She's Not Sorry by Mary Kubica

Author:Mary Kubica
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2024-02-08T20:15:21+00:00

* * *

I lower myself into the armchair, which is wide and plush, the color of rust. I pull my legs into me and say, “You never told me how you and Declan met.” Nat is quiet and almost instantly, I regret that I asked. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”

“No,” she’s quick to say before taking a small sip of her wine for liquid courage. “It’s okay. It’s just that...” Her voice trails.

“It’s hard, I know.”

“Yes. It is.” She takes another sip of her wine and then goes on. “We met at the party of a mutual friend. My friend introduced us and we hit it off. We talked for hours that night and then, a few days later,” she says, “he called and asked me to dinner. By our third or fourth date, I started imagining a life for us together. It was premature, I know, but I’d never met any man like him, one who I was so compatible with. I was a late bloomer. All of my friends were married by then, and I felt a rush—the pressure—to find someone to settle down with. I was scared of being alone, but I also fell head over heels in love. We dated for only five months when he proposed. There was never any hesitation or doubt in my mind. I immediately said yes.”

“What was it like the first time he hit you?” I ask, knowing I’m close to overstepping my bounds, but I can’t help myself. I have to know.

Nat doesn’t baulk at the question. She takes a second to collect her thoughts and then says, “It was instantaneous. Blindsiding. And then it was done and he was so sorry and so full of self-loathing. He cried, sobbed like a child, and I was left to comfort him, to assure him it was no big deal and that things like that happen, though they don’t. We’d only been married a few weeks then and had an argument over something inane like household chores. In the middle of it, he was walking away and I said something stupid because I just had to get the last word in, when he wheeled around and hit me. I don’t know which of us was more stunned or appalled.”

“And then it happened again?”

“Yes. But not right away. At first moments like that were infrequent, so that I could almost convince myself that each time was the last. In time they became more regular and as they did, they changed him. He realized how powerful it made him to make me feel small, and I think it was cathartic too, taking his stress out on me.” She lifts the wineglass to her lips. She doesn’t drink from it. “Each time I came up with some excuse as to why it had happened. He’d had a bad day. He lost a trial. A client fired him or someone else was chosen for partner over him. Each time, I told myself it would never happen again.

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