This Story Might Save Your Life(51)

Needless to say, he found this alarming. So alarming that he had a baby monitor delivered to the house the next day. The kind that connects to your phone so you can watch the feed from anywhere.

“You’re kidding,” I said as he was setting it up. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“If we’d had this last night I could’ve saved you from that … scene.”

“Or, you could’ve answered your phone.”

“Let’s not make a big deal out of this.”

Rage filled me so quickly it scared me. “Not make a big deal?” I shouted. “You think this isn’t a big deal?”

“Joy, calm down.”

Has there ever been an occasion, in the history of time, when it was a good idea for a man to tell a woman to calm down? I was not going to calm down. I could admit my behavior the previous night was not ideal, but Xander had to see he was taking this a step too far. He’d crossed the one line we had left. The one line. Shaking, I threw the monitor at the wall, spraying the room with splintered plastic. “WE DON’T HAVE A BABY.”

“And maybe that’s for the best.”

Reader, I threw myself at him. I wanted to claw his eyes out. Rip his chest open. Drink his blood. Look at me NOW, I wanted to say. Does this look helpless to you? But he had me on my back before I could so much as yank a hair from his head.

“Stop,” he said, pinning me down. “Stop fighting.”

I didn’t stop. I fought so hard, for so long, I ended up passing out. When I came to, he was pressing a cool, wet cloth to my neck. “Needing help is nothing to be ashamed of,” he said quietly.

He fixed a bowl of soup and drew me a bath. “I’m sorry,” I whispered as he shampooed my hair.

“Thank you,” I whispered when he put me to bed.

The following afternoon, Benny showed up to record. Xander was home, of course, hovering nearby as Benny filled a glass with water and downed it in two long pulls. Wiping his mouth, he gave me a once-over. “Why are you wearing that? It’s ninety-eight degrees.” I could feel the heat coming off his skin; his forehead was beaded with sweat.

“The boy band?” I tugged at the sleeves of my sweatshirt, hyperaware of Xander’s gaze. For breakfast, he’d made berries-and-cream crepes with freshly squeezed orange juice. I wasn’t hungry but I’d cleaned my plate. “How was Connecticut?”

Benny mopped his brow with a paper towel. “Thirty degrees cooler.” His sister had taken him to a few breweries. They’d eaten pizza in Mystic. Spent a day shopping. “Sarah insisted I needed new shoes.” He directed all of this to me, despite Xander’s close proximity.

“You got new shoes?”

His eyebrow twitched. “Seriously, why are you wearing a sweatshirt?”

I wanted to tell him. I could make it into a joke. Listen to this crazy thing that happened last night. Look how easily I bruise when someone is holding me down with their knees. Isn’t it wild the way fingers can imprint on your skin when someone crushes your arms? Instead, I looked Benny straight in the eye and told him I was having a bad period.

It pains me to say there were other scenes like this. Other arguments. Other sweatshirts on hot days. “You’re lucky I’m so patient with you,” Xander would say.

Every time, I promised myself I would tell Benny what was happening, and every time, I found an excuse not to. He and Luna were still working on their own marriage. I didn’t want to saddle him with another set of problems. Besides, telling Benny would only force my hand, and what cards was I playing with anyway? Xander was inextricably entwined with every facet of the podcast. With every facet of my existence. It was so. Exhaustingly. Complicated.

Like a dying star, I began to collapse into myself. And as he always had, Xander took care of me. Fed me. Brought me pills. Escorted me to doctor’s appointments. To appease him, to thank him for his service, I kept my mouth shut.

I know what you’re thinking. I know. But that isn’t even the worst of it.





Benny Abbott


Day Three

We hit traffic. It’s bumper to bumper the second we merge onto the freeway, so I change course and take side roads as soon as we pass Elysian Park. By the time we reach my old street it’s already midmorning, and I have to wait for a dump truck to finish upending a line of trash cans before snagging the only open spot along the curb.

Joy was right. The building is no longer called Chez Moi.

“Chez Nous?” Sarah says.

From “my house” to “our house.” It’s been painted too. Same cream, same mint green, but clean. Fresh. “Try it.” I gesture to Joy’s computer in Sarah’s lap and hold my breath.

She types in the words. Again, invalid. Somehow I’m not surprised.

“What now?” Sarah asks.

“Not sure.” I wait for a Mini Cooper to pass, and step out of the car. I still feel strongly there’s a reason we’re here. Like Sarah said, it would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. The fernlike jacarandas shade the cracked sidewalk as I approach the building, Sarah at my side.

Sarah gestures to the lower apartment on the left. “That was yours, right?”

I nod, focusing on the old steel-framed windows above mine. When Joy lived here, she hung sheer yellow curtains that filtered the light and brightened the room all at once. Now there’s nothing in the windows at all. Sarah nudges me and points to a sign resting along the wall in the corridor beneath the stairs: FOR RENT BY OWNER.