1. A world where my girls have a mother who isn’t terrified all the time;
2. The freedom to do and say as I please, without scrutiny or consequence;
3. And the future that looks any way I want it to, free of Shane’s wrath.
Of course, the doubts creep in as much as I try to push them away. How will I achieve that future? My husband is a star athlete, a famous person who has the love of a million fans on his side. He’s a World Series champion and a beloved member of our town, Packton, Pennsylvania. In our six-year marriage, through the birth of our two daughters, I’ve only seen his clout—and his ego—grow to enormous heights.
The truth is, I never would have left. I put up with the hitting, punching, screaming, controlling, and intense jealousy for so many years; it almost felt second nature now. If Colleen Callahan hadn’t seen that bruise on my wrist, if Walker hadn’t questioned me in the hallway at the stadium that one day, if my sister hadn’t come to visit and seen how tense things were … these were the events that set the ultimate climax of the situation in motion. Shane grew angrier and angrier by the month, and I felt like all the walls were closing in.
If he hadn’t attacked me in the parking lot of the Pistons’ ballpark that night, there would be no evidence. I’d never reported his abuse, too scared by my own poisonous thoughts and his threatening and conditioning, and now that’s working against me in the court system. Since they view Shane as a first-time offender, it’s only making things more difficult for me, and my girls.
But Noelle, my five-year-old, and Breanna, my two-year-old, are the reasons I’m not dropping the charges. They are the ones who gave me strength when my lawyer called and told me more bad news. Just seeing their faces, knowing that someday they were going to read the articles and watch the videos about what their father did to their mother …
I want to be better for them. I want to get out for them.
Now that millions of people have seen the pictures of my battered cheeks, my bleeding forehead, and the marks and scrapes Shane left, I can’t escape it. Two nights ago, I finally slipped and let myself google the articles. They ranged from bad to worse, all speculating about our marriage and my husband’s temper, or what we’d fought over. I almost threw my laptop against the wall when I read one that claimed I was an unfit mother for staying in a relationship where my daughters were clearly in danger.
But when I looked at those pictures, the ones the police snapped in the interview room and some media outlet had hacked or leaked, I didn’t even recognize that woman. Sure, I’ve looked in the mirror too many times to count after his fists would ignite fury on my skin. I’ve seen the bruises and blood, the fractures that I never had a doctor look at, even a broken finger I splinted myself.
What struck me the most when looking at those pictures, though, was how dead my eyes were. My mother tells my sister and I every time she sees us that we have the most brilliant blue eyes, brighter than the ocean our grandfather grew up on in Hawaii. The eyes looking back at me in those police photos were void of life, sucked of energy, ready to quit.
I couldn’t do that to the little girls I promised to protect with every part of me. And I could no longer disrespect the family who had sacrificed so much to make it on the mainland, putting their brilliant genes to shame.
As much as it terrifies me, as much as I quake in my boots every time I think of trials and divorce and custody battles I have to press on. If I don’t I know I will end up dead.
The chilling realization steals every inch of safety from my soul, which I know is just how Shane plans to fight me through this thing.
My mind flashes back to the last time I felt truly safe. Before that night in the parking lot, I would have said five years ago or so, in the month leading up to Noelle’s birth. Something about the arrival of our daughter brought out the devil in Shane, although it was escalating verbally even before then.
But five years is the benchmark. The first time he slapped me across the face was after Noelle screamed her colicky way through an entire night before a playoff game. I would have told you that was the last time I felt truly safe.
Except now, I’d be lying. Because the last time I felt safe was the very night that my entire life changed before my eyes.
The last time I felt safe was when Walker Callahan cradled me against his chest and pressed kisses to each bloody cut on my forehead.
And it’s only when I give into that sensation, imagining his arms around me, that I can finally fall asleep.
2
Walker
It may be World Series media week, the five days leading up to baseball’s biggest championship where thousands of reporters stick microphones in your face and ask you everything from the professional to the inappropriate, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.
I’ve been here twice before, once bringing home a ring and another time losing in hellacious fashion. These press junkets and schmoozing events leading up to the seven most important games played in a major league season are supposed to be fun. Competitive. Mostly light-hearted.
Just the same as each time I’ve been here, the Packton Pistons field has been transformed into a midway at a carnival, of sorts. There are sponsor tents everywhere, sports equipment companies, and energy drink manufacturers, and different media outlets all hocking their products. Fans mill about in a specific section, and I can already hear the rowdy ones getting drunker as the afternoon trudges on.
And above it all, the stadium I grew up in and have come to love like another family member, looms large. I can make out the retired numbers of all-star Pistons players from where they’re enshrined on the outfield wall, and my heart thumps a beat. To everyone else, this feels like the same song and dance from World Series’ before.
This media week, though, feels nothing like my media weeks of the past.
The amount of times I’ve been asked about the Shane Giraldi charges is astronomical. And each time a reporter brings it up, questions how I was involved, if I’ve talked to that piece of shit, or what I think the future holds with the trial I want to flip the fucking table over. I want to go scorched earth, scream at them, and tell them the real version of what happened. Not the seventy-five angles the media is covering or how they illegally violated his wife’s privacy and blasted pictures of her at her most vulnerable all over the Internet.
I still don’t know where Hannah, Shane’s wife, is and no one will tell me. Not even Colleen, my cousin and the general manager of the Packton Pistons, the major league team our family has owned for generations. She might be my best friend in this world, and the person most helping Hannah at this moment, but she’s being awfully tight-lipped for someone who says she cares about me.
When I cornered her again at today’s press junket, just before we had to go on stage, she said, “Walker, I know how much you’re worried about her. But it’s in everyone’s best interest if she got some space, if she has time to settle down with the girls without any more tension or emotions in the way.”
I’m pretty sure she knows now, even if we’re not explicitly saying it, how I feel about my teammate’s wife. How I’ve always felt. Throughout the years, I’ve done a damn good job of hiding it, of being cordial but aloof to her at social gatherings and acting like a fun uncle to her children. But that night, two weeks ago, when I saw her lying on the ground completely broken, nothing was keeping me from her anymore.