The Girl From Home Read Online Free PDF

that required a little extra lubrication to get the deal done.
    This time, however, when he stumbled into the living room with that self-satisfied grin on his face—as if cheating on the mother of his children was only one thing he got out of his philandering, the other being that he thoroughly enjoyed her inability to do anything about it—for some reason she’d had enough. She wasn’t going to let it go as she had a hundred times before. If she couldn’t stop his infidelity, at least she could end her complicity in it.
    â€œI hope you at least wore a condom,” she’d said.
    â€œWhat’d you say?” he responded, slurring his words.
    â€œYou heard me. Bad enough that you’re with such trash, but I don’t want whatever’s on her going anywhere near me.”
    He moved closer. By the look in his eye, Jackie knew he was going to strike her. And it was almost like she wanted him to do it. Sometimes, when the bruises faded, she wondered if she’d imagined the assault, but if he hit her again, she’d have incontrovertible proof that her husband was a monster.
    â€œYou high or something?” he said.
    â€œShe must be fucking other people, too. I bet she has to after you. Got some twenty-year-old she calls up the moment you leave, so she can get herself off.”
    By now, he was so close she could smell the stink on his breath. At six-two, Rick towered above her. Although she had provoked this confrontation, Jackie was now afraid of what she’d wrought. She reached for the only shield she had: her children.
    â€œThe kids are home,” she said.
    She hated invoking Robert and Emma for protection. But through the years she’d tried every other tack: fighting back, hiding, threatening to call the police, and nothing else had ever worked.
    The possibility that his children would bear witness to their father beating the crap out of their mother was not always a sufficient deterrent for Rick, however. It often depended on how drunk he was. Tonight he was very drunk, so nothing could save her.
    He smacked her. Hard.
    It was one shot, open-handed at that. But Rick had a big hand, thick too, and callused where the fingers met his palm, from the days when he worked construction. His imprint covered more than half her face, from right below her cheekbone all the way up to her scalp. The contact made a crack loud enough that it sounded like a weapon had been used.
    She crumpled to the floor, her hand instinctively rising to her cheek, to detect whether Rick had broken the skin. A trickle of blood at the corner of her eye latched onto her finger.
    Jackie wanted to cry out, but feared that would only cause the children to leave their bedrooms to investigate the source of her anguish, so she stifled her scream by stuffing her hand into her mouth. For his part, Rick saw nothing but humor in the situation. He flashed a particularly sadistic smile at the sight of his wife curled up in the fetal position on the cold foyer floor. As if he couldn’t be more proud of what he’d just done.
    She braced for more. At his worst, Rick would shower her with punches and kicks. This time, however, he merely stepped hard on her back as he walked away.
    She wasn’t the only one Rick terrorized. When Robert was fifteen, Rick decided his hand no longer was sufficient and started to use his belt to mete out discipline, without regard to the severity of the infraction. After Robert fumbled on his way to the end zone in some meaningless JV game, Rick unleashed a particularly furious beating on his son. Later that night, after Rick had fallen asleep drunk, Jackie went to Robert’s room to comfort him. He had stopped crying and looked more like a man than she had ever recalled.
    It was in that moment that Jackie realized her silent suffering hadn’t been protecting her children after all. To the contrary, she had only served to bring them into her nightmare.
    â€œWhen