…“until the bad man stops looking for her.”
I drove home with the drawing on the passenger seat. Every red light felt like an hour.
My husband, Sam, was supposed to be at work. His car was in the driveway. When I opened the front door, I heard the guest room door close quickly down the hall.
Sam came out of the kitchen and saw the drawing in my hand. His shoulders dropped.
“Please don’t be angry with her,” he said. “Be angry with me.”
The woman in the guest room was his younger sister, Megan. I had met her exactly twice, both times at holidays years ago, when she arrived late and left early with a husband who did all the talking. Sam told me later that he had always worried about her.
Three weeks earlier, she called him from a gas station two states away at midnight. She had left her husband with nothing but her purse and the clothes she was wearing. She had bruises she wouldn’t let anyone see. She begged Sam not to tell anyone where she was, including me, because her husband knew how to find people, and the fewer people who knew, the safer she felt.
So Sam took time off work during the day to sit with her. He hid her car in a friend’s garage. And he told our five-year-old not to say anything because “the lady is hiding from a bad man, and it’s a secret game to keep her safe.”
Lily drew her without a face because Megan always kept her hood up and her eyes down when Lily was around. She didn’t want a child to see her bruises.
I knocked on the guest room door. It took a long time for Megan to open it.
I didn’t ask her anything. I just told her she was welcome here, that I was sorry she’d been hiding from me in my own house, and that she didn’t need to hide anymore.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and cried. So did I.
Over the next month, we helped her do everything she’d been too frightened to do alone. We found a lawyer who worked with domestic violence cases. We went with her to the courthouse to request a protective order. A local advocacy group helped her open a bank account in her own name and find a counselor. Sam took the day off for every appointment.
Megan moved into her own apartment in June, just fifteen minutes away. Her divorce was finalized in the fall.
She came over for Lily’s birthday in November. Her hood was down. Lily gave her a new drawing, the same family picture, but this time the woman in the doorway had a big, smiling face, curly brown hair, and a speech bubble that said, “HI, I’M AUNT MEGAN.”
It’s on her refrigerator now.
Sam and I had a long conversation about secrets after that. I understand why he kept it. I also told him that next time, he doesn’t have to protect someone alone. That’s what I’m here for.
