I didn’t care how he looked. No, what made him different was that he seemed fascinated by who I was. He asked a lot of questions, about my childhood, about growing up on my own, about my mother. It flattered me that he found my story intriguing. I didn’t understand then, or maybe I was too young to realize, that men can be like that about things they want to own. That one way to control someone is to learn everything about them, so you always have ammunition to use when you need it.

I married Ricky not long after that. Darrell, my father, my brother, they all told me I was moving too fast, but I was in a rush to feel normal at that point in my life. I wanted to do what other Black Wolf County girls did. I married a mine worker, I worked to make us extra money, I went to the 126 and drank and joked with friends, I cooked and cleaned and had sex with my husband on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings. Lather, rinse, repeat.

That was how my life went for three years. Maybe that’s how the rest of my life would have gone, if Ricky hadn’t heard his supervisor making a joke about his damaged nose and thrown the man through a window. The assault got him fired from the mine. Everything changed after that; everything began to spiral downward, for me and for him. I began to see the other side of my husband, as if I were orbiting around the dark side of the moon. His failures as a man somehow became my shortcomings as a wife.

Darrell was right about the danger of living with tigers. Believe me, as a cop, I knew what happened behind closed doors to too many of the women in Black Wolf County. Ricky hadn’t touched me, not yet. Even so, I’d grown wary of what he might do. I’d noticed the heat of his temper, like a gas flame on high. When we argued, I saw him clenching his fists. His demands in bed had begun to make me uncomfortable. I felt like he was testing my boundaries, pushing me to see how far he could go before I pushed back. It was almost as if he wanted me to give him an excuse. All along, he had this odd, taunting look in his eyes that said: I dare you.

“I’m going to take a shower before the water gets cold,” I said. I got off the sofa and slipped out of my winter coat, but Ricky blocked my way.

“Was Ajax there?”

“What?”

“Were you with him this morning?” Ricky asked.

“I wasn’t with him. He’s a cop. He was at the crime scene, too.”

“Yeah. Sure he was.”

“What’s the problem? What are you talking about?”