“Twelve years.”
“But you have contact?”
“Not really, no. Craig rarely sees the girls. He’s not that interested. He’s remarried, and has a son, which is what he wanted.”
“Acrimonious divorce?”
DeLano offered a thin smile. “Is there any other kind?”
“There wouldn’t be in my world, but some people claim it.”
“I don’t. But if you think, after all these years, Craig would kill two women to make me suffer, I’d have to say that stretches credulity.”
“Was he or is he ever violent?”
“Once.” More nerves showed as DeLano shifted in the chair, linked her hands together, pulled them apart. “Do you really need this information?” She asked as Peabody came back in with a file.
“I don’t know what I need until I know.”
“Briefly then, I married Craig when I was twenty-four, and had my two girls before I was thirty. I was a teacher, and had been working on my doctorate, but when we married I gave that up, as Craig wanted me to stay at home, keep the home, and tend to the children.”
“He wanted?” Eve repeated.
“Yes. And while I was content being a professional mother, I did begin to feel the squeeze with the limitations of my social activities, my outlets. I accepted that Craig was a very old-fashioned, traditional man, and he provided for us. I accepted that he wanted a son and didn’t interact as much as I expected or would have liked with the girls. I accepted that he wanted things done a certain way, and his response when I didn’t reach that level was subtle insults, coldness. I accepted. You may not understand—”
“Just because I haven’t been there doesn’t mean I can’t understand.”
“All right.” Again DeLano linked her hands together, but this time it seemed like a reset rather than nerves.
“I had a lovely home, was expected to make myself and that home attractive, to be a charming hostess, to be a fully involved mother. I enjoyed all that, but I wanted something for myself. I started to write. I’d always had an interest, and I had the time when the girls napped or on the rare occasions I was allowed—though I didn’t see it then as being allowed—to let my mother take them for an afternoon. I told no one. It was just for me, and over the course of a year, I’d written a book.”
She smiled now, quick and easy. “It thrilled me, thrilled me enough I took a chance and contacted a college friend who worked in publishing. She agreed to read it, and she liked it.”
Now DeLano let out a sigh. “What a moment that was. She had a few editorial suggestions, and I worked on those in secret. And when I had, when she read it again, she bought the manuscript. It was, and is, one of the biggest moments of my life.”
DeLano glanced at Nadine. “You understand.”
“I do, absolutely.”
“I contacted my mother,” DeLano continued. “I didn’t tell her, but asked if she’d like to have the girls, an overnight. Of course she did, so I arranged that. I spent the day shopping for candles, flowers, what I needed at the market to prepare Craig’s favorite meal. I did all this with such excitement, such joy. I was a writer. I’d written a book. It would be published. People would read it.
“When Craig came home, I had the scene set. An elegant, intimate dinner for two. I had champagne. He questioned why I’d let my mother take the girls—without clearing it with him—but I told him I wanted a special evening for the two of us.”
She looked down at her linked hands. “He thought I was pregnant. He didn’t know, as I also kept that to myself, that I was on birth control because I wasn’t ready to have another child so quickly. I wanted another year first so, rather than argue, I’d lied. I’m not proud of that.”
“Your body,” Eve pointed out. “Your choice.”
“Yes, but he wouldn’t have agreed, so I took the coward’s way. In any case, I told him no, not yet, but I had, in a way, given birth.
“That night, I poured the champagne, and I told him about the book, how I’d written it in my free time over the last year or so, how much fun it had been for me, how satisfying. And best of all I’d sold it. He listened to all this, and I should’ve known, I should’ve seen it, but I was so happy, so inside my own excitement, I didn’t see what was coming. Free time? he asked me. Wasn’t that interesting? I had so much free time. I had free time because he did all the work, and I’d used what he’d given me to lie and deceive, to hide my ingratitude.”
She took a long breath. “I tried to defend myself, to tell him I hadn’t neglected anything. Him, the girls, the house. But … He took my plate, dumped the food on the floor—to remind me I only had food and shelter because he provided them. When I objected, he hit me. When I objected to that, he hit me again, and again. He ordered me to destroy the manuscript, tell this friend he suspected I’d had sex with I’d made a mistake. He ordered me to clean up the mess I’d made, then come upstairs and do what his wife was obligated to do.”
Eve gave it a moment while DeLano visibly composed herself. “And did you?”
“A stronger woman would have told him to go to hell, but, yes, I cleaned up the mess, put the kitchen to rights. I locked myself in the powder room long enough to take a picture of my face, the bruises, the blackening eye. Then I went upstairs. It was rape, but I didn’t fight. I didn’t protest. In fact, I pretended to enjoy it. In the morning, I fixed his breakfast, apologized again when he demanded it. When he left for work, when I was sure it was safe, I packed what I needed, I packed what the girls needed, and I left. I went to my mother’s. She called a friend, a lawyer. I arranged for a neighbor of my mother’s to keep the girls while the three of us went to the police and filed charges. I also filed for divorce.”
“What did he do?” Eve asked.