“Which one did you poison? This is really how you planned to kill me? You thought I wouldn’t know?” he yelled while I continued to choke, but that egg I’d been somewhat prepared for.
Once the second egg was gone, Collin sat there with me on the floor until my breathing sounded somewhat normal, but his eyes never left my face.
“You’re insane,” I rasped. Saying those words out loud for the first time felt so good, like a sweet release. I wanted to say them over and over, but I let myself be content with once. “What poison?”
His dark blond eyebrows pinched together in confusion. Any other day, I would have been thrilled that he didn’t look angry after what I’d just said to him, but after today, after what I’d endured on Monday, after the kind of monster he was turning into now . . . I no longer cared.
“Why aren’t you dying? I watched you,” he said angrily, and pointed up to the counter. “I watched you pour something into the salt shaker before you sprinkled it onto the eggs. And then you refused to look at me even though I know you knew I was there. You couldn’t have been more obvious than a child who’d gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar!”
My face fell and my heart pounded in my chest. I had rolled onto my side at some point after he’d released me and was curled into a ball now. I had to swallow back the forced food that was trying to make its reappearance now that I knew what all that had been for. I’d just been choked and nearly suffocated because I’d been trying to keep myself busy while waiting for his eggs to cook. “Salt,” I whispered as heavy tears fell onto the hardwood. “I was refilling the salt shaker with salt.”
There was a pause, then Collin sighed and reached out for me. Before he could touch me, my stomach lurched again, and I scrambled up and took off for the guest bathroom to get rid of the eggs.
Collin was standing near the front door when I finally emerged from the hallway with an apologetic look on his face. “You don’t have to make dinner tonight. My parents’ anniversary party is this evening.”
“I know.”
“Try to be ready by the time I get home. I, uh . . . I need to get to work.” When I nodded, he gestured to his throat and said, “Find something that will cover that for tonight. I can’t have you going anywhere today, Harlow, and after—well, after this morning, I can’t have you calling anyone. You understand?”
Of course I understood. My throat was still bruised an ugly shade of yellow and purple, and he thought I would call the police. He’d hidden my purse before I woke up on Tuesday morning, and I figured from his words that he was going to keep it for a while longer. I tried to keep my face blank, but I hated the fact that now he wouldn’t be with me, and he would have Knox’s phone.
“Your keys, phone, even the house phones. I can’t risk it.”
My eyebrows shot up, but I kept my mouth shut. He’d never taken the house phones with him.
Aggravation replaced the apologetic expression. “I need to—”
“I understand,” I said before he could finish.
Collin took a step toward me, but then rocked back and sighed. “I love you,” he whispered, turned, and left.
Tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall until I heard his car start. Once he was gone, a strained sob burst from my chest, and I stood there staring at the front door like I didn’t know what to do. I felt lost. This wasn’t my monster; this wasn’t my husband. My monster didn’t leave visible marks on my throat. My monster didn’t cut off my air until I passed out and point a gun at me. He didn’t try to stop me from breathing multiple times in one day, or force me to eat food while choking on it.
I glanced to the left to the knocked-over chair, forgotten toast and coffee, and bits of egg on the floor, and a part of me wanted to finally give up. To say forget everything, warn my family, and just leave. But before I was able to understand the movements, I was walking into the kitchen and cleaning.
He’s trained me well, I thought disdainfully, then pushed that thought out of my head. I wasn’t cleaning this for him; nothing I did was for him. Everything I did was to hopefully spare me from more pain. I might have learned what to do and not to do to make Collin happy over the years, but that was simply because I’d slowly realized that it was my greatest form of self-defense from him.
AFTER CLEANING THE house and doing a load of laundry, I stood in the shower for forty-five minutes while sobbing and trying to figure out what to do, then finally pulled myself together and stepped out.
I grimaced when I looked at myself in the mirror. I’d been trying to avoid it lately, but now that I was looking, I couldn’t stop. Large, fading bruises along my ribs and hips, little dots along my arms that looked like everyday bruises if you didn’t know differently, and the monstrosity on my throat. If it were possible, I looked thinner. Looking at my reflection made me feel sick even though the bones that jutted out weren’t anything new.
I ran my fingers over the bones, then the bruises. When I got to my throat, I leaned closer and noticed that the area around my mouth looked red from where his hand had smashed down, and it looked like I was blushing on only one side of my face where he’d backhanded me. I pressed the tips of my fingers against my cheek and winced. I’d wondered which was worse, the beatings I’d always endured, or how he’d been this week. But one look at myself, one painful reminder of how it had felt to not breathe, and I knew I had my answer. I would gladly go back to the beatings, because I knew in my gut that with this new monster, one day soon he was going to kill me.
“Over something as simple as salt,” I whispered to my reflection.
Tearing my eyes from the mirror, I grabbed a towel and walked out of the bathroom so I wouldn’t be tempted to look again.
Once I finished dressing, I walked over to my side of the bed to grab the towel where I’d left it after drying off, and paused. Peeking out of the bottom shelf of my nightstand was my mini iPad. I’d taken it out of my purse to charge last week sometime, and I knew that if Collin had known it was here, he would have taken it with him.
I must have spent half an hour holding it and weighing the options before pulling up the iMessage app and typing in Knox’s number, only to let another fifteen minutes pass as I tried to figure out what to say—and if I should say anything at all.