Aldo’s fingers fisted, crushing the envelope.

“He controlled the finances, my car, where I could and couldn’t go. I knew that I could go home to my mother, but I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t try to hurt us both if I left. He wasn’t always awful. I think that’s part of the cycle. The short fuse, the explosion, the apology, the sweetness. A week before I left, he brought me a stack of paperbacks by my favorite author from the library book sale. It wasn’t all blood and bruises.”

She looked up at him, gaze earnest, and handed him a mug.

“I had hope for so long that after every apology, this would be the time he changed. He was a victim, too. His father beat him bloody every other week until he got big enough to fight back. He confided in me. He’d seen his father hurt his mother his entire life. It’s what he knew. The physical brutality, that was one thing. I could mostly heal from that. It was the emotional side of things. Whittling away at my self-esteem, one snide comment, one accusation, at a time. He hated you for some reason,” she confessed.

Aldo absorbed the statement, knowing the exact reason why Glenn Diller hated him.

“He accused me of having a crush on you, and I denied it. Even though it was true.” She shot him a sidelong look.

“You did?” he asked.

Gloria nodded, remembering. “Who wouldn’t have a crush on football star Aldo Moretta?”

Aldo needed desperately to move his body. To pace before the rage inside him erupted. Gloria stepped around him and led the way into the living room. She sat on the couch, gestured for him to do the same. He tucked the letter beside him on the cushion, still not sure how to approach it.

“I was shocked. Sure, looking back there’d been warning signs. Times when he was rougher than the situation called for or making controlling demands that felt like love at the time. When he hit me, I pushed him. Called him a ‘loser asshole,’” she recalled. “And he fell to his knees in front of me and cried. He begged me not to leave him. Apologized for hitting me. Said it was an accident that he’d never do it again. He told me his story. That all he knew was violence. But he’d change for me. I felt…powerful. I had the choice to stay or go, and he was putting it in my hands.”

“But he never changed,” Aldo said quietly.