Page 45 of Bitter House

Don hasn’t been the only one, of course. He was the first. The catalyst, though I hate to call him anything that sounds so important. I didn’t ask Edna before I did it. Maybe I should have, but I think she would’ve said no. I took his life and didn’t look back, didn’t ask for forgiveness or permission.

I saved her unapologetically.

When I told her what I’d done a few hours later, she cried. To this day, I don’t know if she was crying for herself or Don, or maybe me, but she did. It was understandable, obviously. What she’d been through, what she was going to go through in the future, was a lot.

I understood the loss and the pain with my whole heart, after Harold. But our grief was not the same. Don was a monster, and my Harold was far from it.

We buried Don in the backyard. Edna helped a little, but it was grueling work. It took over a week to dig the grave, with Don’s body resting and waiting in the tunnels below the house. It kept him cool, but not cold. By the time we buried him, he was a nasty sight.

I still don’t know how I managed it. I’ve always gotten nauseous when one of the girls had a bad cut, but with him, I was just numb. It was what had to be done, and so, I did it.

As simple and as complicated as that.

Since Edna, there have been others. Women I’ve met here or there. Women like us.

To be clear, it was never the plan. I didn’t set out to do this.

I just…have.

I’m cautious about whom to trust, always. You have to be. The wrong one and it could bring everything down around us.

I’ve never wanted money. Hell, I have more than I could ever hope to spend. Money is meaningless to me. What I want, I’m discovering, is power. I want to feel like I’m doing something that matters.

I want to help people.

And I have the resources to make it happen.

It started with Cate’s sister, whose husband had beat her around so badly she’d lost two babies during separate pregnancies. I’d had the girls over for drinks one night when Cate mentioned how much she wanted to kill him.

It was silly girl talk. Meaningless. A few glasses of wine, a loose tongue, a hidden desire.

I asked why she hadn’t.

And that was that. It sounds simple, maybe, but sometimes I think all we need is permission.

We made a plan. Cate would have them over for dinner while Jane, Lily, and I snuck in and took care of him. Old women are invisible, after all, since men don’t tend to want to take our clothes off. But we are stronger than we look. A whack to the back of the head. Smothering him in his state of unconsciousness. It was easier than the gun. Much less messy too.

And then…it nearly fell apart.

Cate was meant to keep her sister in the other room, but she heard the commotion. She couldn’t stop her from coming in to see what we had going on.

She cried so hard when she saw him, but it wasn’t for any of the reasons I’d suspected Edna’s tears came. No, when Cate’s sister got ahold of herself enough to catch her breath, she came right out with it: two days earlier, she’d found out she was pregnant. She hadn’t yet summoned the courage to tell her husband. Most likely, we’d just saved her child’s life.

That was a good feeling. The very best feeling. It made digging his grave that much easier. We helped her with her story—that Sal had run off with some woman he met in a club in Vegas. She was alone to raise her child, but more importantly, she was safe.

It felt good, diary. It felt better than I’ve felt in a long time.

And well, after that, we found our purpose.

Jane, Lily, Cate, and I—we are determined to make the world a better place in the only way we can: by getting rid of the men who make it worse. I wish I could say you’d be surprised at how many there are, but I don’t think anyone would.

Women come to us through the secret network we’ve built—women who trust us and believe in us. Women who have no other options. It’s easy to assume they do have other options—that they must—but until you’ve lived it, you couldn’t possibly understand.

What sort of life is it to look over your shoulder constantly? To worry and stress, even if you get away, over when he’ll find you? How much longer you have until he comes back?

The law doesn’t protect us. Not fast enough, not strongly enough. So we have to do it ourselves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

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