He drove. I sat in the passenger’s seat of his truck, watching the leaves blow around in the cold wind. He could have done this himself, I thought. He’s taking me with him for a reason, maybe to show me that I still have some fight left in me.
I looked over at him, at his stone-calm face. “You won’t give up,” I said, “will you.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Never.”
Caroline was at work that night. Eddie was at home, sitting at his kitchen table with his beer and cigarettes, just like the first time I had met him. Here was a man lucky enough to have a woman who loved him, lucky enough to spend every day of his life with her. I could barely stand to look at him.
I’d run into my share of domestic violence before, back in Detroit. A beat cop sees it all the time. There’s only so much you can do about it. You can arrest the man, talk to the woman, help her with her options. You may feel like bouncing the man off the walls a few times, but you can’t.
I wasn’t a cop anymore.
By the time we left him, I think he was thoroughly convinced that Vinnie would be watching over her every day in the casino. Looking for a bruise. The slightest mark on her. Red eyes, maybe from crying. A bad hair day. That’s all it would take for us to pay him another visit.
It was one thing I could do. One good thing for one person who needed help. Maybe another thing the next day, for someone else. Maybe getting one step closer to being the kind of man who’d deserve having someone like Natalie Reynaud in his life, if only for a short time.
Yes, being that man, living with the dagwaging I’d been dealt. Then getting through another long winter so I can see how the world looks when springtime comes again.