She has to choose her words carefully.
“David was violent. He hurt me. He scared me. I ran into the bathroom and slammed the door before he could do worse.” Every word of it is true. Chelsea does not consider herself a good liar.
“Does. He. Have. The. Violence?”
Each word grinds out. It’s meant to make Chelsea feel like a little kid in school who’s too stupid to produce the easy, obvious answer. But it just makes her angry.
“That’s for someone else to decide. My daughter called nine one one because my husband was trying to kill me.” She looks up at him, sullen. “Has he ever seemed violent to you, Chad?”
He’s been running his fingers over some dents and cracks in the bathroom door—hits from Ella’s old softball bat, which they took as evidence—but now his attention jerks back to her. “When I’m on duty, my name is Officer Huntley, and you will respect the badge.”
“Is this an official visit, Officer Huntley?”
For a long, long moment, he chews his gum hard, staring daggers, and then smiles brightly, in a studied way, although it doesn’t quite touch his eyes.
“Of course not. Just checking up on my buddy’s house. And his sweet little wife.” He squeezes her upper arm like they’re pals and takes a few steps toward the door. “I’ll be checking in with my old pal David, make sure he’s all right. You and your girls’ll want to be careful, though.” He hooks his thumbs in his belt loops and looks up at the chandelier. “Three women, alone in the world. Lot of scary things can happen.”
“Something scary happened tonight.”
Again, that overbright smile. “I’m sure it did. You know, Chel, sometimes people make mistakes.”
Now her smile is overbright. “They sure do, Officer Huntley. For years, sometimes. Years and years. Here’s to hoping things go right for once. Thanks so much for stopping by. To check in on us.” She walks back to the front door and holds it open, still mirroring his smile. “Unless there was anything else? Give Laura my love.”
For just a second, he drops the lie, baring his teeth and working his jaw, but then the smile comes back like a mask, and Chelsea realizes that this is a skill he’s honed over the last fifteen years as a police officer, that it’s simply part of the job. And he’s not very good at it. She’s just never seen it before because when he comes here, he’s with David and their cronies, and no one ever questions their authority.
“And I’ll give David yours. I’ll be speaking with him shortly.”
Chelsea yawns, clumsily covering it with a hand. “Sorry, Officer Huntley. I’m so exhausted. I just hope they can find a cure to this meaningless violence.”
He’s outside now, on the doorstep. She could slam the door in his face, but that would mean he’d won, wouldn’t it?
“We do need a cure,” he says, thumb playing over the little snap that holds his gun. “And then we’ll see who really needs to apologize.”
Chelsea laughs, light and silly, like it’s nothing. “I’m guessing the ones who need to apologize won’t be the ones with a busted lip, huh? What a crazy world.”
“What a crazy world,” he echoes. He walks backward off the steps, and right before he leaves the circle of porch lights, he points two fingers at his eyes and then at Chelsea, that old threat.
I’m watching you.
In a fit of what can only be considered suicidal exhaustion, Chelsea rubs at the tenderest bruise on her jaw with her middle finger.
She watches him drive off in his squad car, making a mental note not to speed for the foreseeable future, not to do a single thing that could land her in jail. Seeing goofy little Chad Huntley act like this tonight—it was like watching a terrier suddenly go into attack mode. She’d thought his wife was just boring and stupid, but now she wonders if the poor woman just lives her entire life in fear of what her husband will do if she embarrasses or defies him.
All those years David halfheartedly threatened Chelsea with his “friends on the force,” she’d had no idea those friends were exactly the same thing as David.
Predators, hiding in plain sight.
When his taillights have disappeared, she closes the busted-up door, engages the chain, and sets the alarm. With David gone, the house felt safe. But with a brief, five-minute visit, a family friend—a policeman sworn to serve and protect—destroyed that feeling.
Chelsea walks around the house, closing curtains and locking doors and turning off lights. Her phone is still sitting on the bathroom sink. There are two texts. One is from her mother, reminding her to be careful. The other is from David’s best friend, Brian. The lawyer.
He’s going to take everything, you bitch. I’ll see to it.
All the masks, she realizes, are coming off.
But that works both ways, doesn’t it?
12.
Ella knows Uncle Chad. She’s known him all her life. He’s the youngest of her dad’s friends and the one who gets into the most trouble when he’s been drinking. She saw him smash a beer bottle on his own head once and laugh as he shook off the shards. In the past couple of years, Chelsea’s firmly ordered Ella to stay upstairs whenever Dad’s friends are over, and Ella has been more than glad to comply. These men she’s been told to call Uncle since she was tiny—Uncle Brian, Uncle Chad, Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Gavin—well, she doesn’t like the way they look at her now. She hates it when they tell her she’s pretty, like she owes them something in return.
She especially hates it when Uncle Chad asks her if she has a boyfriend.
As she listens from the top step, the same old rage rises in her chest. He’s so obviously threatening her mom, and he so obviously doesn’t care that Dad was straight-up beating her when Ella called 9-1-1. The people who showed up—the Violence Task Force, the EMTs—they all seemed to care. They were kind and moved slowly and spoke softly around the family, like they didn’t want to startle anyone. But Uncle Chad sounds like a villain in a movie, and the moment he’s gone, Ella lets out a deep breath that she didn’t even know she was holding in. At least Brookie is asleep, flopped out across her bed with Olaf curled against her side. At least Brookie didn’t have to see what Uncle Chad really is, under his sunglasses.