I’m just folding laundry.

No, you’re not. You want to go, Rose? Just go already. I’m sick of you. Sick of seeing your face. You’re ugly, you know that? Ugly.

You don’t understand the only reason I put up with this is I keep hoping you’ll straighten out enough to have a rational conversation about us.

I’m straight as an arrow, baby. So get the fuck out.

If you want me to leave now, then I’m taking Max with me.

No, you aren’t. He doesn’t go anywhere.

Riley, I don’t trust you alone with him. Not with the way you’ve been behaving. Not with how much you’ve been drinking.

You think I’d hurt my own son? Is that what you’re saying?

I’m saying you’re in no shape to be a single parent right now.

There’s only one person in this apartment I want to hurt.

With that last statement, Riley turned and slammed his fist into the wall next to the bed. Bam. His hand disappeared through the drywall as if it were nothing more than rice paper; I think he was even more surprised than me. He just stood there, fist still in the wall, seconds passing, until finally his shoulders slumped, his head lowered, and he began to cry. Not just cry but sob. Sob like I’d never heard him do before, a complete and total capitulation to his circumstances, an abandonment of hope. He finally pulled his fist out and slid down the wall to the floor, where he wrapped his arms around his knees and buried his forehead on top of them. He didn’t bother to look up as I backed out of the room.

Max was in the hallway, just out of eyeshot of the bedroom. I didn’t know if he’d been watching, but he certainly had heard everything. This couldn’t continue. I had to take him out of there.

I raced into the hall and pulled Max in toward me.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, not thinking of anything else to say. We had moved well past the sometimes-parents-argue phase in our family dynamic.

He squeezed me back and asked a question I couldn’t make out. I leaned him back so I could see his face.

“What?” I asked.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No. He’s just…just angry at the world right now. But it’s not your fault. You know that, right?”

He looked up at me, his eyes fixed on mine. “Were you scared?”

And in that moment, I was honest with him, because I had no one else I could share with.

“A little,” I admitted.

But that wasn’t altogether true.

I was a lot scared.

Riley had changed. Now he wasn’t just a man I no longer loved. He was a threat. First he hits the wall. Then what? And what would I be willing to do to secure the safety of my son and me?

How would you characterize your relationship with your husband?

No way I was going to tell Detective Pearson all those things. No way I was going to tell him how, after calling 911 that morning I found Riley dead, I hung a picture over the hole in the wall to avoid questions about there having been a fight. Or how I had a neighbor take Max that morning so it would be harder for the police to ask him any direct questions. And I got lucky. I got Detective Cooper assigned to the case, and he was quick to tell me he was retiring in a few days and promptly declared Riley’s death an accidental overdose.