I’ve started a new tradition on spa nights. After I return to my hotel room, I curl up in a ball and sob hysterically. I don’t know who I’m crying for. Myself and the dreams of the future I once had? For my husband, and the hopes he probably had for us? For my child, who looks up at me so sweetly, without any idea what Mommy really does when she goes away?

Maybe I’m crying for my childhood, for the moments of tenderness and security I never had, so that some depraved part of me must continuously punish myself, as if picking up where my mother left off

One day, standing in front of the hotel mirror, looking at the huge bruises slowly darkening my ribs, it occurs to me that I don’t want to do this anymore. That somehow I have fallen in love with my husband. That by virtue of never touching me, he has in fact become the most special man in my life.

I want to stay home. I want to feel safe.

It’s a good vow, don’t you think?

Unfortunately, I’m no good at clean, healthy living. I have to hurt. I have to be punished.

If not by myself, then at least by someone else.

When I first saw the picture on the computer screen, that single black-and-white image of unspeakable violence being committed against such a small, vulnerable young boy, I should’ve packed up Ree and left. That would’ve been the smart, sensible thing to do.

No wasting time with denial. So Jason was kind, considerate, and, the best I could tell, a remarkable father It wasn’t like respectable family men couldn’t have dirty little secrets, right? Of all people, I should know that.

Was it the cycle of violence? In my calculating attempt to run away from my family, to pick the one man I thought was the antithesis of everything my father had been, had I run right into the arms of another monster? Maybe darkness speaks to darkness. I didn’t marry my husband because I thought he would save me; I married him to stay with the devil I knew.

I know the moment I saw that photo, I felt a stirring deep inside the ugly part of myself A bitter sense of recognition. All of a sudden, my perfect husband was no better than me, and heaven help me, I liked that. I really, really liked that.

I told myself I needed more information. I told myself my husband deserved the benefit of the doubt. One explicit photo in the trash bin did not a predator make. Maybe he’d received it by accident and immediately deleted it. Maybe it popped up on some website and he was getting rid of it. There could be a rational explanation. Right?