Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
I’ll Keep You Safe
“You’ll do it if you love me, Erin. If you care for your marriage.” Cary glared at her and she backed down. She couldn’t believe what he said.
Why? Why did he react in that way? She had followed him through seven states, given five years to marriage, and he didn’t care at all. She was pregnant and he didn’t want it.
“It’s not mine,” was his first response when he found she was pregnant. As though it had been medically proven he was sterile.
“Who have you been fucking?” He ranted as he stomped through the house. He punched holes in the walls and kicked the doors. He was livid and wild.
Really, they weren’t ready for children in every way, but who was? They had a good start. It wouldn’t be that much of a sacrifice. He was steadily gaining popularity at work. He was ready for a promotion. They had their own home and a relatively secure life. Yet he was unreasonable.
“Get rid of it.” He had commanded, like it was a mistake or an error that could just be removed and forgotten.
What was his absolute hatred of the pregnancy about? She was terrified of his rage. She would be the one to carry and deliver. Yet he acted as though he would be forced to do everything. To make matters worse, he claimed it belonged to another man when she brought the subject up.
She had been the opposite with all of his “wants.” She had given in when he wanted time away from her. “Time out with the guys.”
It turned out he was frequenting strip clubs. Time with the guys, huh?
She had learned the hard way what Cary Frazier was like. Time with the guys to watch sports and do guy things?
Nope.
Time for a lap dance.
He didn’t fool her. She knew what he wanted, and it wasn’t male bonding.
She made the mistake of declaring, “They only like you for your money.”
He punched her.
As though the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, and it was her fault that it did. Like it wasn’t the truth and they really would give him a second glance if he didn’t have a buck or two.
He busted her nose for it.
She started packing, but she’d stayed. He cried and told her how sorry he was, how stressed he was.
Stressed? Yes, honey. You are stressed.
What can you get now?
You sure as hell won’t give anything.
She had started to hate him. She didn’t want to acknowledge it. She was married.
Weren’t marriages supposed to last forever?
She succumbed to his tears, the entire time knowing that if the shoe were on the other foot, she would’ve been kicked out and in the middle of a nasty divorce.
She was a wife. She wanted to be a good wife.
Didn’t good wives pretend the bad didn’t happen?
That was how her mother had handled bad times.
She felt the stab of regret in her heart after she told him she was pregnant. She wished she hadn’t stayed that first time. That it did belong to someone else and she had some place to go.
Anything to ease his fury, or to just leave him.
She knew his mind was made up.
No kids.
Period.
She wanted kids.
She had wanted children for years. The laughter and tears, the company and the love. She wanted to be called “Mommy” and feel little arms embrace her neck. She wanted to wake up in the morning to a crying child.
She didn’t just want.
She needed to have children.
Her biological clock kept her awake.
And he wanted to destroy it.
A beautiful new life was developing in her stomach, and he wanted her to kill it.
“And if I don’t?” she asked defiantly.
He had shocked her with a cruel lecture of his own plans.
“I’ll do it for you. Or better yet, you can get your ass out of this house and out of my life. Don’t expect child support or alimony. That bastard isn’t mine. I used protection.”
He paused a moment and added, “Doesn’t matter. How about I just kill the both of you? You could fake DNA evidence and I’ll be screwed out of money for years. Yes, I think that’s it. I’ll kill you and that problem before it starts.”
He was so sure of himself, so cruelly closed to the circumstances. He knew he was the father, yet acted out his juvenile delusions of another man.
She fumed as she washed the dishes.
Oh, yes. You’ve never used protection with me. Hopefully, you’ve grown accustomed to using it. How many of those sluts at the strip club have you gotten pregnant? I’m sure you would’ve, if every other customer hadn’t been there prior to your entry. Yes, Cary Frazier, I know fully well what you do there. Your friends like to talk. You should really direct your anger at them. If it hadn’t been for their big mouths, I wouldn’t have heard about your little sessions in the back room with . . . What’s her name? Oh, yes. Electra. Isn’t that just Freudian? Tell me, does she prefer men who are already involved? Well, she should like you. You are going to be a father . . .
A tumbler fell from the dish drainer onto the floor. It shattered and propelled pieces of glass across the linoleum.
“What the hell’s going on in there?”
His gruff yell broke the sounds of crunching glass.
“Nothing.”
She was sick and tired of his attitude.
“You clumsy bitch. First you whore around and get pregnant, now you’re destroying my stuff. How’s that for generosity?”
“You’re just a fucking knight, aren’t you, sweetie?” She wrinkled her nose. “Why don’t you go see Electra? Today was payday. I’m sure she never drops glasses or gets pregnant.”
He didn’t say anything to her.
It was the first time she admitted to knowing details about his personal activities. He couldn’t say anything.
