He didn’t say anything, but his silence wasn’t aggressive. His waiting was just that: waiting. He was giving me time to say what I needed to.
“It’s my husband, Angelo. Our marriage hadn’t been right for a while, and, about a week ago, I’d had enough. He was out of the house so often that I was sure he was cheating on me. So, one night I followed him. He went to this factory and killed a man. He saw me, and I ran. I’ve been running ever since. He must’ve sent that fake police officer to fetch me or… I don’t know.”
I could feel Blake’s intent eyes on my face.
“Christ,” he whispered.
“That’s not all,” I said, suddenly empowered by my admission. “He said ‘this is a message from Gabriel’ when he killed the man. I think he’s part of the mafia.”
Blake sat back, the flickering candlelight showing several concerned creases in his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, and then I rose.
“If you don’t want to help me anymore, if it’s too much, then I understand. I can leave tomorrow. I know I’ve disturbed your life enough already.”
Blake rose and looked down at me, a frown on his face. “No. Don’t leave. It’s not safe out there. I’ll still help you.” He was still frowning as he said it.
“I mean it,” I insisted, stepping back. “I got myself into this. It’s not fair to go dragging someone else into this mess.”
He tilted his head at me.
“You really think that?”
The question made me pause. Did I? After all, how was it my fault Angelo had turned out to be a crazy sociopath, and a member of the mafia at that?
I sat down and stared into the candle. Lila’s favorite quote, stolen from Mad Men’s Don Draper, played in my head: “People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.”
I glanced back at Blake and found myself nodding.
After all, hadn’t a part of me always been suspicious of how fast my relationship with Angelo had progressed? The way he had pursued me relentlessly since the moment we met, said everything right and done nothing wrong? Hadn’t his shady friends seemed off from the start? Hadn’t the whole idea of my not having a job seemed wrong too? And yet I had gone along with all of it, plugged my ears to my family’s and friends’ pleas, burrowed my head into Angelo’s chest further, twisted myself so I could only hear the lies he cooed to me, the things I wanted to hear.
On my wedding day, when I felt like throwing up instead of smiling and running back home instead of walking up the aisle, didn’t I take a Pepto-Bismol instead of looking into what was tugging at my heel, screaming at me to take a deeper look at the man I was marrying?
Yes, Angelo was a manipulative, evil man, but there had been signs of who he really was and I had ignored them. I’d shut my eyes to the signs and my ears to reality, to others, even to myself. I had been so intent on things being as they’d seemed that I had refused to accept anything that had suggested otherwise.
Yes, I may have been a victim of Angelo, but I was also a victim of myself. I had done this too.
“Yes,” I said. “I ignored the signs because I couldn’t bear facing the truth. My husband was manipulative, and I ate it all up because I wanted to.”
Blake was still staring at me intently. There was an expression on his face I hadn’t seen before.
He took my hand and then dropped it.
“We should probably go to sleep now. We have a big day ahead of us.”
As he knelt to put out the candle and start unpacking the duffel bag, he said, “Thank you for telling me.”
“Thank you for still wanting to help me,” I said.
He took out the tartan sleeping bag and, as he unrolled it, asked me, “You’re okay with sleeping outside for tonight?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I’d prefer to sleep with the glass shards and plaster pieces.”
We laughed, and he gestured back into the hole of the door. “Be my guest.”
I slipped into the sleeping bag, snuggled in, and closed my eyes. “Maybe outside will be nice…for tonight.”
Blake said nothing, and I rolled onto my back to look at him.
“What is it?” I asked after seeing his awkward look.
“There’s only one sleeping bag, and it’s cold.”
I rolled over to the side. “Oh, of course. Sorry.”
He slipped in.
“Sorry. Tomorrow I’ll cut it in half.”
As we lay there, our shifting away from each other only brought us closer together. The sleeping bag was barely big enough for one, let alone two, which wasn’t the worst thing since Blake radiated warmth. I quite liked the feel of his strong arm beside my face. Everything smelled like warm pine.