Aw.
"Hey," I say to no one in particular as I sit down, avoiding eye contact with Erin. I so want to hate Erin. She’s Dan’s ex, one. She’s stealing my friends, two. And give me a few seconds so I can think of three and four.
I feel a hand on my forearm. "How are you feeling?" comes Erin’s warm voice, soft and vulnerable. Suddenly I recall something that she told us last night. I lived in a shelter for a little while, after my mom died. Some girls in high school found out. They used to call me Shelter Girl.
Shelter Girl. How awful. Maybe Jaime is right. Maybe I’m not twelve years old. Maybe I’m just a bad person.
"I’m doing good," I say, looking at her and smiling. "Better than expected."
We order. I skip the round of Bloody Marys. My pancakes arrive, a great big mountain of them, topped with a patty of butter and no syrup. It’s carb overload, and I feel a little sleepy afterwards, so I lean back, listening to Erin, Jaime, and Tiffany talk about the minutiae of last night, helping each other piece together the same picture. I zone out, wondering if Erin is going to drive home afterwards or go back to Tiffany’s house and move in forever.
Then I hear Jaime say, "Brynn is staying with me."
"I think I’m going to go back home today," I say, reaching down and massaging my lower back. "I have to buy a few things at Home Depot, replace the outside flood light, stuff like that. I think I’ll be okay.”
"Why don’t I help you out?" Erin says. "It’s no trouble at all."
Seems like a decent idea, but a really bad one at the same time. Before I can deliberate and/or think of a reason to say no, Jaime says, "Oh, that’s so sweet of you!"
And I find myself in Erin’s car after breakfast, driving to Home Depot.
34
BRYNN
Strange days. Strange days indeed. Dan would explode in a ball of fury if he found out about my new friend. Surprise! It’s your ex! Isn’t that weird? I’m not entirely feeling like myself these days.
I feel like I’m living in some strange surreal world where my new bestie is Dan’s crazy ex, but I’m starting to think that maybe I’ve been living with the crazy person all along.
Erin and I did my Home Depot run, replaced the outdoor floodlight, and put up better blinds. Erin was helpful and beyond generous. She offered to pay for everything even though her SUV needs some bodywork—that accident she mentioned last night, similar to Jaime’s bumper cars episode, except Erin’s SUV has significantly more damage. Erin said she’s still waiting on the insurance company to pay out, but I couldn’t bring myself to let her pay for security enhancements on Dan’s house. That just seemed so wrong.
"He hit me," Erin says in a soft voice. Not Dan, thankfully, I remind myself. We’re sitting in the front room, talking. She hugs a big velvet throw pillow, recalling her harrowing relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Chris, all the while I’m thinking about Dan.
Her long white-blonde hair is pulled around one shoulder. The slightly bulbous tip of her nose wiggles a little when she talks as sunlight falls into her brown-flecked eyes.
I’ve never known a victim of domestic abuse before. It all seems so foreign to me, loving someone, but getting beat up by that someone. I have googled it, however, when an acquaintance of mine posted her story of survivorship on Instagram of all places.
Is there a history that predisposes women to fall for abusers? Some sort of hardwiring gone wrong or something? Because after what happened with Dan, this is appearing to be a theme with her. Did I just take her side?
"It all started out so amazing. So perfect. Like soul mates perfect. I felt like we were meant to be." Erin’s talking about her abusive ex, but I can’t help but draw parallels to my relationship with Dan. "He was so attentive and yeah,"—she shrugs—"he was a little possessive. But you know I thought that was refreshing. I’d dated people before who literally had no clue. I mean, they just didn’t care. I had one boyfriend who never even looked up from his computer after I got out of the shower."
"No." I honestly couldn’t imagine. Dan has laser beam eyes, pre and post shower.
"So when Chris was very interested in where I was going and with who, I kind of liked it. I felt like he cared, you know? But then . . . I remember the first time he hit me." She looks up at the ceiling and blinks a few times as if she’s trying to hold back tears. I’m horrified and riveted by her story. Is this my future?
