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“Please,” she gasped, tears spilling down her cheeks. That’s why she’d been making soup so often She’d been living off the kindness of her friends and their gardens. “You think you’d have anything if it weren’t for me? You think you’d be able to cook your disgusting slop if I didn’t put a roof over your head?” “That’s exactly what you were saying,” he seethed. He staggered around the island, bumping into it twice as he closed the distance between them. She hadn’t said it, but she’d been thinking it. “What are you saying? Are you saying I don’t pull my weight around here? That I’m lazy?” “Then why don’t you do it?” She practically exploded, knowing instantly that any chance of talking him out of the beating had evaporated. “I need to get some wood for the fireplace.” Why hadn’t she run when she’d first heard his voice? Why was she still here? She took another step toward the door. “I’m not telling you what to do,” she replied. The only way to fight him was with surrender, and a tactic she’d mastered these past few years. If she yelled, that fired him up further. If she cried, that only made him angrier. “If you don’t want dinner, why don’t you go and turn on a game or something,” she said, keeping her voice even. She’d been blinded by love, though, and she’d thought that love would be enough to get them through. Her mother had told her that marrying this man was a mistake – that he’d never amount to anything. She wished she’d listened to her mother, too. Ma told me you would be, but I didn’t listen. “You’re a terrible cook – and a terrible wife. “I don’t want anything you’re going to cook,” he sneered. There was a loud crackle as liquid met open flame. “Well, I felt fabulous until I came home and found you cooking this slop again,” he said, striding to the island and flicking the handle of the pot so it tipped, spilling the soup into a puddle on stove top. She wrung her hands, letting her eyes dart from him to the back door only a few feet away. She knew reasoning with him was a mistake but she still tried.
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“I’ll get you a cup of coffee and you can have some dinner. “Why don’t you have a seat at the table,” she suggested. “I didn’t hear you,” she lied, taking another step backward. He wouldn’t have the coordination to follow her once she hit the woods. If she was quick, she’d be able to bolt out the back door. “Cooking dinner,” she said, being careful to keep the counter island between them. His face, which was no longer handsome or distinguished, was flushed from the whiskey she knew he’d been drinking down at Wayne’s Tavern. He was standing in the archway between the two rooms now, his icy blue eyes fixed on her drawn face. He saved that for when he was drunk – and he was invariably quick with an apology the next day, promising it wouldn’t happen again. He’d wake up with a hangover, sure, but he usually didn’t beat her because he was feeling poorly. It was the smartest thing to do, and yet she still wasn’t sure. She could spend the night elsewhere and return in the morning. They’d tried to get her to leave him, offering her places to stay and support for the rough road ahead. She could run and hide at a friend’s home. She could run and hide in the woods behind the house. She could flee out the back door, she told herself. She sighed, wiping her hands with a nearby towel.
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There wasn’t a crumb on the floor, a speck of dust on the shelves, yet she was a failure. When she wasn’t nagging, she was failing to perform the household duties to his expectations. She’d talked to him about it, of course, but he refused to listen. They would go back to the way things used to be. If he would just stop drinking … if he would just let go of the demon of alcohol … then things would be better. Alcohol turned her husband from the loving man she’d married into the monster she lived with today. She knew he was drunk, the telltale slur of his speech echoing through the house. He was in the living room, leaving just one thin wall separating them as she worked on his dinner at the stove. And his hands, those hands that had joined with hers five years before in front of a priest as they declared themselves to one another forever, would be clenched at his sides until he decided he was ready to hammer them into her body. The door of the house – more of a shack, really – flew open, causing the entire structure to shake. Love doesn’t disappear it’s misplaced until it can be discovered again. Yes, the flashes of love were rare now, but they still ignited. And, even more, she hated herself for the love she still felt for him despite the way he treated her. She never truly learned her lesson, and she hated herself for it. No matter how many times she’d told herself the previous time would be the last time, it never was.