Таррин Фишер - The Wives

“Do you like it?” she asks, coming down the stairs. “I found it at a flea market. I’ve always wanted to be able to do it myself but never had the time.”

“I do,” I lie. “Didn’t you say you had a family photo there before?”

Hannah seems to flush under my gaze. “Yes,” she says, and then quickly turns away.

I think of my empty locker at work and realize she’s playing the same game I play. Hide the husband; avoid the questions. But bruises? I’ve never had to hide bruises. I think of my ear and absently lift a finger to trace the spot. Beneath my relaxed exterior, my heart beats hard against my ribs. Before the night he pushed me, I never would have been able to imagine Seth doing something to hurt a woman. And even after the night he shoved me I made excuses, blamed myself. But there’s no denying Hannah’s bruise. I press my questions down my throat until it feels like I’m choking on them.

“Hey, let’s drive separately so you don’t have to come all the way back here after the movie,” she suggests. I nod, wondering if there’s another reason. Tonight is her night with Seth; he’d arrive late after leaving Regina’s. Perhaps she didn’t want him knowing she’d made a friend. A friend would ask about her bruises, a friend would direct her eyes at the husband.

I follow behind her SUV, gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turn white. We pass through downtown, the square of food trucks, the shops, the people bundled up, all whizzing past. I barely see it. I’m too busy thinking.

We’ve just pulled up to the restaurant when I get a text from Seth.

Hi. Where are you?

I stare at his text, puzzled.

It’s six o’clock. Which means Seth should still be with Regina. It’s an unspoken rule that when you’re with one wife, you don’t text the others.

Dinner with a friend, I text back.

Nice. Which friend ? The hair on my arms prickles. Seth’s not in the habit of quizzing me. In fact, he’s never asked about my friends, except to caution me not to tell them about us.

Where are you? If he’s being nosy, I have the right to be, too.

Home.

That’s an interesting answer, I think. Especially when he has three homes.

Hannah is walking toward my car, having already parked. I shove my phone deep into my purse and step out of the car to meet her.

Seth will have to wait. It’ll be a nice change, since I’m always on the waiting end. It’s funny how I care about him less when I’m with Hannah.

“Ready?” Hannah grins. The restaurant she chose reminds me a little of the Italian place Seth took me to the first time he told me about his wife. As soon as we walk in the doors, she’s approached by who I suppose is the manager. He rushes over to say hi, fussing over her as he leads us to a table. Hannah thanks him and he runs to the kitchen to get us a specialty appetizer.

“How do they know you?” I ask after a server waves at her.

“Oh, we come here a lot.” By we I assume she means her and Seth.

I notice that she keeps the bruised side of her face turned away so that when she looks up at them, they only see her good eye. It’s only once we’ve ordered our meals that I finally ask her what’s been bothering me all night.

“Hannah, how did you get that bruise?”

She lifts her hand as if to touch it and then drops it into her lap.

“If you tell me that you walked into a door or hit your face on a cabinet, I’m not going to believe you, okay? So why don’t you just tell me what really happened.”

“So you want me to make something up?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

I bite my lip thinking about what to say. “No. I want you to trust me, though,” I say carefully. “God knows I’ve made some really stupid decisions, so I’m not ever going to judge you.”

She wipes her mouth with her napkin and takes a long sip of her water. “Really, it’s like you want me to confess to something scandalous,” she says.

“Last time I saw you, you told me that your husband hid your birth control pills so you’d get pregnant. That sounds pretty controlling and manipulative to me. I’m just checking.”

She looks down at her hands, which are now folded neatly on the tabletop. She looks completely relaxed and in control, minus the U-shaped bruise beneath her eye. I stare at her, mentally willing her to tell me everything. If Seth is hitting her, I need to know. My God—it would be hard to believe, but...

“My husband...” She chews on the inside of her cheek. I want to nudge her forward, encourage her to talk to me, but I’m afraid that if I say anything at all the spell will be broken and she’ll shut down, so I wait.

“He does have a temper. Sometimes...” Her voice falters like she’s not exactly sure how to word things. “I think his past affected him more than he’s willing to admit. But I can assure you, he doesn’t hit me.” I’m hung up on part of her explanation, the part about his past. Does she know something that I don’t?

“His past?” I interrupt. “What do you mean?”

I manage to keep my face neutral, but I can feel my eyebrows pushing toward each other, my forehead wanting to crease with worry.

Hannah clears her throat, and it’s a very ladylike sound. I can barely take it; I want her to spit it out. There are already feelings of intense jealousy curdling in my stomach that she would know something that I do not.

“Well,” she says finally. “He comes from a large family...”

No shit , I want to say.

“Someone in his family...well, someone hurt him.”

I shake my head. “Hurt him how?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hannah says, and I can tell she’s already regretting saying anything. “Roughed him up for fun, bullied him. I’m making it sound lighter than it actually is...”

I stare at her, confused. So Seth was teased by his siblings? What’s new? My sister once tossed my favorite doll into the fireplace and looked on contentedly while I sobbed.

She waits until the server filling her water glass has walked away and then she leans close to me. “He had an older brother who was a psychopath,” she whispers. “Would do terrible things to him, like hold him down in his bathwater until he thought he was going to die, and would sneak into his room at night and...well...touch him.”

I balk. “He was molested ?” I search my memory for anything—anything Seth has said about his brother. But the truth was that he hardly spoke about him; I didn’t even know his name. I feel a rush of anguish; I was less important. He didn’t share his hurt with me. I take a long drink of water, hoping she doesn’t notice my expression.

Hannah draws back at my outburst and then quickly looks around to see if anyone’s heard us. There’s no one in the direct vicinity, and her face relaxes.

I’m impatient with her. Screw caring what people think at a time like this. My heart is racing a mile a minute and I feel positively sick to my stomach. If that were true, how could he not have told me? As I stare at Hannah, at her perfectly sharp cheekbones, and full lips—pursed disapprovingly at me—I feel both betrayed and hurt. She can see it on my face because she reaches across the table to grab my wrist. Squeezing it softly, she watches me with her big blue eyes.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Did I say something to upset you?”

“No, not at all. It’s just a terrible thing...” I try to pull myself away from her as gently as possible, keeping a tight smile on my lips. I hate her in this moment. She seems to buy my lie, because she lets me go, retiring her hands to her lap.

“How many years did it continue?” I ask.

“On and off through most of his childhood. Until his brother left for college.”