And does Ella know that the Violence was just an excuse?
“So that was exciting,” Chelsea says, keeping her voice low so she won’t wake up Brooklyn, who crashed out on the couch when the boring part of the law process began.
Ella is vaguely orbiting her, not touching or making eye contact, but hovering. “Yeah.”
“I bet I look terrible.”
At that, Ella looks up, probing and…hurt? “Mom, a guy just beat the shit out of you. How else would you look?”
Chelsea glances in the hall mirror, the same one her mother rubbed a thumb over just a few weeks ago, and can’t help but stare, judge. She does look like shit. It’s scary, how bad she looks. Bruised and tender and fragile. The little butterfly Band-Aids, the dark smudges, the swollen, bloodstained lips. She touches them, gently, and flinches, and then the tears finally come. First it’s sniffles, as if she’s trying to catch the tears one by one and suck them back down. But soon it’s great, whooping sobs, each one shuddering through her, racking her body as water sheets down from her eyes, locked in the mirror. Ella’s arm is around her shoulders, but it’s not enough, so she pulls her daughter close, and Chelsea can’t remember the last time they hugged like this, plastered down the front, clinging like they’re holding on to that door in Titanic, frightened by the cold realities of life and terrified to be adrift outside of this fragile connection.
For a moment, Chelsea isn’t sure who is the child and who is the parent, and that only makes her cry all the harder for the burden Ella’s been forced to bear.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Brooklyn asks, just her eyes and the top of her head visible over the sofa. “Does it hurt?”
Chelsea turns, automatically producing that reassuring mother’s smile that says everything will be okay even when it won’t.
“A little, baby. But I’m going to get better.” Just saying it makes her smile more real.
He’s gone. The house is quiet. For the first time in forever, she doesn’t feel fear.
And then the doorbell rings.
Ella looks to her, both of them gone from calm peace to high alert. No one really rings doorbells out of the blue these days, not in a neighborhood with a gate, and it’s too late for Patricia to be out randomly looking for someone to torture. Maybe it’s one of the neighbors, checking to see if they’re okay? Maybe it’s Jeanie, the only person with any inkling of what Chelsea’s been dealing with.
She peeks through the peephole and feels the strangest combination of shifting feelings.
It’s a cop. Is that bad?
No. Cops helped her out. They must have more questions. It’s okay. It’s safe.
No.
Wait.
It’s a cop she knows. One of David’s high school friends.
“Open up, Chel. I know you’re in there.”
And she has to open up, doesn’t she, because he’s a cop?
“Take Brooklyn upstairs,” she whispers to Ella. “Try to get her into bed.”
Ella nods and swoops Brooklyn off the couch, carrying her like a koala as the younger girl sleepily asks questions, the same questions that Chelsea is asking herself.
Who is it?
Is Mommy in trouble?
Are they going to take her away like they did Daddy?
“Shh,” Ella says. “We have to be quiet and brave.”
“You always say that,” Brooklyn complains, one fist rubbing her eyes.
Once the girls are safely upstairs, Chelsea opens the door.
“Hey, Huntley,” she says, hoping her exhaustion is obvious.
“That’s Officer Huntley.” It comes out crisp, and he’s wearing reflective sunglasses despite the fact that it’s pitch black outside. “Can I come in?”
Chelsea steps back. “Of course.” Because Huntley’s been here before. He comes over with David’s old high school crew to watch the fights on their huge TV, and he comes to their Fourth of July barbecue, dragging his miserable wife, Laura.
Huntley—his first name is Chad, but his friends don’t call him that—steps inside, takes off his sunglasses, and looks around like he’s in a James Bond film, like he’s never been here before despite the fact that he once barfed Jell-O shots into one of Chelsea’s decorative vases. As she watches him tuck his glasses into a front pocket and walk around, chewing his ever-present cinnamon gum, she can’t help glancing at the open front door and wondering if this is an official visit. Did she have to let him in? She’s known him for almost twenty years, but in that friend-of-a-friend way. David doesn’t like to hang out with the boys and girls together; they always separate off into the women and the men. Most of what she knows about him she’s heard from Laura over the years, and Laura is the kind of woman who fades into the background and laughs too loud at everyone else’s jokes.
“I heard your address over the radio. Tried to text David but didn’t get an answer. They said you said it was the Violence.”
He turns to face her, and his eyes are small and sun-creased, narrowed in suspicion. He looks her up and down, sneering a little. Chelsea has always gotten the idea that he either hates women or doesn’t care to take the time to understand them, and now she stills like a rabbit in a hawk’s shadow, knowing that this kind of attention from Chad Huntley is definitely not a good thing.
“Thing is, Chel, I’ve seen folks with the Violence. Pulled a ten-year-old girl off the crossing guard yesterday, and thing is…” He steps closer, so close she can smell his cinnamon gum and a whiff of dandruff shampoo clinging to his high and tight. “That crossing guard was a big man, and that girl was a little bitty thing, and the crossing guard looked a hell of a lot worse than you do right now. But David’s so much bigger than you. And you don’t look so bad.”
Chelsea swallows hard, and he snatches her chin, fingers digging into her jaw. He turns her face this way and that, and she feels every aching place where David left a bruise. “See? You look okay. Some women who look like you do right now? They tell me they fell down the stairs. You fall down the stairs, Chel?”
She’s shaking now, trying hard not to yank her face away as his fingers dig in where a tooth is loose. But he only holds her harder.
“Answer me, Chelsea.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, Officer Huntley, I did not fall down the stairs.” Her voice shakes, and she hates that. But what she hates even more is that she’s been made to feel this way twice in one night by two different men who should be protecting her.
He lets her go almost as if he’s throwing her face away, and she works her jaw, hoping he hasn’t made it worse.
“Does David really have the Violence, Chelsea?”
He’s talking in that way men do when they’re angry and want it to be very clear that they’re containing the anger, almost as if it’s a favor. He paces the foyer, hands on his hips, one right by his gun. He looks down at a blood spot on the floor, one the other officers took pictures of, and rubs it away with his shoe.
“Well?”