I want you to understand something. Carol never stopped believing he was in there. Every time he stole from her purse, every time he sold something out of my garage, every time he came home at three in the morning with his pupils like pinheads, she said the same thing. “That’s not Danny. That’s the sickness. Danny’s still in there.”
I stopped believing it before she did. God forgive me, but I did.
That Thursday I was at the shop until nine. I’d told Carol I’d be home by seven, but a brother’s transmission was fighting me and I lost track of time. That’s the part I’ll carry. I was two hours late.
When I pulled into the driveway the kitchen light was on and the front door was open about six inches. Carol never leaves that door open. She’s afraid of the cat getting out.
I found her on the kitchen floor with her back against the dishwasher. Her glasses were across the room in two pieces. She had one hand pressed against her ribs and the other one held up toward me, palm out, like she was telling me to stop.
“Don’t,” she said. “Ray. Don’t go after him.”
I didn’t even ask who. I already knew.
She told me while I was getting a bag of frozen peas on her eye. He’d come in around six wanting money. She’d said no. She’d said it for the first time in six years, because a counselor at the clinic had told her that saying no was the kindest thing she could do.
So she said no, and he threw her against the counter. When she tried to get up he put his hand on her throat and held her there and screamed at her, and then he took the emergency cash out of the coffee can and left.
“He was crying,” she said. “The whole time. He was crying, Ray.”
