someone takes a photo, heads off the trail, and then that’s it.”
I was too afraid to go closer to the edge, but I could hear the water rumbling over the riverbed. Leaves rustled behind me, and I jumped, gasping.
Before I could stop myself, I imagined Davis, standing there, ready to push me off the ledge, end it all, give me the punishment I’m sure he thought I deserved.
Vera stepped closer, reaching out a hand toward me. “What’s wrong, Lucy?”
Instinctively, I took a step away from her.
“Are you okay?” John asked, but I backed up even more, shaking my head—
“God,” she said. “You look green.”
I bent over, hands on my knees.
The river rushed in my periphery, and I retched—one, two, three times.
I’m so scared, I thought as tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks, and I continued to heave.
John stepped forward, pressing a napkin into my hand, and when there was nothing left to spit out, he helped me stand up straight, his hand, strong and steadying, resting on my elbow, bathing it in heat. Electricity. “Whatever happened to you,” John said. “Whatever he—” His voice deepened with anger, protectiveness, but he took a breath, calming down. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay now.” He squeezed my elbow gently. “We’ll make sure of that.”
Vera sidled up, too, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, nowhere near as strong as John’s but comforting all the same. “John’s right,” she said in my ear as more tears came. “Like I said last night, you’re safe with us.”
Something crazy happened in that moment, something I hadn’t expected, pushing every intrusive thought away.
I believed them. What’s more, I decided to tell them the truth.
TEN
Perhaps things wouldn’t have gotten so bad if I had better learned to prevent Davis’s triggers.
Maybe then I wouldn’t be standing in the middle of the woods upstate, bile sour in my mouth as I tried to explain the details of a failed, abusive relationship to my new friends.
But it was a lost cause from the beginning—there were simply too many things that could piss Davis off.
He didn’t like criticism—no one did, but he really hated it—especially in public.
He didn’t like me flirting, or anything that could be construed as flirting, which included wearing sexy clothes outside of our apartment, spending too much time on my makeup, smiling too long at waiters or bartenders he deemed attractive, or engaging in banter with male coworkers, even if it was only about work.
He didn’t like me talking about my exes. Not even stupid, insignificant ones. Not even as a joke.
He didn’t like any openness about our sex life. Though it was always good between us, one of the ways we were undeniably in sync, it was his and his alone to enjoy. No sharing even the smallest details with others.
He didn’t like me trying to control him, no matter how tiny the ask. He was an adult, he said. He’d do it all in his own time.
He didn’t like me going places without telling him. Hours that couldn’t be accounted for. He was like a nosy client that way, needing to know how I spent every minute of time he had decided was his.
I know it sounds terrible, like some sort of prison sentence, but really, it wasn’t. I would have left far sooner if it were. As with any person you spend all your time with, you learn what gets under their skin. You do your best to avoid it. You grow as a person, as a couple. You communicate your needs.
And the good, it was so good. The sex, the emotional support, the excitement of us. Once, we took a road trip to Niagara Falls, spur of the moment, upon learning that neither of us had been. We kissed slowly as the water sprayed around us.
But I was human. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t completely avoid setting him off. And as time went on, as our second year together blended into our third, his punishments began to escalate, began to get physical.
A loosening of the screws that held the mirror over my side of the bed in place—the antique one that had been given to me by my mother. He’d been so convincing, helping to bandage up my head, looking up places on Yelp that could replace cracked glass. I found the screwdriver two days later, sitting between pairs of socks, out of place, almost like he wanted me to discover it.
And then, waking up in the middle of the night. An intense shooting pain in my arm, Davis beside me, breathing deeply, sleeping, or so I thought. A bruise appearing, pale purple, the next morning. His face, blank, when I’d asked him if he knew how I’d gotten it. It’s your bruise, he’d said, laughing. Not mine.
Davis’s cruelty was never random, was never something that just exploded. He swore far less than the average New Yorker—and never at me. And in our years together, he raised his voice only a handful of times. Instead, his anger simmered until he found a way to channel it. He was proud of his control. He looked down on those who didn’t have it, people like me.
When I tried to leave last May, after the fourth time I’d woken with bruises on my body, I wasn’t stupid. I knew by then how much he watched me. I changed my Apple password, and I disconnected that damn Nest camera. I didn’t use my credit card, either. Still, I underestimated how tied together we’d become. At the only dog-friendly hotel I’d found in Brooklyn, where I’d been holed up for two days, I’d found a card advertising the hotel’s app—Download to get free high-speed internet, it had promised. Apparently, Davis had set us up as a family in Apple, which meant that even with my new password, our app downloads were synched and shared.