It was her turn to glare.
She could feel his haughty stance become shaky.
He was speechless.
She almost laughed aloud.
After all the bitching she had to endure, he was finally speechless.
He turned and walked away.
She picked up the last of the broken glass and his footsteps returned.
“We’re going to the doctor tomorrow.”
“Are we?” She held her chin high. “And what are we doing there?”
“You are getting an abortion.”
“The hell I am.”
“If you plan on living, you will.”
“And if I don’t plan on staying?”
“Then perhaps funeral arrangements are in order.”
He looked at her.
It was the first time he’d ever stooped to such a low level.
She knew, at that moment, that he hated her.
He hated her with a passion.
She was nothing to him.
He would divorce her, but she was too much of a threat to his finances. Child support, potential alimony, he couldn’t have that.
He wasn’t just spewing his usual hot air.
He was serious.
He had moved her across the states for his own purposes. She was isolated and didn’t have any friends or family near. She couldn’t run anywhere.
She hadn’t planned on his dramatic and negative change toward her, so she didn’t mind when he put his name on their bank account. She didn’t know how to access it. He wouldn’t sign anything that allowed her access.
What could she do?
What choices did she have?
She worked to put Cary through college and forgot about her own dreams and ambitions. She dropped out of the academic world to work and support his career.
She knew she could get a job at a fast-food place, work somewhere for minimum wage. Even at that, she would have a terrible life.
Could she place a baby in that situation?
A child who didn’t ask for a life?
She used a damp paper towel to scan the floor for tiny shards. It would be her luck to step on one during the night.
How could she possibly support another life?
A child?
Cary wouldn’t help her.
She knew, somehow, he wouldn’t be one of those men who had a sudden change of heart as the time drew near. He’d already booked her an appointment with an abortion clinic. He’d probably quit work just to avoid paying child support.
Abortion.
It was a nasty word.
She couldn’t bring herself to consider it.
Not after she wanted a baby for so long.
How dare he?
How could he possibly want her to destroy a beautiful new life? A precious little human that she needed to protect.
Primitive instincts would allow her to do what was needed to protect that life.
Anything needed . . .
She needed money to support a growing baby. She did have the few courses of real estate she was able to take before she dropped out. That might get her a secretary’s position at a real estate company.
But even then, she wouldn’t earn enough to support a baby by herself.
Certainly not when it’s twenty bucks a week just for diapers.
She had to think of something.
The baby inside her deserved better.
Deserved more than a mother who made a little over minimum wage.
That was clutching at straws.
She couldn’t afford day care . . .
Life insurance.
The word echoed from the depths of her mind.
What was that?
What did life insurance have to do with the baby?
The thought hit her.
She would get Cary’s life insurance.
But how could she pull that off?
She lay awake in bed and listened as he snored.
How would she take care of it?
She knew she would keep it. There was no question. If she had to work three jobs, she would keep it and love it.
Cary didn’t fit into the picture with a child.
He wanted to kill it.
His own baby.
He was a monster.
She rose and placed a palm on her stomach. She almost believed she could feel life inside her. She started to feel the joy she knew she would have as the child developed. She thought of names and how she wanted to decorate the nursery.
There was so much to decide.
Yet she was bound by Cary. He wouldn’t provide her with any means to help the baby. He’d said it once, and a million times more.
There was only one thing to do.
Listen to those primitive instincts.
But how?
Did she really have the capacity to harm Cary?
It’s him or your child, that small voice whispered.
She got up and went into his room, the place he kept his junk. Sports magazines, memorabilia, and his old varsity stuff.
Shit.
That was what she really wanted to call it.
She opened his desk and rummaged through it.
She found a stack of hard-core pornography books.
That’s my Cary, she thought.
Better to watch than get involved.
She found a little black notepad filled with names and numbers. All were women, and some had little notations beside them.
“Nice ass,” was on one.
Another said, “Open all night.”
His descriptions told her all she needed to know.
He’d only gotten that pad a few months earlier.
“I’m keeping notes,” he had claimed.
She found his revolver and set it on the desk. She sat at his chair and looked at it. A box of bullets lay inside the drawer with it.
It looked cruel when it lay in the open.
A device meant to destroy life, as he had wanted to destroy life.
It was also the key to a wonderful future.
The weapon had to be used on Cary or he would find many more weapons at the clinic to use on her baby.
There was always the possibility that Cary planned on using it anyway.
How else could he bury her as he wished to do?
According to those instincts, he would shoot her before he let her have the baby.
She couldn’t deny it.
How could she do it without arousing suspicion?
It wouldn’t do any good to be incarcerated and pregnant, a sure sign she would lose the baby.
Why would someone suicidal undress before killing themselves?
It didn’t seem very convincing.
She sat there for hours and stared at the weapon.
