Everybody Said

Everybody said Kevin was great – quick with a smile and a joke at the summer barbecue or a cold beer at the tailgating party; he was an all-American boy with warm, blue eyes and just enough stubble to appear rugged.

He worked a good job as a construction foreman for the biggest home builder in the state, drove a sparkling clean black Dodge pickup, seemed to be the master of all he surveyed, whether framing up a new colonial or holding court at the pool table over at Johnney’s Pub.

Everybody said Kevin’s folks were great too – mom played the piano for Sunday services down at Cleveland Presbyterian and dad was ex-military, 20 years with the 88th Air Wing out at Wright-Patterson and committed to keeping both his hair and his lawn cropped close  out of long habit.

Everybody said you were lucky when Kevin picked you, seemed to see past your somewhat socially awkward mannerisms to appreciate the real, much more complex person than you cared to show around strangers or, frankly, sometimes even your friends.

And he was – great that is – until he wasn’t. It all happened so fast and so out-of-nowhere that you thought it was just a bad joke at first, some brashness fueled by a Friday night out with his work crew, his truck parked with one wheel a foot up on the curb outside.

And so, you really weren’t prepared: not to duck, not to cry out, not to even barely raise your hands to protect yourself, much less to plot an escape – your only goal was to live to see another day, so you begged, and you pleaded and thankfully his temper and his drink wore themselves out after only a black eye and a broken finger.

And then everybody said it must have been a mutual fight, or even something you did to deserve what happened – but you knew, and you knew too now that no one had your back, you were the girl who cried wolf.

But you knew the wolf, and he slept beside you, and he harbored your destruction within him, it was only a matter of time.

That was three years and two states ago, and no one from then knows your address now and you’ve finally started sleeping through the night again.

Everybody said Kevin was great; they probably still do.