Chapter 2 - The Sound of Glass
My feet felt leaden as I crossed the threshold back into the kitchen. The smell of burnt coffee and spilled milk mingled with the metallic tang of dried blood that still lingered in the back of my own throat.
Linda was still on her knees beside Derek, stroking his hair with frantic, fluttering motions. She glared up at me, her face contorted with pure malice. "Are you happy now, Emily? You’ve turned your father into a criminal! Look at what you’ve done to this family! Derek has given you everything—a house in Las Arboledas, a car, status—and you let this grease monkey assault him in his own home!"
"Shut your mouth, Linda," my father said without looking back. He had not picked up his watch yet. He stood between me and Derek like an immovable wall of bone and blue cotton. "If you say another word to her, I will take every window out of this house with my bare hands."
Linda closed her mouth, though her chest heaved with indignation.
"Go upstairs, Em," Dad said gently, his voice shifting completely as he turned to face me. The hardness in his jaw softened into something agonizingly tender, something that broke the dam behind my ribs. "Grab your papers. Passport, social security card, title to your mother’s car. Take two bags of clothes. Nothing else matters. If it was bought with his money, leave it."
"Dad," I whispered, the word catching on the dried split inside my lip. "The police... he really will call them."
"Let him," my father replied. He glanced down at Derek, whose breathing was slowing but who remained firmly plastered against the kitchen floor. "Let the deputies come. We’ll show them your face first, then we’ll show them the bruise on his ribs. Let’s see who gets taken out of here in cuffs."
I didn't argue. The hypnotic fog that had paralyzed me for thirty-six months was beginning to burn off under the heat of my father’s presence. For years, Derek had convinced me that the walls of our marriage were opaque—that no one on the outside could ever understand what drove him to anger, that I was difficult, high-strung, ungrateful. He had chiseled away at my certainty until I believed that his rage was merely a natural reaction to my incompetence.
I took the stairs two at a time.
Our bedroom was spotless. I had spent the previous afternoon scrubbing the baseboards and laundering the Egyptian cotton sheets because Derek liked the scent of lavender when he came home from the office. The room smelled of expensive fabric softener and my own silent terror.
From the top shelf of the walk-in closet, I pulled down my old blue duffel bag—the canvas one I had used in college. My hands shook so violently that the zipper snagged twice. I dumped the contents of my nightstand drawer onto the bed: my passport, my birth certificate, the silver locket that contained a photograph of my mother before the cancer took her, and my personal checkbook from the small credit union account Derek didn't know I still kept open.
As I stuffed shirts, jeans, and underwear into the duffel, I heard Derek’s voice drift up the stairwell. It was weak, but the arrogance was crawling back into it.
"She won't last a month, Richard," Derek was saying. "She doesn't have a career. She works ten hours a week at a community gallery. She can't afford health insurance. She can't afford tires for her car. She’ll come crawling back here within two weeks, and when she does, the locks will be changed."
I froze, a pair of wool socks clutched in my fist. The old panic flared in my stomach. He was right. How was I going to survive? I had abandoned my graphic design clients when Derek insisted that having a wife who took freelance commissions made him look like he couldn't provide. I had no steady income, no savings that weren't under our joint name.
Then I heard my father speak from the base of the stairs.
"A Bennett doesn't crawl," Dad said, his voice echoing off the drywall with absolute finality. "She worked before she met you, and she’ll work after you’re nothing more than a bad smell in her past. And if I ever see your car within a mile of my shop, Derek, you’d better hope the transmission is in reverse."
I zipped the bag shut. I grabbed my winter coat from the hanger. On my way out of the room, my eyes caught my reflection in the full-length gilded mirror Derek had bought me for our second anniversary—the one he often told me to look into when he wanted me to see "how plain" I looked without makeup.
The purple swelling under my left eye was deep, almost black around the socket. The skin over my cheekbone was stretched shiny and taut. But beneath the swelling, my eyes weren't dull anymore. The glaze of chronic submission was gone.
I walked down the stairs with my chin up.
In the kitchen, Linda had helped Derek onto a kitchen chair. He was hunched over, holding his chest, watching the hallway with a look of pure hatred. When I appeared with the duffel, his eyes narrowed.
"Take that bag out of this house, Emily, and you’re dead to me," he snarled, though he kept an eye on my father’s hands. "You hear me? You won't see a dime of alimony. I’ll drag the divorce out until your father has to mortgage that greasy shack he calls a business just to pay your legal bills."
My father didn't give Derek the satisfaction of a response. He walked to the counter, picked up his silver watch with the weathered leather band, and buckled it back onto his wrist. The buckle made a sharp, clean click.
Then he reached for the bakery box.
"Leave the cake," I whispered.
Dad paused, his hand hovering over the red string. He looked at me, then at the table set with paper napkins, wilted roses, and deflating balloons.
"You sure, sweetheart?" he asked softly.
"I don't want anything from this house," I said. "Not even the things you brought into it today."
My father nodded once. He left the box on the counter. He took the heavy canvas duffel from my shoulder with one hand, and with the other, he took my cold fingers into his warm, calloused palm.
"Let’s go home," he said.
May you like
We walked out the front door, leaving the screen door to bang shut against its wooden frame. Behind us, Linda’s shrill complaints began anew, but as the engine of my father’s 1998 Ford F-250 roared to life in the driveway, her voice was swallowed completely by the rumble of an eight-cylinder engine.
***
