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“Yes.”
“Are you going back to Chad?”
“No.”
I sat up straighter. “Okay, I’ve got to keep asking you questions.”
“It’s fine. What else would you like to know?”
“If you’ve heard from Chad.”
“Not a peep. He and I are over, Rhys.”
“He’s put his hands on you before, hasn’t he?”
“One other time. He shook me like in front of Nana’s Kitchen and then threw me down onto his living room floor and yelled at me. He was angry because I stayed at work past five to finish cleaning an elderly, widowed woman’s teeth. She was late for her appointment, making Chad and I run late to meet his boss and his boss’s wife for supper that evening. I told him about the hiccup with my patient, and he seemed fine. But when I got to his house after work, he said my lateness embarrassed him and that he’d canceled our plans. Then he did all the other to me.”
“What did you do?”
“I yelled back at him, kicked him in his damn balls, and left.”
“Why did you stay together with him?”
“I believed his week-long tearful apology and repeated promises to never take his anger out on me again were sincere.”
I glanced down at the sleeves of Riley’s dress. They were long enough to cover her upper arms, where Chad had grabbed her before shaking her last Saturday.
“Did you have bruises on you after that first incident?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have them on you now?”
Riley pulled up her left sleeve to answer me. As I’d suspected, dark spots were on her skin where Chad had dug his fingertips. Seeing the bruises made me furious, but I hid how I was feeling because I didn’t want to upset Riley. I just wanted her to keep talking to me, and she did.
“When Chad put his hands on me that first time, I immediately thought of you. You’d never been anything but kind to me, and I couldn’t believe how unkind Chad was being.”
“If you had remained with him after what happened last Saturday, his violence against you would’ve only gotten worse.”
“I’ve accepted that reality.”
“Riley, I asked you on Friday night if you were happy and if Chad treated you well. You said yes to my questions. It wasn’t the truth, though.”
“But it was. I was happy at that point because Chad had been treating me well. It’d been three months since that first incident with him happened.”
“Please don’t take any of what I’ve said or asked in the wrong way. I’m just trying to understand.”
“I know you are.”
“And my understanding of why you stayed with Chad is you believed his apologies and promises never to put his hands on you again.”
“Right.”
“Are there any other reasons why you stayed?”
“I-I love him.”
“Anything else?”
