Nobody told us anything. I want to be fair to them about that — they thought silence was the same as protection.
But a house has a temperature. You learn to read a car door closing. You learn the difference between the quiet after an argument and the quiet after something worse. I could tell from the hallway what kind of night it was going to be, and I was nine.
My sister and I never talked about it. That's the part that surprises people. We had a whole unspoken agreement to keep being kids in front of each other. We got very good at volume control on the TV.
I became the calm one. Every family has one and it isn't a personality, it's a job. I read faces before I read rooms. As an adult that has made me good at some things and strange at others. My wife will ask what's wrong and I'll say nothing, and I'll mean it, and it'll still be a habit from a hallway thirty years ago.
They stayed together, for what it's worth. I'm not sure that's the happy ending it gets treated as. What I needed wasn't for them to stay or go. What I needed was one adult saying: this is happening, it isn't your fault, you're not imagining it.
I'm not angry anymore. They were young and they were doing their best with the tools they were handed. I just wish somebody had said something out loud.
The stories currently featured in this collection are fictional accounts created to explore common relationship patterns, decisions, and consequences. They are not presented as accounts from identifiable individuals. As real reader stories are submitted with permission, they'll be clearly identified. These fictional accounts are illustrative, not clinical guidance. They are not therapy, legal advice or a substitute for professional help.