When I went down to the lobby for Dusty’s afternoon walk, which I always did right at three, he and Ellie were waiting for me, the sun streaking through the windows, a beautiful late-spring day. He came up to me and hugged me tight, asked me how my “solo staycation” had been, told me he’d brought Ellie along for a surprise brunch at a nearby dog-friendly restaurant. I’d been too in shock to argue, to explain to him—and her—that I’d been considering leaving for good. Maybe a part of me wanted to buy his story, wanted it to be okay for us. His punishments were all so strange, so hard to pinpoint, that sometimes I told myself they’d never even happened. And waking up to bruises—could I even be totally sure they were from him? What if I’d started sleepwalking and didn’t know it? What if? What if?
Besides, what he offered me, when things were good, was so much. He was my family, even if a completely dysfunctional one.
We’re meant to be together, he’d said when I was back in the apartment, and then, later that night, much later, just as we were drifting off to sleep: You can’t leave me, babe. Ever.
I’d woken that morning to a jolt, a smack, a red-hot pain across my face. To Davis turning around, walking from the room as if nothing had happened. I half expected him to look back and smile—Sorry, babe.
And as if that wasn’t enough: The next day, I was walking Dusty, my face coated in makeup, when his leash snapped in two, and he chased a squirrel across two lanes of traffic. I was able to catch him, thank god, nearly killing myself as I ran out in front of the oncoming cars, but when I examined the leash afterward, it looked like it had partially been cut. And when that night, I pulled the pocketknife that had been a gift from Davis’s grandfather from his tossed-aside jeans, it became so clear.
It didn’t matter that Davis always kept that knife on him, to open Amazon boxes and meal-p
rep subscriptions. I still knew it, deep down.
He had done this. He had put Dusty at risk to hurt me.
If I tried to go again, Davis would find a way to take away what I cared about most. Which meant that I couldn’t try—I had to succeed.
I didn’t tell Vera and John all this, standing there in the middle of the woods, sun beating down on the trail, my stomach still churning, the river careening below. I couldn’t sum up three years of Davis and me in one conversation. I didn’t tell them what had happened on Wednesday—it was still too raw, too fresh—though the images flashed in my mind anyway. The searing pain on my cheek. The way I’d struggled, hands shaking, to dial 911. Then the smash of my phone against the exposed brick wall of our apartment.
But I told them what mattered: that he’d controlled me, that he’d hurt me, that he’d made it clear I could never leave.
John stroked my back and Vera scooted closer, drawing us tighter together.
Most of all, I told them what I knew myself, so deeply:
No matter what happened, Davis could never, ever know I was here.
* * *
• • •
It was only when I was back, when they’d dropped me off—my legs already aching from the hike, my nauseated stomach begging for water, my heart both light and heavy with the relief and shame of someone finally knowing—that my world, momentarily pasted back together, tore open again.
I grabbed my computer, queued up my untraceable VPN connection, and logged in to my old email, needing to check. To know.
There it was, what I’d been fearing.
What, at the same time, I’d been praying for.
An email from Davis.
You won’t get away like this. I will find you, I swear to god.
ELEVEN
Our dinner looked almost savage against Vera and John’s big white ceramic bowls—coq au vin in an oxblood sauce. With my fork, I jabbed at a last bit of chicken. Succulent and rich, with just a hint of tartness.
Vera pushed her dish forward and leaned back in her chair. “That was perhaps the best take-out we’ve had yet from the French place. Don’t you think?”
I nodded, pulling my cardigan tighter, as a breeze snaked through one of the windows, cracked open a couple of inches. Over the past six weeks, Woodstock had changed almost as much as I had. The sky was darkening earlier now, the late-October air was crisp but not yet cold, and the leaves had lit up with color, splashing the landscape with watercolor hues.
“Almost makes the ten-dollar delivery charge worth it,” John said with a laugh. “I can’t stand to think how much we’ve racked up in charges lately.”
He was right. We did order a lot of take-out. If Vera was up to it, she’d make lasagna, her pièce de résistance, or John would whip up an elaborate meal, a recipe with a ton of steps and ingredients, using practically every pot in the house, roux and roasted eggplants caked onto cast iron. Occasionally, I cooked for them at my place, things that were simpler, like my mom’s turkey tetrazzini. John would always know which recipes had come from my mother and which hadn’t.
But too often, we’d order something. The steak house that wrapped baked potatoes in foil, the French restaurant whose sauces were like crack. Chinese to-go, paper bags printed with grease.
I never expected our relationship to blossom so quickly. But after the hike where I told all, they invited me to dinner the next night, and then I insisted on returning the favor, and before we knew it, more nights of the week than not, we were eating together.
We never went into town, despite my repeated asking. Not to that bar, Platform. Not to Schoolhouse for brunch. Once Al, the waitress there, had asked me why my neighbors never came, and I told her what they’d told me—that being so close to the gallery made it feel like work. From the look on her face, I don’t think she quite believed it, and I can’t say I did, either. There was the graffiti, for one thing, which still didn’t sit right with me, even though I told myself it was just rebellious kids. And the fact that locals wouldn’t go to the gallery. And then the way that Maggie, the older woman next door, who always managed to time her dog walks with mine, went quiet, her eyes ominous, if I ever mentioned my friendship with Vera and John.
