Read Online The Comfort of Black by Carter Wilson - Free Book Online Page A

beginning. Before—”
    â€œBefore the money?”
    Hannah felt her back muscles tighten.
    â€œI was going to say before he had to start traveling so much. Right after we got married, it was perfect. It was feeling like that again. He’s been leaving me notes, we finally had sex after six weeks, and we—”
    â€œYou’re trying to rationalize an irrational situation, Hannah. Mom did that for years. If she was here, she would tell you the same thing. Get out before it gets worse. Hannah, he could be Daddy.”
    â€œDon’t call him that.”
    â€œOkay. He could be
Billy
, and you’re just finding out now. Or he could be worse. I know this is hard to hear, but that hooker shit, and the dream? What if he’s a psychopath and you’re just learning that now? Hell, Hannah, he could
kill
you.”
    Kill
. Such a short, simple word. Like
cut
or
run
.
    â€œMom should have done a better job disappearing with us. Changed our names, even,” Justine said. “We should have driven all the way to California.”
    Hannah thought of the night her mother had told the girls to come for a car ride. Billy wasn’t home from his constructionjob yet. Hannah’s mother smiled despite the horror from the previous night, a night of open palms and screams. The station wagon had two suitcases loaded in the back—the large yellow Samsonite ones, their hard plastic exteriors cracked and peeling. Hannah asked what they were for, and her mother had smiled and said they were taking a little trip. Justine asked if Billy was coming, and Mom said he wasn’t. That it was a special girls-only trip.
    Hannah had been ten.
    They hadn’t gone far, just a few towns away. Billy found them four days later and used his charm to lure her mother back home. Said he couldn’t live without her. Said he would change. Even promised it right there in the dingy motel room, its smell a mixture of cigarettes, trucker cologne, and empty years. Billy was looking at Hannah when he said it, though his words were directed at her mother.
You know I can change. Be a better man. Be the man you need me to be. Ya know I got it in me, babe
.
    He did change. He got worse. For some reason he never touched Justine or Hannah, as if that would be crossing some kind of moral boundary. How many times Hannah wished for her skin to tingle with the hot flashes of pain rather than her mother’s. But Billy saved his best verbal abuse for Hannah, cutting her into pieces with every sentence directed at her. It took another five years before they finally rid themselves of Billy, and the bitter irony was by that point their mother was so reliant on the abuse, it turned out she couldn’t live without it. Today, her mother was dead. Hannah had no idea where Billy even was. Maybe still in prison. Maybe dead. Billy was just the name of a ghost that whispered in her ear from time to time.
    â€œDallin’s never done anything like this before,” Hannah said. “And Dallin isn’t like Billy.”
    â€œHoly shit, Hannah. Are you seriously listening to yourself?”
    But Hannah didn’t hear her sister. She was gazing through her, existing deep within her own mind. She was replaying the scenes over in her mind. Rebecca winking. Dallin leering.Fighter’s stance. The sudden hand to the throat, the slam against the wall. Zoo barking. Glass breaking.
    You have no idea what’s good for you
.
    A thought jolted her from the imagery.
    Why had he come back home that morning?
Dallin was usually out the door by eight, and he certainly wasn’t home when she had woken. But then, there he was, sneaking up on her just moments after starting to watch the video of him and the web slut.
    Justine said something. Hannah only heard sound. She lifted the cocktail glass to her lips.
    â€œWhat?” she asked.
    Justine peered over Hannah’s shoulder.
    â€œI said there’s a guy over there. Sitting alone.