Something in her shut down. Maybe because her son had just turned two and she didn’t want him growing up with a father like that. Or maybe because, at that moment, Karen didn’t want to answer the call. She did not radio her partner. Did not tell him to leave the deli immediately so they could get to the scene.
Karen waited in the car, listening to calls come over the radio, and for the first time in years, she felt nothing. Not good or bad, not anxious, not scared, not anything. Like her heart stopped beating for a few minutes.
By the time she and her partner made it to the scene, her husband was dead.
38
Karen picks up her Red Bull and takes a long sip. Eight o’clock at night, and she’s still working, still trying to find a connection between Joey and Wes. Frustrating.
No. Infuriating.
Her phone rings, and when she sees the name, she hesitates. A long list of things to do is waiting for her. If she answers, she’ll be lucky to get half of them done.
Darren. Always Darren.
He had not been one of the three she checked in with tonight. Karen picks up the phone because she has to.
“Hi,” she says. “How are you?”
A deep, rumbling sigh.
“Darren? You okay?”
“I did it again,” he says. A tiny voice, like a child admitting he broke something. Darren is a thirty-six-year-old man who has obviously returned to Alaina, his girlfriend. For the third time. Staying out of an abusive relationship can be harder than getting out.
Her long to-do list goes out the proverbial window. She can’t turn Darren down, can’t ignore him. She has never been able to arrest Alaina. The woman hasn’t come close to breaking the law. And Karen looked. Hard.
Alaina doesn’t hit Darren. She is possessive, manipulative, degrading, and controlling—which is a problem, because most emotional abuse isn’t illegal. Even when it crosses the line, it’s hard to prove in criminal court. The DA won’t even try those cases, because making a jury understand the difference between something said in anger and a real threat isn’t easy. Alaina knows that.
Karen does, too. So did her husband.
* * *
—
It was subtle at first. Karen didn’t even see it happening. If someone had told her she was being manipulated or abused, she never would’ve believed them.
Long before Karen married her husband, it started. The first time he asked her to cancel plans with her girlfriends, they were still in the dating phase. When he said he really wanted to see her and begged her to go out with him instead, Karen thought it was sweet. He brought her flowers, and they spent a romantic evening at a nice restaurant.
The first time he asked her to skip a weekend with her family, it was because he had something special planned. And he did. A rented Airbnb in the wilderness, two days without seeing anyone else—and without any clothes.
The first time he got jealous was right after they both graduated from the police academy. They had been in a relationship for over a year, and he asked about Karen’s partner at work. A man who had been on the job for almost fifteen years. Her boyfriend wanted to know if her partner ever checked her out, ever hit on her. Always in a light tone, like he was teasing. She thought it was cute that he was jealous.
No red flags, as far as she was concerned. When he proposed, she said yes without hesitation. Karen was madly in love with this man who cared so much about her.
The first time she noticed how small her circle of friends had become was when she shopped for a wedding dress by herself. Still, she told herself this was normal. The natural result of spending most of your time with the person you’re going to marry. You build a life together, replacing the one you had when you were single.
The first time he texted and asked where she was, they were already married. He wanted to know why she was late getting home from work. Her husband was worried, and rightly so, because they were cops. When he did it again—and again, and again—Karen started texting him first, letting him know exactly when she would be home. Always before he had a chance to text her. If she didn’t, he would blow up her phone.
Completely understandable. Anything can happen when you’re a cop. Her husband wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.
The first time he made a suggestion about what she should wear, Karen had been impressed. Not many men paid that much attention to clothes. He started doing it more often, until he was choosing all her clothes for her. By then, she was convinced he knew more about fashion than she did. Karen let him dress her, because he was better at it.
Everything was so easy to explain. To herself, at least. She didn’t share any of it with coworkers or the few friends she still had. This was relationship stuff, the private things you don’t run around telling other people. She didn’t want to, either. It would require too many words, too many questions.
Karen still didn’t realize she was doubting her own behavior, because he had convinced her not to.
And his smile. That goddamn smile.
It was hard to think a man smiling at her like that didn’t love her. Didn’t want the best for her. Didn’t want the best for their family.
So she kept making excuses for him. Kept telling herself all of this was normal. It was only after Jack was born that she started realizing how dangerous her husband was.
The knowledge came slowly, one drop at a time, each one more painful than the last. Like a special kind of torture designed for people who had married the wrong person.
The first time he accused her of cheating, she laughed, because it had to be a joke. It wasn’t. And he kept on doing it. If she looked at a waiter for too long, laughed at a bartender’s joke, or even thought about having a drink with her partner, it meant she must be cheating. Or that she wanted to.
The first time he threatened to kill himself if she left him, Karen assumed he was just being dramatic. She left anyway. He called her and claimed he was holding his service weapon, ready to blow off his head. Rather than call the police—and potentially make him lose his job—she went back home.
The first time he threatened to kill her if she left him, he also said he would find her. Wherever she went, whatever she did, he would be there. Karen woke up, took a hard look at her life, and realized she was exactly where he wanted her to be.
Trapped.
39
It takes Ivy less than a minute to learn that the man with the beard is named Milo.
Milo.
She hates the name, and hates the way it sounds with her own. Ivy and Milo. Doesn’t work. It also doesn’t matter, because she isn’t looking for a new life partner tonight.
At least he is polite and asks all the right questions: what she does, who she knows, how she spends her free time. Heath fades into the background, burying himself in his phone, leaving Ivy alone with Milo. She doesn’t dare look over at Wes, who is still talking to the group of girls in the middle of the bar. But he is paying attention. And she is paying attention to him.
Milo, oblivious, goes on and on about his podcast. “My friends and I started it for fun, something to do because it didn’t really cost anything. We recorded our conversations about pop culture and current events, stuff like that, and loaded them on YouTube. Then it kind of took off.”
“What’s it called?”
He smiles, looking a bit sheepish. “Promise you won’t judge me by the name.”