"Then what happened?" I ask.
"So I left. But Chris tracked me down and convinced me to come back. He said he loved me and he was so sorry. He said he’d never do it again. His dad beat him up when he was a kid and he wanted to break the cycle of abuse. I wanted to help him through it so that we could grow stronger and better together. You know?" She looks at me, her eyes swimming in unspent tears. Then she laughs ruefully and wipes her right eye. "I can’t believe I was so gullible."
"You can’t blame yourself," I say, hoping that’s the right thing to say. I really don’t know.
"But when these things happen," Erin says, "you can’t help but look at yourself and wonder how you got there. My therapist says that it’s good to look at yourself, even if it is like looking in a broken mirror."
"I guess that’s a good place to start."
Erin falls silent. She plays with the tassels on a throw pillow, her blood red polish glinting in the light drifting in from the bay window.
"Then what happened?" I ask.
"Well, then he—he put me on medication."
My mouth drops open with shock. "He drugged you?"
"No, not exactly. Well, I don’t know. Maybe. I started off on stuff like Xanax because I was really having a hard time coping with everything, you know?"
"Of course."
"But the pills my ex gave me made me feel strange and disassociated. And when he was at work one day, I upended the house until I found the vial . . ." She meets my gaze. "It was an anti-psychotic medication."
"Holy shit."
"Yeah . . ."
"What does that even do to you?"
"It just makes you feel really loopy. Like you’re spaced out and stuck in some strange time warp."
"Sounds unpleasant."
"And then the drug wears off and you feel like road kill."
"Ouch."
"Yeah, it’s a really vicious cycle. I wouldn’t recommend it. So I pretended to take the pills, but I just spat them out when he left. I guess looking back, going cold turkey probably wasn’t the best way to handle everything, but I just wanted to be able to think straight and figure out what to do. And that’s when our relationship really fell apart."
"Mmhm."
"I thought he wanted to help me." The venom in her hard eyes makes my stomach turn. "But he only wanted my money."
"Wow." I don’t trust myself to speak, afraid that I’ll say the wrong thing. Where did she get all her money anyway? I want to ask, but that’s off topic. "So how did it end? I mean, is he still around?"
She looks down. "No," she says, almost wistfully. "He’s gone . . ." She runs her tongue over her incisor and nods definitively like she’s decided on the matter. "He’s out of my life forever."
I want to ask about this forever part. Does she mean a permanent restraining order? Did the guy move overseas? Find another victim? I’m trying to formulate my next question without sounding like an investigative journalist, when she looks up at me through her eyelashes.
"Do you remember anything that happened that night we all went out?"
That night. The mere mention of it makes my blood run cold.
"I mean, did you see anything?" she clarifies.
I shake my head. "No. I just know that you and Dan . . . went somewhere and you . . . caught it on tape, so to speak."
I hadn’t forgotten. The mere existence of the recording gives me cold sweats and sleepless nights.
"Yeah, I got in the habit of recording everything because of the Chris ordeal. That’s what I call it, anyway. Recording became an automatic reaction."
&
nbsp; "How do you even do that?" I ask, wondering.
She pulls out her iPhone with its winking bejeweled case. "It’s super easy. There’s an app pre-installed on every iPhone, called voice memos."
"Really?" I pull out mine.
"It’s hidden right there in the extras folder." Lo and behold there it is. I open up the folder, then the app, and push the big red record button. The seconds run along a ticker timeline, squiggles marking the audio. "You can return to your home screen and turn off your phone. The app will continue recording."
I try it, clicking the side button on my phone. The screen goes black. Then I wake up my phone again and go back to the app. There it is. Recording away.
"Very sneaky!"
Erin demurs. "Yeah, there you go. So if you’re ever walking into an iffy situation, just start recording. Make sure the microphone is pointing out though. I slide my phone into my bra. I call it my braket, my bra pocket. Plus, you get a nice lift." She laughs a little and slips her phone into her bra, nestled to the side. I can see the very bottom of her phone, microphone perfectly positioned to catch a nice clean stream of audio. "Voilà."
