The long drive home was shrouded in a silence that felt more threatening than any argument. My husband’ recent transformation into a sullen, irritable stranger had me on high alert, and I was carefully measuring my words and actions. Our stop for gas felt like a brief reprieve. He got out to handle the pump while I stayed in the passenger seat, wrapped in my own anxiety. The interruption came from a man in a company uniform, tapping on my window and telling me I was needed to sign a receipt. It was a routine request, but the night was about to become anything but routine.
He didn’t hand me a credit card slip. Instead, he passed me a carefully folded note. I opened it and read the stark command: use a trip to the bathroom as an excuse to run and never come back. I was frozen, caught between confusion and a dawning sense of terror. I looked up at the attendant, and the grim determination on his face told me this was real. He subtly gestured toward my husband. It was then that I saw the dark, flaky stain on his sleeve. In the bright lights of the gas station, the color was unmistakable. My eyes then moved to the trunk, where I saw more of the substance smeared near the lock.
A cold clarity washed over me. I walked back to the car, my legs feeling like they were made of wood. I told my husband I needed to find the bathroom. He barely looked at me, which was a small mercy. I turned and walked toward the building, each step feeling like a countdown. I expected to hear my name called out, to be demanded to come back. But the only sound was the hum of the overhead lights. The moment I was inside, the attendant was there, phone in hand. “Stay with me,” he said firmly. “The police are on their way. You are not going back out there.”
We waited in the brightly lit store, and soon the parking lot was alive with the spinning red and blue lights of police cars. I watched, numb, as officers placed my husband in handcuffs. The man I had shared my life with was being arrested just feet from our car. As the initial shock began to fade, the attendant shared the information that cemented the horror of the evening. He explained that he had seen my husband days earlier with another woman, who was later featured on a news broadcast as a missing person. His vigilance and courage had broken a terrifying pattern. The note he gave me was more than a warning; it was the reason I was still alive to tell this story.
