Because I’ve been there, Marin almost says, but as always, she holds back, keeps the truth hidden. Brent was brilliant—his bruises were a secret well kept. And Marin, like Sonya and Ranee, became his accomplice, ensuring no one ever saw.
“Gia,” Marin starts, but it is too late. With a wave, Gia goes through the front door, a smile plastered on her face as if it were sewn on. Shutting the door, Marin sinks against it, her breath coming in gasps.
“Gia left for school?” Raj comes down the stairs, his chai steaming. At the sight of Marin on the floor, he rushes toward her, dropping the cup along the way. The spiced chai seeps across the marble floor toward the carpet. Marin watches it in slow motion, wondering absently how they will remove the stain. Reaching for her, he demands, “Marin, what’s happened?”
She stares at him, her husband, but a complete stranger. She has never told him about her past, her childhood. There was no reason to. It was over, she was sure. What purpose was served in telling him? She would not live in the past when she could control the future.
Her husband is not her confidant. She has never told him about her stresses at work or career concerns. They never share dreams, or intertwine their lives. Gia is the string that binds them together, and with their child broken, they have nothing to hold on to.
“Gia has bruises on her body,” Marin admits, pulling her hand out of his. “On her stomach, her back, and now her arm.”
“What?!” He steps away from her, revulsion filling his face. “How the hell did she get those?”
“I don’t know.”
It is an odd thing to share burdens with another human being. You imagine it will lessen your own burden, ease some of the ache that sits in you like lead. But it almost does the opposite. Seeing Raj’s reaction only brings home the enormity of the situation. Turning away from it, she focuses instead on the chai that has fully soaked into the carpet, leaving an odd-shaped stain.
“An illness? They can start with bruises, right?”
Marin welcomes the idea, chiding herself for doing so. When would a parent ever choose a disease for their child? “She’s not sick, Raj,” Marin says. “She was beaten.”
He turns toward her, fire raging. A man lost, he attacks the closest thing available. “Did you do this?”
Standing slowly, she faces him—her partner, her husband, and now, when they are both desperate, her enemy. She wants to lash out, to show him that she is her father’s daughter, but she refuses. “I didn’t touch our daughter. Did you?” Turning the tables, she enjoys his look of horror.
“No.” He stares at Marin, both of them outsiders in their own home. “I didn’t.” He drops his face into his hands, his agony like a virus marching through the home, filling every space and crevice available. “Never.”
“Then it’s time we found out who did.”
Raj and Marin have never worked together. When Gia was born, they carved out separate hours during the night to tend to her. Since she was on formula, they each took a three-hour shift. During the day, Marin would work while Raj played with her and vice versa. When they went to restaurants, Marin ate her food quickly while Raj walked Gia, and then Raj ate his. Marin saw couples working together, playing family games, both parents coaxing their child to eat. The partnership felt foreign to her, no part of her desiring to replicate it.
Now they stand on the same side, facing a situation neither ever dreamed of. What parent would? “Has she given any indication whom it could be?”
They have settled in Marin’s office, she in her leather chair, and Raj on the sofa. “No. I asked, begged her, but no answer.” Marin doesn’t tell him about the slap.
“What did the school say?”
“They didn’t. Karen seemed as shocked as we are.”