But then my heart sinks. So that’s exactly how she recorded her tussle with Dan. The thought of Dan roughing up Erin takes me back to the police incident report. And it occurs to me that Erin has the answers I have desperately sought.
My stomach twists just thinking about bringing up the topic. But I need to know. I readjust my position on the couch and take in a big breath. "Hey . . . Erin?"
"Yeah?"
"It’s kind of an awkward subject, and—and if you don’t want to talk about it, I completely understand. But I found a police incident report about something that had happened between you and Dan. A domestic abuse problem? It was a two-page narrative. Unfortunately, I can’t find the conclusion." Then I wait, holding my breath, but Erin doesn’t reply. "So what happened, if you don’t mind me asking?"
"What did it say?" she asks. "I mean, you said you only read some of the narrative . . ."
"It said that Dan was agitated and placed in a squad car."
My eyes sting. It’s the precursor of tears, but I blink them away. Buck up, Brynn. Just get the damn facts.
Erin lets out a big breath, and I think I glimpse a hint of a smile. She seems almost relieved, but that’s not right. Why would she be relieved?
Her gaze meets mine. Her eyelids drop. "Yes, he was placed in the back of a police car. The cops wanted to arrest him." She pauses. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"
I look away and nod, praying I can take it. "He chucked a wine bottle at me and missed, thank God. Then we argued. He roughed me up a little,"—she motions to her forearms. "And he begged me not to press charges."
Wow. I don’t even dare speak. Dan, my beautiful tender Dan, is not who I thought he was. And then a surge of relief washes over me as I realize that I dodged a bullet, followed by a stark slap of reality. If what Erin says is true, then I would have been next.
Abusers don’t change. Leopards and their stripes or spots or whatever. People don’t change. If Erin hadn’t reached out to me, it would have been only a matter of time before the cops rocked up to this house and placed Dan in the back of a squad car. Wouldn’t it?
Even as I think these words, there’s a stirring deep inside of me that makes me hesitate and doubt. I can’t reconcile the man that I know with the man that Erin describes. They’re like two different people. My Dan and her Dan. Which one is the real guy? And if my Dan is the real Dan, then he’s innocent. But why is he so cagey about that night?
Erin adjusts the pillow on her lap. "You probably never want to think about that night again—that night we all went out. But I know you want answers . . ."
"Yeah, I do."
Erin smiles sadly. "It’s hard. I get it. I’ve been there. My therapist said to me once that if you hear or see something from the event in question, sometimes memories come back to you. That happened to me when I was trying to piece together some things that had happened with Chris. It’s like your brain shuts down around that trauma, but sometimes you can trigger it to open back up, so to speak."
I’d never thought of that. Maybe I did see something, but my mind blotted it out.
"And I totally understand if you never want to think of it again, but you must wonder if Dan actually . . . hurt me, right? Maybe you think I’m lying?"
"No," I say, jumping to her defense. "No I don’t think that at all." Yes, I absolutely do.
"It’s completely natural." And there she is, making me feel better again.
We sit in a silence for a few seconds. "Okay," I admit, "I do wonder what really happened."
She doesn’t seem offended or hurt. She seems pragmatic and confident in the result. "You know I have a recording from that night. And if you ever want to listen . . ."
I hold up my hand. "No. I can’t. Not now."
She shrugs. "No big deal. I’ll just text you the recording. And if you ever feel like you’re ready to listen, then it’s there for you."
And by the time she leaves, I’ve already decided that I want to listen to the audio clip. I want to try and look in the broken mirror.
35
BRYNN
Later that night, Erin sends through the audio file with the following text message:
Here you go, hon.
The thought of listening to the audio clip that she recorded the night of Dan’s farewell party fills me with dread. Will listening to it trigger any memories? I don’t know, but I need to find the answer because this uncertainty is pulling on the very last thread that’s holding me together.
