Nicholas Sparks - Safe Haven

With Jo’s words, Katie felt a finger touch her heart. All at once, it seemed hard to breathe.

“Are you talking about me?” she finally croaked out.

“I don’t know. Am I?”

Katie felt herself pale slightly, but before she could respond, Jo smiled.

“Actually, I was thinking about my day today. I told you it was hard, right? Well, what I just told you is part of the problem. It gets frustrating when people won’t tell the truth. I mean, how am I supposed to help people if they hold things back? If I don’t really know what’s going on?”

Katie could feel something twisting and tightening in her chest. “Maybe they want to talk about it but they know there’s nothing you can do to help,” she whispered.

“There’s always something I can do.”

In the moonlight shining through the kitchen window, Jo’s skin glowed a luminous white, and Katie had the sense that she never went out in the sun. The wine made the room move, the walls buckle. Katie could feel tears beginning to form in her eyes and it was all she could do to blink them back. Her mouth was dry.

“Not always,” Katie whispered. She turned to face the window. Beyond the glass, the moon hung low over the trees. Katie swallowed, suddenly feeling as if she were observing herself from across the room. She could see herself sitting at the table with Jo, and when she began to speak, her voice didn’t seem to be her own. “I had a friend once. She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn’t talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning, she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn’t and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she’d visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror.”

Katie stared at the floor. Linoleum was peeling up in the corners, but she hadn’t known how to fix it. She’d tried to glue it, but the glue hadn’t worked and the corners had curled again.

“He always apologized, and sometimes he would even cry because of the bruises he’d made on her arms or legs or her back. He would say that he hated what he’d done, but in the next breath tell her she’d deserved it. That if she’d been more careful, it wouldn’t have happened. That if she’d been paying attention or hadn’t been so stupid, he wouldn’t have lost his temper. She tried to change. She worked hard at trying to be a better wife and to do things the way he wanted, but it was never enough.”

Katie could feel the pressure of tears behind her eyes and though she tried again to stop them, she felt them sliding down her cheek. Jo was motionless across the table, watching her without moving.

“And she loved him! In the beginning, he was so sweet to her. He made her feel safe. On the night they met, she’d been working, and after she finished her shift, two men were following her. When she went around the corner, one of them grabbed her and clamped his hand over her mouth, and even though she tried to get away, the men were so much stronger and she didn’t know what would have happened except that her future husband came around the corner and hit one of them hard on the back of the neck and he fell to the ground. And then he grabbed the other one and threw him into the wall, and it was over. Just like that. He helped her up and walked her home and the next day he took her out for coffee. He was kind and he treated her like a princess, right up until she was on her honeymoon.”

Katie knew she shouldn’t be telling Jo any of this, but she couldn’t stop. “My friend tried to get away twice. One time, she came back on her own because she had nowhere else to go. And the second time she ran away, she thought she was finally free. But he hunted her down and dragged her back to the house. At home, he beat her and put a gun to her head and told her that if she ever ran away again, he’d kill her. He’d kill any man she cared for. And she believed him, because by then, she knew he was crazy. But she was trapped. He never gave her any money, he never allowed her to leave the house. He used to drive by the house when he was supposed to be working, just to make sure she was there. He monitored the phone records and called all the time, and he wouldn’t let her get a driver’s license. One time, when she woke up in the middle of the night, she found him standing over the bed, just staring at her. He’d been drinking and holding the gun again and she was too scared to say anything other than to ask him to come to bed. But that was when she knew that if she stayed, the husband would eventually kill her.”

Katie swiped at her eyes, her fingers slick with salty tears. She could barely breathe but the words kept coming. “She started to steal money from his wallet. Never more than a dollar or two, because otherwise he would notice. Normally, he locked his wallet up at night, but sometimes, he would forget. It took so long to get enough money for her to escape. Because that’s what she had to do. Escape. She had to go someplace where he would never find her, because she knew he wouldn’t stop searching for her. And she couldn’t tell anyone anything, because her family was gone and she knew the police wouldn’t do anything. If he so much as suspected anything, he would kill her. So she stole and saved and found coins in the sofa cushions and in the washing machine. She hid the money in a plastic bag that she put beneath a flowerpot, and every time he went outside she was sure he would find it. It took so long to get the money she needed because she had to have enough to get far away so that he’d never find her. So that she could start over again.”

Katie wasn’t aware of when it had happened, but she realized that Jo had taken her hand and she was no longer watching herself from across the room. She could taste salt on her lips and imagined that her soul was leaking out. She wanted desperately to sleep.

In the silence Jo continued to hold her gaze. “Your friend has a lot of courage,” she said quietly.

“No,” Katie said. “My friend is scared all the time.”

“That’s what courage is. If she weren’t scared, she wouldn’t need courage in the first place. I admire what she did.” Jo gave her hand a squeeze. “I think I’d like your friend. I’m glad you told me about her.”

Katie glanced away, feeling utterly drained. “I probably shouldn’t have told you all that.”

Jo shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry too much. One thing you’ll learn about me is that I’m good with secrets. Especially when it comes to people I don’t know, right?”

Katie nodded. “Right.”

Jo stayed with Katie for another hour, but steered the conversation toward easier ground. Katie talked about working at Ivan’s and some of the customers she was getting to know. Jo asked about the best way to get the paint out from under her fingernails. With the wine gone, Katie’s dizziness began to fade, leaving in its wake a sense of exhaustion. Jo, too, began to yawn, and they finally rose from the table. Jo helped Katie clean up, though there wasn’t much to do aside from washing a couple of dishes, and Katie walked her to the door.

As Jo stepped onto the porch, she paused. “I think we had a visitor,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a bicycle leaning against your tree.”

Katie followed her outside. Beyond the yellow glow of the porch light, the world was dark and the outlines of the distant pine trees reminded Katie of the ragged edge of a black hole. Fireflies mimicked the stars, twinkling and blinking, and Katie squinted, realizing that Jo was right.

“Whose bicycle is that?” Katie asked.