Interrupting her thoughts, the doctor suggested, “So, the abuse against you was worsening over time because he couldn’t channel it elsewhere.”
Nodding in agreement, Alice swallowed down the emotions that were taking control of her body. “He spent a lot of time in the basement watching those recordings, hoping that just by seeing the violence, it would somehow relieve some of the pressure.”
She winced, but then widened her eyes as tears poured down her cheeks. “Watching the recordings only made him worse. He didn’t want to hurt me. For some reason that I’ve never figured out, he wanted to protect me.”
Alice grew quiet, giving Dr. Chance the opportunity to interject. “Perhaps when he learned that you suffered a similar type of abuse in your childhood, he felt a kinship to you. When he saw you’d become weaker as a result of it, he felt a duty to stand strong where you could not.”
“Maybe,” Alice replied. “Or maybe by protecting me, he was in some way protecting the abused child that he had been at one time. I was a symbol of that weak little boy he hadn’t been strong enough to protect because he was a child.”
Her head ticked to the side, her movements becoming more erratic as they closed in on the confession she was attempting to voice.
“Whatever the reason, he truly did love me, and he hated himself each time he hurt me or caused me to cry. He wanted to change, Doc. He just didn’t know how.”
Several seconds passed in thick silence, the weight of Alice’s memories suffocating them both.
His voice calm and unhurried, the doctor asked, “How many women did he kill before you met him, Alice? Do you know?”
She nodded. “Around thirteen. Their bodies were buried in the yard that eventually became my garden.”
A keening sound filled the room, Alice’s pain so severe that it was leaching out of her in audible, heartbreaking sounds. “I got married with those bodies in the ground beneath me.” Her eyes met his. “I loved that plot of land because it fed the plants so well. How fucked up is that, Doc? Those women were rotting and I was excited because I didn’t have to use fertilizers to keep those plants alive.”
Hands clenched into fists, Alice slammed them down onto the cushions beside her, her face twisting into a mask of anger and shame, her body moving so suddenly and without coordination that the doctor sat forward in case he needed to keep her from harming herself.
“Alice, I don’t want to have to restrain you…”
“There’s nothing to restrain,” she yelled. Taking several minutes to calm herself, Alice relaxed back against the couch, blinking her eyes rapidly to expel the tears that wouldn’t stop welling in her eyes.
Only when she’d grown quiet again, did the doctor speak.
“You had no way of knowing.”
A bark of angry sound blew over her lips. “Yeah, but that doesn’t excuse me turning a blind eye when he started killing women again. It doesn’t excuse the fact that I enjoyed that he was killing again because, when he was with me, he was the man I fell in love with again.”
“Alice –“
“No, Doc. Don’t say anything. I need to say this and I need you to just listen and understand what I’m trying to tell you.”
With a serious expression on her face - her eyes wide, her mouth pulled into a thin line and her brow furrowed with the anger and self-loathing that she was feeling - Alice finished the confession that proved just how horrible she had been.
“For once in my life, I was the pampered person. Growing up, I was the freak, the one who was hurt, the one who was hated and the one that nobody cared whether she lived or died.”
She paused, her throat working to clear away the thickness of guilt that clogged it.
“For once, I wasn’t that girl anymore. And it was because of those women. And instead of hating my husband for what he was doing to those women, I enjoyed it. I didn’t watch. I didn’t listen. I didn’t participate. But I didn’t stop him either. Not at first.”
“How many, Alice? How many women died while you lived in that house?”
“Four,” she answered, “and although I knew it was wrong, although I tortured myself by watching the news reports and their families begging for their safe return, I said nothing. I had my husband back. He was kind to me and he was loving. I wasn’t the abused freak anymore, and for that, I turned a blind eye.”
Refusing to react in a way any normal person would react to what she’d revealed, the doctor schooled his expression, forcing practiced kindness into his voice when he asked, “When did that change? What happened that you’re here now instead of still living that life with Max?”