Echo Burning

pregnancy.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “He got me believing it,” she said. “For a long, long time. That happens, you know. You’ve got to be very self-confident to resist it. And I wasn’t, in that situation. He took away all my self-esteem. Two or three years, I thought it was my fault, and I tried to do better.”
    “What did the family do?”
    She pushed her glass away. Left the iced coffee half-finished.
    “They didn’t know about it,” she said. “And then his father died, which made it worse. He was the only reasonable one. He was O.K. But now it’s just his mother and his brother. He’s awful, and she’s a witch. And they still don’t know. It happens in secret. It’s a big house. It’s like a compound, really. We’re not all on top of each other. And it’s all very complicated. He’s way too stubborn and proud to ever agree with them he’s made a mistake. So the more they’re down on me, the more he pretends he loves me. He misleads them. He buys me things. He bought me this ring.”
    She held up her right hand, bent delicately at the wrist, showing off the platinum band with the big diamond. It looked like a hell of a thing. Reacher had never bought a diamond ring. He had no idea what they cost. A lot, he guessed.
    “He bought me horses,” she said. “They knew I wanted horses, and he bought them for me, so he could look good in front of them. But really to explain away the bruises. It was his stroke of genius. A permanent excuse. He makes me say I’ve fallen off. They know I’m still just learning to ride. And that explains a lot in rodeo country, bruises and broken bones. They take it for granted.”
    “He’s broken your bones?”
    She nodded, and started touching parts of her body, twisting and turning in the confines of the tight booth, silently recounting her injuries, hesitating slightly now and then like she couldn’t recall them all.
    “My ribs, first of all, I guess,” she said. “He kicks me when I’m on the floor. He does that a lot, when he’s mad. My left arm, by twisting it. My collarbone. My jaw. I’ve had three teeth reimplanted.”
    He stared at her.
    She shrugged. “The emergency room people think I’m the worst rider in the history of the West.”
    “They believe it?”
    “Maybe they just choose to.”
    “And his mother and brother?”
    “Likewise,” she said. “Obviously I’m not going to get the benefit of the doubt.”
    “Why the hell did you stick around? Why didn’t you just get out, the very first time?”
    She sighed, and she closed her eyes, and she turned her head away. Spread her hands on the table, palms down, and then turned them over, palms up.
    “I can’t explain it,” she whispered. “Nobody can ever explain it. You have to know what it’s like. I had no confidence in myself. I had a newborn baby and no money. Not a dime. I had no friends. I was watched all the time. I couldn’t even make a call in private.”
    He said nothing. She opened her eyes and looked straight at him.
    “And worst of all, I had nowhere to go,” she said.
    “Home?” he asked.
    She shook her head.
    “I never even thought about it,” she said. “Taking the beatings was better than trying to crawl back to my family, with a white blond baby in my arms.”
    He said nothing.
    “And the first time you pass up the chance, you’ve had it,” she said. “That’s how it is. It just gets worse. Whenever I thought about it, I still had no money, I still had a baby, then she was a one-year-old, then a two-year-old, then a three-year-old. The time is never right. If you stay that first time, you’re trapped forever. And I stayed that first time. I wish I hadn’t, but I did.”
    He said nothing. She looked at him, appealing for something.
    “You have to take it on faith,” she said. “You don’t know how it is. You’re a man, you’re big and strong, somebody hits you, you hit him back. You’re on your own, you don’t like someplace, you move on. It’s different for me. Even if you can’t understand it, you have to believe it.”
    He said nothing.
    “I could have gone if I’d left Ellie,” she said. “Sloop told me if I left the baby with him, he’d pay my fare anyplace I wanted to go. First class. He said he’d call a limo all the way from Dallas, right there and then, to take me straight to the airport.”
    He said nothing.
    “But I wouldn’t do that,” she said quietly. “I mean, how could I? So Sloop makes out this is my choice .