“I don’t want her alone with me,” I said.
Diane’s face changed.
She had expected forgiveness, or at least silence.
Instead, I made the first boundary she could not lower a blind over.
Then Erin’s phone buzzed.
She looked at the screen and went completely still.
Scott was trying to contact her.
And his message was not an apology.
Part 3 :
I escaped through the side gate, reached the hospital with my baby’s heartbeat still strong, and then learned that what happened in the yard had been prepared before I ever stepped outside.
The first thing I remember clearly is the concrete.
It was rough enough to catch against my skin as Scott dragged me across the yard by my hair, and every time I tried to twist away, the movement pulled harder at my scalp.
I was pregnant, but that did not slow him down.
My belly struck the ground again and again until pain seemed to come from everywhere at once, and then I vomited blood onto the stones beneath me.
There are moments when fear feels loud.
This one did not.
My mind narrowed to small things: the heat under my palms, the fence beside the yard, the pressure in my stomach, the need to protect the baby inside me, and the sick realization that the person hurting me was the man who was supposed to be my husband.
Then a metal trash can slammed against the chain-link fence.
Our neighbor Erin was standing on the other side.
“Scott, get away from her!” she shouted.
For one second, his grip loosened.
Not because he suddenly understood what he was doing.
Not because seeing me on the ground shocked him.
He simply looked annoyed that someone had interrupted him.
