Public Secrets

“He hits you?”
The disbelief didn’t register; she was too deep inside herself. “Sometimes I can’t even walk for days after. It’s been worse lately.” She stared at a pretty pastel print on the wall. “I think he might want to kill me.”
“Back up, Emma. Emma, look at me.” When she caught her friend’s face in her hands, Marianne spoke slowly. “Are you telling me that Drew physically abuses you?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, carefully, Marianne let out a breath. Watching Emma’s face, trying to make sense of it all, she sat back on her heels. “Does he get drunk, do drugs?”

“No. I’ve only seen him drunk once—on our wedding night. He doesn’t do drugs at all. He likes to be in control. Drew has to be in control. I always seem to do something, something stupid to set him off.”
“Stop it.” Enraged, Marianne sprang up. Her eyes were flooded as she paced the room. “You’ve never done a stupid thing in your life. How long has this been going on, Emma?”
“The first time was a couple of months after we moved uptown. It wasn’t so bad, he only hit me once that time. And he was so sorry after. He cried.”
“My heart breaks for him,” Marianne muttered. She stalked to the door to admit room service. “Here, don’t worry about setting it up.” She signed the check, handed over the twenty, and got rid of him. First things first, she decided, and ignoring the food, poured the Grand Marnier.
“Drink,” Marianne ordered. “I know you hate the stuff, but we both need it.”
Emma took two small sips and let the warmth course through her. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t seem to be able to think for myself anymore.”
“I’ll think for you for a couple of minutes. I vote we castrate the sonofabitch.”
“I can’t go back. Marianne, I think I’d do something, something really horrible if I went back.”
“You seem to be thinking just fine. Can you eat?”
“No, not yet.” She had to sit, just sit for a moment and take in the enormity of what she’d done. She’d left Drew. She’d gotten away, and now she had her friend, her oldest and closest friend with her. Closing her eyes, she felt a fresh wave of shame.
“Marianne, I’m sorry, so sorry. I know I haven’t returned your calls, I haven’t been a friend to you these past months. He wouldn’t let me.”
Marianne lighted two cigarettes, and passed one to Emma. “Don’t worry about that now.”
“He even told me that you had—that you had tried to take him away from me.”
“In his dreams.” She nearly laughed at that, but Emma’s face stopped her. “You didn’t believe it.”
“No, not really. But … There were times I believed anything he’d tell me. It was easier.” She shut her eyes again. “The worst is, it wouldn’t have mattered to me.”
“If you’d just called me.”

“I couldn’t talk to you about it, and I couldn’t bear to be around you because I was afraid you’d find out.”
“I’d have helped you.”
Emma could only shake her head as her hands clasped and unclasped in her lap. “I’m so ashamed.”
“What the hell for?”
“I let him do it to me, didn’t I? He didn’t hold a gun to my head. That’s the one thing he never did to me. He didn’t have to.”
“I don’t have the answers, Emma. Or I do have one. You should call the police.”
“No. Good God, no. I couldn’t bear to … to see it spread all over the papers. And they wouldn’t believe me. He’d just deny it.” Fear came sprinting back, on her face, in her voice. “I can tell you, Marianne, he could make you believe anything.”
“All right, we’ll hold on the cops and get you a lawyer.”
“I—need a few days. I just can’t talk to anyone else about this. All I really want is to get as far away from him as I can.”
“Okay. We’ll plot. Now we’re going to eat. I think better on a full stomach.”
She bullied Emma into taking a few bites, then pushed the Pepsi on her, hoping the sugar and caffeine would put color back in her friend’s cheeks.
“We’ll hang around Miami for a few days.”
“No.” Emma was thinking clearer now, though the nerves were still jangling inside her head. Of all the wild plots and plans that had rushed into her mind over the last two days, only one seemed right. “I can’t even stay tonight. It’s the first place he’d come looking for me.”
“London then, to Bev. She’d want to help you.”
“No passport. Drew locked it in a safe-deposit box. I don’t even have a