“WHY DID HE hit her, Dad?”
Carter was in his Snoopy pj’s, snuggled up in his Snoopy sheets and blankets, with Snoopy—our yellow Labrador puppy, who was almost as big as Carter, even though both of them were still growing like weeds—curled up at his feet.
I brushed my son’s hair out of his eyes and wished I had an answer. He had my hair and eyes, both dark brown. This was the hardest part of being a parent—trying to explain all the shit in the world when there wasn’t a good explanation. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “You understand why I hit him, though, right?”
He sniffled and nodded, wide-eyed. “Because he was hurting Miss Natalie.”
“And it’s not right for a man to ever hit a woman or a child. We don’t hit anyone.”
“’Cept in hockey games sometimes,” Carter said, repeating my explanation almost verbatim.
“That’s right. Except in hockey games sometimes. But that’s part of the rules, and it has consequences. When you fight in a hockey game, you have to go to the penalty box.”
Even though I had made sure he understood that fighting was an accepted part of the game I played, he’d never once seen me drop my gloves and fight on the ice. Fighting wasn’t something I enjoyed. Besides, I could help my team better if I was on the ice than I could sitting in the box.
I’d hoped my son would never see me do it in any context. If he had to see it, though, I was glad it was because I was defending someone who couldn’t defend herself. Because I was trying to right a wrong. Because it was the only thing I could do, given the circumstances.
“Is he going to hurt her again?” Carter asked, sniffling.
I took a tissue from the box on the nightstand and held it so he could blow his nose. “I don’t know, Carter,” I said cautiously, weighing each word before I let it leave my lips. “I hope not. I hope he won’t hit her again.”
That wasn’t quite the truth, though. Yeah, I hoped he wouldn’t beat her up when they got home, but I knew he would. Been there, done that. I’d recognized the haunted look in Natalie’s pale-blue eyes. I’d seen the same quiet desperation in them that I’d seen in my own eyes for years. In my mother’s eyes, too. The certainty that it wasn’t over. The knowledge that she was bound to experience something even worse once they were alone.
He was probably beating the shit out of her right this very moment, a thought that made me physically ill.
I should’ve hauled her into my car, by force if necessary. I should’ve called the cops. I should’ve done something—anything—other than walk away.
What the fuck kind of example was I setting for Carter?
The thought of what Natalie was probably going through right now had my stomach roiling. Because I knew. I fucking knew what was happening, and I hadn’t managed to stop it. I’d tried, but trying wasn’t good enough.
There had to be something else I could’ve done. Some scenario I hadn’t contemplated, some argument I could’ve made. But nothing came to me, not even now, after the heat of the moment had died off and I could think clearly.
If she wasn’t ready to get away, there wasn’t anything I could do to change that.
Short of kidnapping her and rescuing her against her will, at least. And then would I be any better than Hayes?
It’d depend on how you looked at the situation, I supposed. I knew how I saw it, but how would she interpret something like that?
Carter patted the back of my hand consolingly, as if a simple touch could erase the memory of what he’d just witnessed. As if his touch could cleanse and purify my hands after they’d touched that pathetic excuse for a human being. Carter could almost do it, too. “She’ll be okay, Dad.”
“Yeah,” I said, because he needed to hear it, not because I believed it.
“You’ll take care of her.”
But how could I take care of her if she wouldn’t let me?
I finished reading Carter his bedtime story, then gave both him and Snoopy kisses on their foreheads before turning out the light.
“Leave the door cracked tonight,” Carter pleaded as I made my way out of his room.
He hadn’t asked for that in a couple of years. Not since his nightmares had stopped.
Back in the early days, after Kinsey and I had split up, he’d had a lot of nightmares. Kids took everything in, thought it was all their fault. I knew that. I’d lived through that. So he’d blamed himself, somehow, for our inability to make our marriage work out, and it had manifested in nightmares.
But once we’d been able to convince him that Kinsey and I were still friends, and that we both still cared about each other and—most importantly—still loved him, the nightmares had come to an end. If they came back now, because of Hayes Fucking Lennon, that would give me one more reason to want the bastard dead.
I left the door cracked and switched off the lights, then headed back downstairs for a beer. Once I was relatively assured that Carter would be able to drift off to sleep, with Snoopy standing guard, I took out my cell and tried to come up with what I could possibly say to Kinsey to explain what’d happened.
No matter how long I stared at my phone, though, nothing came to me. So I did the only thing I could do.
I called her, despite the late hour.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded, sounding half asleep. “Is Carter okay? What happened?”
“Carter’s going to be fine,” I cut in before she could get too worked up.
“Going to be? Meaning he’s not now?”
“We witnessed a guy beating up his girlfriend after the game tonight,” I said. “One of my teammates,” I added, almost as an afterthought even though that was the last thing it should’ve been.
“Oh, shit,” Kinsey breathed into the phone.
That didn’t even begin to cover it.
“What’d you do?” she asked.
Because she knew. She knew all about my abusive father. She knew how I felt about this shit.
She fucking knew.
“I almost killed him,” I admitted.
“Shit.”
“Had the bastard’s throat in my hands. I could’ve done it, Kinsey. I could’ve choked the life out of him. I was so close. So fucking close to doing it.”
“But you didn’t.” She said it as if she knew that, too.
“No.”
But already, I was second-guessing myself. Already, I wished I could turn back the clock and have a do-over, because that bastard deserved to die. And because I had an idea of what was happening to Natalie right this very moment.
And because I felt like a piece of shit for allowing it to happen.
“And Carter saw all of this?” my ex asked cautiously.
“Every last bit of it.”
“But you talked to him about it afterward, right?”
“Talking doesn’t undo it.”
“No,” she said on a weighted sigh. “But it’ll help him understand.”
Could a kid ever understand the kind of thing my son had witnessed tonight? I’d never been able to process it. I’d never understood what had led my father to do the kinds of shit he’d done. Why no one had ever stepped in and put an end to it.
My teachers and coaches had to have known. I’d gone to school every day covered in bruises and scars that couldn’t be explained away by simply stating, He’s a hockey player, and hockey’s a rough game, or You know how kids are these days.
No one, not once in my life, had ever tried to stop him.
And now I was no better than any of them. Because I’d walked away. When it was all said and done, I had walked away and left Natalie to deal with it on her own.
I was as bad as Hayes.
Maybe I’d never lifted a finger against her, but I hadn’t stopped him from doing it, either. Hell, I might have made things worse for her.
“He asked me to leave the door open tonight,” I said.
“He just needs some reassurance. That’s all it is. He needs to know you’re there.”
Yeah, I was here, all right. I only hoped it wasn’t me he feared.
The rage that had welled up inside me and spilled over was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He’d witnessed me almost kill a man. And he’d seen me walk away from a woman in need. Those were two things I’d vowed to myself that he would never, ever see, but they’d both happened in the same night.
“Is Snoopy sleeping with him?” Kinsey asked.
“That dog sleeps on his bed even when he’s with you.”
“Then he’ll be fine. He’s got his puppy to protect him, and he’s got his daddy in the next room. He’ll be fine.”
I only wished I were as confident as she was.