She reached for him. Put her hand on his strong arm. “Aldo. He was always going to hit me. You were an excuse, not the reason.”

He didn’t move away from her touch, but he didn’t try to hold her either. “When you didn’t leave him… I didn’t understand.”

Her heart hurt. Another person she had disappointed, devastated.

“I hate this. I hate knowing that I let you down, Aldo.”

“You didn’t let me down. I didn’t understand. I didn’t get it. But I do now. I don’t blame you for staying.”

“I do. I blame myself every day. Aldo, what if I left him the first time it happened? What if you and I had that shot? My entire life would be different. I would have gone to college. I would have made something of myself. We might have kids and pets and soccer practice and lasagna for dinner.”

Staring into the darkness beyond the windshield, she mourned the loss of things she’d never had.

“Or we would have been too young to know what a good thing we had and screwed it all up,” Aldo pointed out. “I was eighteen. All I knew was football. The Guard, college, all of that turned me into who I am today. I wouldn’t be here now, if it had gone down differently. I believe that, Gloria. I really do.”

Maybe he had a point. But not enough to get her to unwallow. “I hate that I was a textbook battered woman.”

“There are reasons why women don’t leave,” Aldo argued.

“And there are women who would never let themselves be put in that situation. Do you think Sophie would have ever let Ty hit her? Even once? No! She would put his balls in a pickle jar. But I didn’t have that spine at sixteen. I didn’t have that confidence. I was so hungry for attention I was willing to accept abuse and humiliation and isolation as the price to pay for it.” Her voice was raised, and she didn’t care. The words had been trapped inside her for too long.

“I can’t forgive myself any more than I can forgive him,” she admitted. Her eyes were dry, but her heart was pounding in her head.

Aldo brought his fingers to the back of her neck where he stroked gently.

“This is a second chance for both of us. I’m going to try real hard not to blow it. But isn’t the important thing not what you did or didn’t do at sixteen but what you choose now as an adult? Isn’t the point of all of this that now you’ll have that pickle jar, and you’ll be ready to use it?”