I’d always been a good sleeper, the person who takes forever to finish the book on the nightstand because she barely gets through two pages before nodding off. How many nights had Brian tugged a novel gently out of my slack hands and pulled up the covers, all without me waking? This changed after we found out about Heather.
Every night I’d lie there in bed, unable to stop my brain from cycling through Heather’s situation over and over again. I’m a planner and a problem solver—a keeper of daily lists that can be neatly checked off, a person who says yes where others say no, a certificate-bearing graduate of multiple, expensive motivational seminars. I’d fire-walked for goodness’ sake, practically skipping across the hot coals while fellow attendees with near-religious devotion chanted “Believe and do! Believe and do!” to the beat of a goatskin drum. But this was a situation that I couldn’t fix, and so I chewed at it in my mind, over and over, tugging and pulling, like a terrier with a rat, trying to conquer it.
“What’s going on?” Brian asked one night after weeks of my insomnia. In stereotypical fashion, it had taken him that long to notice something was up. He’s on the road so often, and when he is home, he’s got his head stuck to his phone or focused on his laptop. I once experimented with being a brunette and it took him five full days to realize that this change from red hair to brown was what had been throwing him off.
It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The holiday had passed in its usual bustle of shopping and traveling to Grandma’s house. It wasn’t over the river or through the woods, but my mother’s house was far enough away that I’d worried about what would happen if Heather needed me. My mother always insisted on hosting Thanksgiving dinner, even though her house was so small that we had to set up separate card tables in the living room to seat everybody. I’d endured the usual jokes from my aunts and cousins about being assigned to bring the store-bought rolls and drinks because “everybody knows that Julie doesn’t cook,” while ducking periodically into the privacy of my mother’s bedroom to check my phone.
“I’m fine,” Heather said, sounding impatient but unharmed when I’d finally reached her. I could hear some fast-paced, Eastern European–sounding music in the background. “We’re at his aunt’s house,” she said when I asked. And then she whispered, “It’s okay—he’s in a good mood.”
The way she talked about Viktor’s moods reminded me of a weather forecaster. I felt a momentary relief at hearing that things were fine, but of course he’d be on his best behavior out in public. Sarah had read some articles about how abuse could actually get worse over the holidays because of the additional stress. Christmas was coming and Viktor was likely to be around more.
I was worrying about this as Brian and I sat side by side in bed, when he looked up from the news he was scrolling through on his tablet and asked me what was going on. Apparently I hadn’t turned a page in my romance novel in a while. “How come you’re not conking out like you usually do? Is something wrong?”
I gave up any pretense of reading and tossed the book aside. “No, I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
“The McCormick sale?” he asked with understanding. He put his tablet aside and drew me into his arms. “You’ll get them to the closing table eventually, babe. You always do.”
I stiffened as his strong arms came around me, feeling slightly panicky as they wrapped around my midsection. Viktor grabbing Heather at the party, Viktor’s finger marks on her neck. “Hey, you really are stressed,” Brian said with surprise, feeling my resistance. “It’s just one sale, hon, you’ve got to let it go.”
If only it were about a sale. I could only look back with wonder at feeling so much anxiety over something so trivial. No one was going to lose his or her life over a house sale.
“It isn’t about the McCormick house or any other sale,” I said, turning to him in bed, thinking that this was it—he’d asked and I was going to tell him. “It’s about a friend—she’s being hurt—”
At that moment, we heard Aubrey cry out, a prolonged, high-pitched sound that startled both of us. She’d been waking from bad dreams recently and I’d wondered if she was somehow channeling the anxiety I was feeling. “My turn,” Brian said, throwing back the covers. “Back in a few—just hold that thought.”
Before he’d even made it out of the master bedroom, I knew that I couldn’t tell him. I’d made a promise to Heather and felt ashamed that I’d almost broken it, and for no better reason than my own fear, which was nothing compared to what she had to be feeling. There was nothing Brian could do about it anyway; there was no point in telling him. I switched off the lamp on my nightstand and rolled onto my side, closing my eyes and willing myself to be asleep before he came back. It didn’t work—I was as fully awake as I’d been every other night for weeks—but I kept my eyes closed and my breathing even as he got back into bed, feeling him hover over me for a second before his lips gently grazed my cheek. He was engrossed again in his tablet in a minute and missed the tears that I couldn’t stop from slipping soundlessly beneath my closed eyelids.
*
Being so sleep-deprived can do odd things to one’s perception. I tapped the fender of the car in front of me one morning as I waited to merge onto Route 65 because I swore I’d seen his car moving. The irate driver sprang from his car yelling, “You! This!,” waving a hand at me and then at his car’s rear end and back again, while I tried to apologize and riffled through my glove box for insurance information, the traffic swelling behind us, a cacophony of angry voices and car horns.
A few days later, I thought I spotted Heather at the Whole Foods in the city, where I’d stopped after a realty meeting. Pushing my cart slowly through a maze of organic, vegan, and gluten-free shelves, I came around a corner and spotted a familiar figure at the other end of the aisle. She had her back to me, but I knew it was her, that lithe body and messy blond bun, the thin legs in yoga pants and an oversize sweater. She was talking to someone as she rounded the corner, and I swore I recognized that languid, lilting sound of her voice, but when I turned the corner after her, I saw that it wasn’t Heather, but another woman altogether, part of a couple, the dark-haired, muscular man she was with resting a brawny arm protectively across her shoulders and bending to kiss the bare skin at the nape of her neck.
A week went by, then another—time passing in the whirlwind of activity that is life with a job and children. I’d wonder how it came to be Friday when it felt as if I’d just woken up on Monday morning, and the struggle to stay on top of all my responsibilities, in addition to worrying about Heather, had left me seriously exhausted. That’s why, while I realized that things were getting worse, I didn’t understand just how bad, and by that time it was too late.
*
The day before it happened was a Tuesday. I remember waking that morning with the same drugged feeling I’d had every morning of late. Unable to sleep for most of the night, I’d finally fall into a slumber so deep that when the alarm went off it felt like coming out of anesthesia.