What could she do to protect herself and her child?
If she waited until morning, he would do all he could to get her to that doctor. If she refused, he would try it at home.
She hadn’t forgotten the episode when he held her down to force a confession of cheating from her. She hadn’t been near another man, but he forced her to admit to it so he could bully her.
What a pathetic father he would make.
She couldn’t trust him to be humane or honest.
He wasn’t.
She loaded the weapon and slid the gun down into her pocket.
She knew what she would do.
She started the computer and began authoring a suicide letter. It could work. She had to save her baby.
She’d do anything to save her baby.
The laws of nature clearly stated a mother had every right to protect her young.
She walked back into the bedroom and nudged his side.
“Leave me alone,” he barked.
“I think there’s a burglar outside.”
She knew the thought of someone else being in his shit would raise him from bed. He threw on shoes and his robe and went all over the house.
She knew her time drew close as she went into his room.
The letter lay on the blotter in front of the chair.
She forged his signature.
“What have I told you about being in here?” he demanded.
She looked down and pretended she didn’t hear him.
He stepped farther into the room and she put her hand in her pocket.
He strode toward her and she backed away from the desk.
“I said . . .”
He trailed off when he saw the gun pointed at him.
“Now, honey. Let’s talk about this.”
She knew what it would be like as soon as she lowered the barrel.
She wasn’t about to flinch.
He would beat her up.
She couldn’t risk losing her child.
She’d endured so much to have it.
She jerked the gun, motioning for him to sit down in his chair.
He talked slowly.
“Is it about the doctor? We can talk, I promise. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you.”
His apologies were false and brought on only by the gun.
If she hadn’t carried the piece, he would be ready to strike her for waking him.
If she lowered it, it would mean her child died.
If he couldn’t do it at the clinic, he’d kill it when it was born. She would turn her back and it would wind up dead, smothered or drowned.
She stared at him and tried to rekindle something of what used to be.
The times they endured, the bills they scrimped to pay. All the dreams and hopes they shared. The bad times they made it through.
It was all nothing more to him than a bad dream.
It was everything she considered wonderful when she thought of her husband.
But it was nothing more than a nightmare to him.
“What happened to you?”
She made him listen.
“What happened to the man I loved?”
She begged from her heart, but his eyes didn’t have the familiar loving glow. It was gone, replaced by some deadened look that remained cold.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I know you are depressed.”
Her words made no sense to him. His puzzlement was evident. But talking kept her mind programmed to complete the action.
“I’m sorry you want to take this way out.”
She fired.
He fell to the side of the chair, his open eyes staring into space.
She wiped the gun down with her gown and placed it in his hand to get fingerprints on it. Then she let it fall to the floor.
It appeared he’d dropped it.
She paused a moment.
Wasn’t that the usual routine?
People who had such a sudden blow of grief usually needed a moment to come back to reality.
She had completed one mission.
Now to finish it with the proper authorities.
She went to the bedroom and telephoned 9-1-1. She worked herself into a panic as the dispatcher answered.
“My husband shot himself!”
She cried to the person at the dispatch office.
“I didn’t know . . . He was depressed. I knew he was having a tough time, but not this . . .”
The police and ambulance arrived quickly.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The authorities turned their attention to her when his friends spoke of how Cary was.
His cheating, partying, and his abuse toward her.
Those friends he loved so dearly wished her away. They wanted to make her pay when he had been the one to deserve it all.
They all deserved the same end, but she could never say that.
If the world had been fair, he’d have gotten much worse.
They sang like little birdies to the brave boys in blue, and she refuted every accusation they could create.
Many were blissfully clueless and tried to lie to the authorities about her.
She heard everything from her “substance abuse issues” to her “time on the streets.”
She’d never had a drug problem and never lived on the street.
Maybe it was for the best that Cary hadn’t told his friends anything substantial about her.
They all appeared to be nothing more than gossiping troublemakers harassing a poor young widow.
They attempted to call her and torture her over the telephone for days, but she sang like a bird as well. With the aid of a voice recorder, she turned it all in.
The authorities grew so angry at their interference and implications, they threatened those good ol’ buddies with criminal charges for harassment.
Evidently, they saw the real side of all of them.
Unfortunately, she became a prime suspect instead of a battered wife who suffered everything a pompous blowhard could give.
There wasn’t a great deal of attention given to the case. There wasn’t actual evidence of any foul play.
Merely the statements of a few coworkers to a detective.
Her primary salvation in the matter was the sentence:
“Why would I kill my husband? I’m carrying his child. Why would I want my child to be fatherless?”
Eventually, the attention died down, and she knew it was over.
She had saved the life of her child, and in turn, the child had saved her from a life of agony with him.
She was grateful.
Her son was her hero before he was born . . .
