Dangerous Women

WITNESS by J. A. JANCE

What are you going to do about it?” I asked. Refusing to meet my gaze, Mindy Harshaw poked at her salad with her fork but ate nothing. Her lower lip trembled. “What can I do?” she asked hopelessly.

A year ago I’d been matron of honor at Mindy’s wedding. She had been radiant then. A few months later, when she and our other pal, Stephanie, and I met for coffee at Starbucks, she had definitely lost her glow. She had been uncharacteristically quiet then and had hidden out behind a pair of enormous sunglasses, claiming she had an infection related to pinkeye. Now, having heard what she had to say, I suspected the pinkeye story was just that-a story. And the woman sitting across from me bore no resemblance to my lifelong friend who had been a beaming bride only a few months earlier.

I had been shocked when she slipped into the booth across from me. She looked wan and pale, and I thought she had lost more weight than she could afford to lose. I didn’t say, “My God, Min! You look like hell!” although I probably should have. But now, after she had told me at least some of what had been going on, I wasn’t the least bit shy about offering my opinion.

“What you do is blow the whistle on the jerk,” I said. “You’re not the first Cinderella who woke up after the honeymoon to discover she had married a frog instead of Prince Charming.”

Mindy sighed. “It didn’t turn out that way for you and Jimmy.”

That was true. I had been a thirty-eight-year-old “old maid” when I was introduced to James Drury in the lobby before a performance of Angry Housewives, an original Seattle-based musical about a group of frustrated mothers who start a rock band and end up with an unlikely hit entitled, “Eat Your Fucking Cornflakes.” Not being a housewife at the time, I hadn’t much wanted to go, but a friend from school had dragged me along. James Drury had been bullied into going to the play by a friend from the bank where he worked. The moment Jimmy and I met, we clicked. Just like that. Neither one of us had been married before, and our whirlwind courtship had left our friends, Mindy included, shaking their heads. Jimmy and I had enjoyed eleven glorious years together before a drunk driver, going the wrong way on the I-90 bridge, had snuffed out Jimmy’s life and dismantled mine.

It was now three years later. The ache of losing him was still there, but his death was long enough in the past that when Mindy asked me to be her matron of honor, I had been glad to do so. I had known Mindy Crawford since grade school. In high school and college she had always gone for the wrong guys-for the wild ones, the ones living on the edge, for the muscle-bound jocks who played sports, looked great in jeans mid T-shirts but had nothing whatsoever going on upstairs. But in the days and weeks leading up to Mindy’s wedding to Lawrence Miles Harshaw III, I thought for sure she had come up with a wi

Larry had money, looks and brains, and not necessarily in that order. Obviously, having money isn’t everything, but I was grateful that, after years of hardscrabble existence, Mindy would finally be in a situation where she wouldn’t be living hand-to-mouth. As far as I could see, Larry was crazy about her. Which is one of the reasons I was so provoked with him right now. Larry Harshaw had pulled the wool over Mindy’s eyes and mine as well. She had an excuse-she was in love with the guy. I’ve spent the last twenty-five years working as a high school guidance counselor, and I resented the hell out of being duped. Two and a half decades of working with troubled kids has taught me way more than I ever wanted to know about the realities and pervasiveness of domestic violence. It worried me that Mindy seemed totally oblivious about what was in store for her.

“What do you think I should do?” she asked.

“Let’s go over what you just told me,” I said. “He reads your mail, checks your e-mail. He monitors your telephone calls and checks the mileage on the odometer whenever you use the car. What does this sound like to you?”

“He wants me all to himself?” Mindy asked meekly.

“It’s a lot more serious than that,” I told her. “It’s called isolation. He’s cutting you off from your support network. I’m surprised he let you meet me for lunch.”

“It was spur of the moment,” Mindy admitted. “I didn’t exactly tell him.”

Or ask permission, I thought.

Suddenly I felt much older and wiser than my fifty-two years, and Mindy seemed like an i

“I’ve seen how Larry Harshaw acts,” I said. “In public, he’s the perfect gentleman. What’s he like in private?” My question was followed by a long, awkward silence. “Well?” I prodded finally. “Are you going to tell me?”

“He’s not very nice,” Mindy said in a small voice.

“How so?” I asked. “Does he tell you you’re stupid, for example?”

Mindy nodded. “Yes, and that I’m not good with money.”

“Because…?”

“Because I don’t balance my checkbook.”

“Min, I’ve never known you to balance a checkbook-not once in forty years. But have you ever bounced a check?”

“No.”

“Well then? So much for the money-handling problem. What else?”

“There’s more to it than just the checkbook,” Mindy said. “Even though it’s not true, I’m worried that he thinks I married him for his money. When we were engaged, all his friends kept telling him we needed to have a prenup. I told him at the time that I’d be happy to sign one, but he said not to be silly. That he loved me and that whatever he had he was willing to share.”

Up to a point, I thought.

“Okay,” I said. “He treats you like a prisoner in your own home. He checks on your comings and goings. He belittles you. What else?”

“What do you mean?” Mindy asked,

“Has he ever hurt you?”

“He’s hurt my feelings,” she replied.

“Has he ever hit you or hurt you physically?” I insisted.

“Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“We were cross-country skiing out by Lake Kachess a couple of weeks ago,” she said slowly. “A storm was coming, and I had this terrible feeling that he was going to drive off and leave me out there all alone. That he was going to leave me to freeze lo death.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I told him that I’d hurt my ankle and wouldn’t get out of the car.”

An involuntary chill swept up my spine. I had no doubt that some subliminal sense of self-preservation was what had kept Mindy off her skis that day and kept her alive long enough to tell her hair-raising tale to me.

“But he’s never struck you?” I asked. “Bruised you or pushed you around?”

Mindy shook her head. “No,” she said. “Nothing like that.”

But she was wearing a turtlenecked sweater. With long sleeves. I know how domestic violence works. I know how cagey abusers can be in making sure none of the bruising shows. I also know how hard it is for women to admit they’ve been hit. They think that somehow they’ve caused this terrible calamity to befall them, and by admitting what’s happened they’re also confessing their own implicit culpability.

“You need to get out,” I said quietly. “You need to get out now, before it gets worse. Because it will get worse.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I mean, I just barely finished sending the thank you notes for the wedding presents.”