“No.” It wasn’t true. “I want to help her.”

“You are. At least, your dead daddy is. Don’t worry about her. You know what to do.”

Scott wanted to be strong. He wanted to be like that young man who’d charged into the fray to stop those bastards from beating up his friend.

“You have nothing,” Casey said. “No way to stop me. Knees. Now. On your fucking knees.”

She scooped up her bottle and moved over, raising her other hand. “Fucking knees. Knees, Scott. On your knees, you sick fuck.”

He fell to his knees and looked up at his wife; there was no choice. His eyes stung with tears. “Now… now what?”

“Don’t flinch, okay, baby?”

She poured the contents of the wine bottle over his head. The red wine streamed through his hair, down his neck, tickling down his spine. He detached; he became a statue, inside and out, dead, rock, nothing. She huffed and tossed the bottle at the wall. Scott remained still even as it shattered.

“So obedient,” she said. “I’m going out.”

Scott didn’t ask where. He could only hope she stayed out for a few hours, giving him a chance to recover and get ready for the next round.

Casey paused at the door. “You need to know something. You can dream things into existence. There are so many things that are true, if you believe them, if you honestly give yourself to them.”

She’d been saying similar things for days, and like usual, Scott had no clue what she meant; it was just another of her crazed rants. Like the night before when she’d said she was going to be a pop star. He couldn’t tell if she believed it in the moment, was faking it, or if it was something in between.

A reverberation moved through the house when she slammed the door. Scott waited until he heard her car screech from the driveway, and then he fell onto his side and drew his knees up.

The tightness came, in his chest, his head getting fuzzy as he struggled to draw in enough breath.

He wrapped his arms around himself, imagining they were Natalie’s. He didn’t care if she wanted to leave, to be with her girlfriend instead; he didn’t even care about the complicated corners of their marriage. As long as they could remain friends. As long as she’d let him press his body against hers, not in a sexual way, but for the warmth, the promise, the lie that he’d escape this misery.

40

NATALIE

As well as fear, as well as violence, Scott would use money to manipulate me. This part pains me so much, especially because I was earning more than him for most of our marriage. But somehow he gained control of our finances.

No, not somehow.

He turned feral and attacked me one evening, wrestling my purse from me and tearing out my bank cards. Waving them in my face – he was so malformed with rage – he ranted about what a slut I was. I was using my bank card to meet men in hotels; I was a whore, I was cheating on him, I was defective, not the wife he deserved.