What’s more, I never saw a visitor at the farmhouse besides me—no one going in, no one coming out. Even for a couple of artsy introverts, it was strange. And Vera and John—they weren’t exactly introverts anyway.
And then there was the day, last week, when I went over to find Vera and John staring at the tires on John’s truck. “Cheap, unreliable tires,” Vera said, when I asked her about it. But I wasn’t stupid—they looked slashed.
There was something off about them, about their standing in this town, that much was clear. There were people who didn’t like them, for whatever reason. But in spite of my curiosity, I didn’t hound them for answers. They’d become too dear, too important to me already. I was too afraid of losing them to push.
Rachel’s name had disappeared from their whiteboard—erased, just like that—and though her junk mail still collected in my mailbox, she never came by to retrieve it again. If it had been an affair, if she’d been the one to slash the tires, it was none of my business. And I wasn’t willing to risk our nights together, tucked away at their place or mine, to find out.
Vera leaned back even farther in her chair, taking another sip of wine. She was sitting almost cross-legged, one knee hooked over the other, her hand on the table, barely grazing John’s. He turned his hand over, and their fingers intertwined, like puzzle pieces—a perfect fit.
Life wasn’t perfect. I won’t pretend it was.
Though Davis hadn’t emailed me again, his lack of contact didn’t quell my fear. I knew he was planning, waiting for the best time to strike.
Many mornings, I woke up with a hangover, and my money was dwindling fast. Though I was still pitching articles and writing essays, my payments went directly from the publishing companies to my bank account, which I’d been too afraid to access since coming up here, in case Davis had found a way to keep track of where I made withdrawals. I was planning on making a trip to the city soon, emptying it all and then leaving right away, but even so, there was only so much in there. The wine and take-out could not go on forever.
As I took another sip of wine, I let myself glance at Vera and John’s intertwined hands again, unable to help myself.
There was something else threatening the carefully balanced triangle we’d created—more than what the residents of Woodstock felt about a couple of Manhattan snobs. More, even, than Davis.
Me.
It was impossible to make it stop, though I had tried. Over the past six weeks, whenever John and I were alone, I couldn’t help but fantasize, imagining him and me, together. Picturing a world where I would be the one he reached for after telling a joke, where we would retire upstairs in the farmhouse, not them.
Like last week, in my kitchen: Vera on the sofa a room over, John next to me at the counter where we couldn’t be seen. Our hands had accidentally touched as he passed me the plates, and he’d laughed, jovial and deep, as he nudged me with his elbow: “I’m pretty sure the cook’s not allowed to do dishes.”
I turned, and he was right there, and all sorts of fantasies ran through my head.
It was a stupid crush, a schoolgirl one, really, one that had bloomed so quickly I found myself replaying Mr. Darcy’s words in my head—I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. John was everything I’d ever been looking for in a man. Safe, but sexy all the same.
The feelings weren’t mutual, and I was thankful they weren’t. To him, nothing had transpired in that instant beyond run-of-the-mill helping with the dishes. His eyes were for Vera, not me. Whose wouldn’t be?
But still, I’d thought of him, the closeness of him, the way he smelled like wood chips and orange oil, when I reached beneath the covers in
bed that night.
Sometimes I wondered if maybe it hadn’t even been an affair, if Rachel had simply fallen prey to his charms, too. If Vera and John’s friend, that warm, cheerful, and seemingly harmless divorcée, had developed a crush on John, and if that’s what had torn the trio apart. If, one night, I’d have too much wine, and my feelings would show—I’d give myself away.
I wouldn’t, I told myself. My love for Vera, it was strong enough to prevent me from ever showing my cards. Vera, whose honesty was refreshing, whose demeanor was mothering without being controlling, encouraging without ever feeling fake. Vera, who—even more than John—had become my true protector, the one I could count on above all else. Vera’s goodness like a magnet, an ionic tug. He was my crush, but she was my love, warmth deep in my insides, comforting as chicken soup, sweet and rich as dark chocolate. She was the mother I didn’t have anymore, the friend I could be honest with—my missing pieces, all the women I needed but no longer had, rolled into one. Between the two of them, I felt like I had a family again. On our own, we were off-kilter—messed up by a combination of our histories and our proclivities—but together, we were different. Whole. They had promised to keep me safe, and so far they had kept their promise.
Now, if only I could figure out a way to spend time with them without burning through so much money. I took a last sip of wine, draining my glass.
Vera noticed immediately. She grabbed the bottle of pinot and topped me off.
“By the way,” I said, broaching the subject as delicately as I could, “pretty soon I’m going to have to cut back on the take-out and fancy wine.”
John leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking. “Fun fact: We should probably cut back, too.”
Vera’s head tilted to the side. “You don’t like my delicious wine?”
I shrugged, forcing a laugh. Though Vera and John always said they needed money, it didn’t stop them from spending it. “Of course I do,” I said, scratching at the table. “But you know, just the usual, trying to make ends meet.”
