I got home to a deserted street and darkness. Dawn didn’t break in January until much later. The sweet smoke of the fire we’d made lingered in the air, and the driveway was covered with snow, so I parked on the street. As I walked toward the front door, as I let myself into the house, part of me was still floating. I didn’t turn on any lights. I hung up my coat. I didn’t—and this is important—I didn’t have my gun with me. It was upstairs, where I’d left it with my uniform.

I went into the living room. Blindly, without seeing anything, I gathered up the clothes I’d shed there, as well as the robe and the blanket from Tom. I inhaled the scent of the robe as I held it. So many thoughts raced through my mind: thoughts of Tom, thoughts of my body and the things I’d been missing, thoughts of my job, my childhood, my mother, my father, my brother. The one thing I didn’t think about was the danger I should have remembered. I didn’t think about Ricky. I’d forgotten all about him. At that moment, my husband didn’t exist. I hadn’t left the lights on or checked the lock on the door or any of the windows.

Of course, that was a terrible, terrible mistake.

He came at me from nowhere, an invisible man bursting from the shadows. One moment I had clothes in my arms, and then the next moment I was literally flying through the air as Ricky threw me across the room. I’m not heavy; he had no trouble launching me off my feet. I hit the wall and smashed into a glass picture frame that broke, spraying shards that sliced open my face and arm. Before I even fell, he grabbed me and threw me again, this time full speed into the brick hearth of the fireplace. My head struck stone. Pain erupted like the burn of a flame behind my eyes. I slumped to the carpet, tasting blood in my mouth.

“You whore! You goddamn whore!”

He bent over me, shouting in my face. I was on my back, but I couldn’t focus on the dark shape over me, because I was caught in a tornado of dizziness and hurt. I put up my hands in a feeble effort to push him away, but he twisted my left wrist hard, and I heard the bone snap like a broken pencil. I couldn’t help myself; I screamed in agony. He drove his knee into my chest, making me choke, and then he leaned his whole weight into me. Next he used his fists on my face, over and over, and with each blow, my skull slammed into the floor. He broke my jaw. He broke my nose. Blood from my head ran into my eyes.