“And what’s worse, he always tells me after that it hurts him more than it hurt me, that he only hits me because he loves me.”

Silently, her tears fell one after the other as the sobs wracked her body. I’d never seen her cry like this before and it terrified me, even though I didn’t want to admit it. Elise was the strong one, Elise always knew what to do.

I wasn’t the strong one.

I didn’t know what to do.

“Sprained wrist, dislocated shoulder, more bruises than I can count over the years. One time it got so bad that I went to stay at a friend’s house for a week until he came and literally dragged me out kicking and screaming.” I began to cry and soon I was sobbing too. “He threw me into the car and fought with her parents out on their lawn. They called the cops. And I thought maybe I was saved. But the police came, took one look at me—healthy and unhurt because I got to have a whole week away from him—and let him take me home. Said something about referring the issue to social services. But they didn’t. Because no one ever showed up. And that was when I realized if the cops weren’t going to do anything about it, no one was going to do anything about it,” she said.

“Why didn’t they?” I cried, shocked. They were police officers—they were supposed to do something, protect her.

She tried to wipe her tears away but they kept coming. “The cops believed my dad because of course they did. Who were they going to believe?” she said as more tears fell from her face.

“How could they?” My heart broke for her, for the girl who didn’t get the help she needed.

“TV shows and movies almost always show the police as these heroes, but sometimes they’re not. I’ve read that a lot of cops hit their own partners and children. And they’re the ones who’re supposed to protect people,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve pinned my hopes on being saved by someone else.”

We stayed like that for a while, crying together on her bed. Overwhelmed, I found myself pulling away from Elise, afraid to touch her. It was too much to process, the ground beneath us fracturing. Everything we had before seemed like an illusion now broken by the awful truth.

I felt guilty, angry at myself for all the things I’d said before, things that had seemed harmless at the time but now were insensitive at best. I should’ve been listening when she was talking about how there were gradations of horrible. I should’ve known it’d come from a dark, dark place. My childhood, with all the fighting and neglect, could never compare with what she’d gone through—what she was still going through.

Elise wiped away her tears with the back of her wrist and sniffed. “For the longest time I thought it was my fault. He told me it was my fault, every time. I was useless, I didn’t appreciate how hard he worked to feed me, how my mom had left him with this—this burden. He said I was stupid and would never amount to anything, just like her. She came from this fancy family, she’d been a fucking debutante, he said. Never worked a day in her life. He told me I had to toughen up if I wanted to survive. That he was trying to make sure I didn’t end up useless like her.” She began to sob then, covering her face with both hands.