Chapter 1 - The Click of the Lighter
Every night, Victor dragged me into the garage like it was part of the marriage vows he had rewritten in his own head. The garage of our quiet suburban home smelled of motor oil, cold concrete, and burnt tobacco, and after a while the sound that terrified me most was not his shouting but the soft metallic click of his lighter. I learned to flinch before the flame even appeared. I was six months pregnant, my skin already marked by burns that never had time to heal, and I kept both arms wrapped around my belly as if I could shield my baby with bone and prayer alone. Victor would lean close, cigarette glowing in the dark, and hiss, “You and that baby are in my way. I already have someone else. I’m not losing everything because of you.”
His mother, Elaine, stood a few feet away as if she were supervising a household task. She never looked ashamed. She pulled fresh cigarettes from the pack, handed them to him, and spoke in that calm, chilling voice she used whenever she wanted cruelty to sound practical. “Do it faster,” she would say. “If she dies, the house, the money, and the insurance go where they belong. Don’t let that baby be born.” I begged them to take the house, the furniture, the savings—anything—but I stopped begging for myself after the second week. After that, I begged only for my child. Victor laughed every time, because pain had become entertainment to him and Elaine had taught him how to call it discipline.
During the day I wore the same oversized gray sweatshirt and sweatpants because soft fabric was the only thing I could bear against my skin, and even then every step hurt. Victor kept my phone. Elaine watched the doors. If a car slowed outside, they both went silent until it passed, then the lighter clicked again. They were not just hurting me. They were waiting for me to disappear in a way that would benefit them. I knew from the things Victor muttered when he thought fear had broken my hearing that he believed my life had already become paperwork: a wife’s name on a deed, a shared account, an insurance policy, a pregnancy he saw as an obstacle. In that garage, I stopped being a person to him. I became a problem he meant to solve.