I have to get to the bottom of this. Did Dan beat up Erin or not? Being in two minds have never been so devastating. Deep down, I cannot actually believe that Dan hurt Erin. I don’t believe that the man I love is capable of any violence against a woman. Yes, he has a short temper. Does that make him guilty?
But all the verifiable facts are pointing to his guilt: his cagey behavior, his aggression on the phone, dodging my questions, and stonewalling. Then there’s the police incident report stating that Erin had marks on her arms, along with her testimony saying the same, and the fact that they placed him in the back of a squad car. There’s the photo, a recording, and Dan’s physical advantage.
She must weigh all of one hundred and fifteen pounds. Plus, she’s not exactly muscular. I would call her skinny-fat, the type of girl that doesn’t need to work out because she looks good anyway. Models are like that, so they claim, until one of them crashes out of the fashion world and writes her lettuce-eating memoir.
I walk to the kitchen, trying to calm the nervous fluttering in my stomach, and pour myself a glass of wine. I should be bigger than my problem, and handle it sober, but I’m barely hanging on to my sanity right now. I need all the help that I can get.
I sit down on the couch, phone in one hand and glass of wine in the other, wondering if listening to the voice recording will trigger any memories. Has the answer been buried deep inside me all along?
Bear hops up on the couch and lies down next to me. They say dogs and cats are so different, but neither misses the opportunity to get their rump scratched, Bear included. I reach over and pat his back, while he swishes his fluffy tail in my face, his pink tongue lolling out of his mouth. He may not be the brightest spark, but he’s friendly and cuddly. And that’s all I need right now.
I push his tail out of my face, swallow some wine, and set my glass down on the coffee table. Then I put my phone on the armrest and pull up the audio. It’s a black screen with a gray triangle. All I have to do is push "play" . . .
I hear a sound of fabric scratching against the microphone and the distant booming bass of the nightclub music. I close my eyes as memories from that terrible night swirl in my mind as fleeting as snowflakes, carrying me back to the night of Dan’s D-day party. The night that I want to forget, but can’t quite remember. Fragments come rushing back to me, flashes of ragged memories that don’t quite fit together
.
I remember bright strobe lights and women dancing in cages hung from the ceiling. I think we crashed a Very Important People party. Snippets of a conversation float up like a waterlogged body in a murky pond.
What are you—a human trafficker?
Ha ha ha!
Geez. Who were those people?
I remember the dance floor. And the wraith. I remember the wraith. What happened exactly? He tried to kiss me.
I pause the recording.
Ugh. This is like an out of body experience. My heart is thumping out of my chest. I didn’t listen to the audio recording to relive that awful memory. I pull in some deep breaths, trying not to make myself dizzy. And exhale a long breath that I didn’t realize I was holding.
Okay, I feel calmer, not quite better, but capable of carrying on. So I push play again.
A door slams shut, blocking out the deep beats of the music.
"What do you want?" I hear Dan say. The sound of his voice makes my heart race. He’s slurring a little bit, his mouth sounds like it’s full of cotton balls.
I think back to the handful of times I’d seen him drunk. I recall Super Bowl Sunday in particular. He drank the entire day non-stop and still seemed stone cold sober. I remember marveling at how well he could handle his booze. How did he get so drunk the night of his send off?
There’s a cut in the audio stream. Then the sound returns, quieter now. For one horrible second, I think I can hear Erin breathing fast. Dear God, not that. I think I’m going to be sick, but it’s not that—it’s . . .
It’s coming back to me in a rush. That night.
I remember pushing an exit door open and looking out across an empty parking lot. There was a black SUV parked out there. A Beemer. The memory stabs through the veil of my subconscious mind like a dagger. And suddenly I remember. I remember it all. I remember seeing the reflection of Erin’s blonde hair in the mirror-black hood of the vehicle.
And I remember Dan shaking Erin, his hands gripping her shoulders. And when I hear her cry out—"Stop, Dan! Stop!"—I break down in tears.
Keep Me In Sight Page 16
