Chapter 4: The Gas Station Call
She called at 11:14 on a Tuesday morning.
I know the time because I looked at the clock when my phone rang and I saw her name, and something in me went cold before I even answered.
Hannah never called mid-morning on a weekday.
She worked from home and Craig monitored the hours she kept.
She had told me that once, lightly, the way you mention a rule that embarrasses you.
He likes to know I'm focused.
"Hannah?"
The sound she made was not crying.
It was something that had been crying for a while and had gone past it.
"Mom.
I'm in the BP on Fenwick Road.
I can't — I don't know what to do."
I was already standing up.
"Are you hurt?"
"No.
No, I'm okay.
I just — I had to get out of the house."
"Stay there.
I'm coming."
"Mom, you don't have to—"
"I'm already in the car."
I wasn't yet.
I was putting on my shoes one-handed with the phone pressed between my ear and my shoulder.
Tom was at work.
I left him a text that said Hannah, Fenwick BP, going now and I was out the door in under two minutes.
She was sitting in her car at the far end of the lot, away from the pumps.
I pulled up alongside her and got out and she got out and I held her for a long time in the wind in that parking lot without saying anything.
When she pulled back her face was blotched and her eyes were almost swollen shut.
"Come sit in my car," I said.
"It's warmer."
She nodded and got in the passenger side and I got in and turned the engine back on for the heat.
"Tell me," I said.
She looked at her hands.
"He went through my phone."
I waited.
"Last night.
He went through it while I was asleep and in the morning he — he had questions.
About a text I sent to Roz." She stopped.
"Roz is my friend from work.
We've been friends for six years.
He doesn't like her.
He says she's a bad influence."
"What did the text say?"
Hannah's mouth pressed together.
"I told her I was having a hard time.
That's all.
I didn't say anything specific.
I just said I was struggling and she said call me whenever and I said I would." She looked up at me.
"That was it.
That was the whole thing."
"And he saw it."
"He woke me up at six in the morning holding my phone in my face.
Asking me what I meant by struggling.
Asking me what I'd told her.
Asking me if I'd been talking to other people about our marriage." Her voice went flat.
"He said if I was going to air our private business to people who didn't understand us, then maybe I didn't understand what marriage meant."
My hands were very still on the steering wheel.
"Hannah.
What happened after that?"
She looked out the windshield.
A long time passed.
"He took my phone," she said.
"He has it.
He said he'd give it back when he felt like he could trust me again." She paused.
"I'm using the old one.
The one from before we were married.
I kept it in a box in the closet.
He doesn't know I still have it."
The old phone.
In a box in the closet.
I thought about that.
About what it meant that she had kept it.
"How long have you had that phone there?" I asked.
She didn't answer immediately.
When she did, her voice was very quiet.
"Since the first time," she said.
I turned to look at her.
"The first time he took mine," she said.
"About two years ago."
Two years.
The number landed in the car like something dropped from a height.
"Hannah," I said.
"I need to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth."
She nodded.
"Is this the worst it's been?
Or is there worse that I don't know about?"
She looked at me for a long moment.
Her eyes were steady now, in the way that eyes go steady when someone has made a decision.
"Mom," she said.
"I need to show you something."
She reached into the pocket of her coat and took out a folded piece of paper.
She held it for a second before she handed it to me.
It was a photograph.
Printed on regular paper, slightly creased.
She must have printed it at some point and kept it hidden with the phone.
I looked at it.
Then I looked away.
Then I made myself look back.
"When?" I said.
"March," she said.
"The night he found out I'd had lunch with Daniel without telling him first."
I folded the paper back along its crease and held it in both hands and did not say anything for a very long time.
When I finally spoke, my voice came out steadier than I expected.
"We're not going back to waiting," I said.
"That's done."
May you like
She didn't argue.
That frightened me more than anything else.
