A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

inadvertent or not.
His tone is brusque, but not necessarily mean. Hey, Shel? Bring
me something to drink, would you?
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she calls up the stairs. She looks to me,
says anxiously, “I have to go.” She fully intends to close the door in
my face. Before she can, my foot inches forward. It happens
unintentionally, before I can think it through. My foot fills the door’s
narrowing crack so that she can’t close it when she tries.
“What are you doing?” Shelby asks, surprised. She looks down at
my wedged foot. Her voice stays quiet, words hissed. She doesn’t
want him to know that I am here.
I say flatly, “You didn’t tell me if you’re all right.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks, her tone immature. Shelby is in her
early twenties. I thought I’d reached adulthood when I was that age.
Now, over a decade later, I realize that at twenty-three or twenty-four,
I didn’t know much of anything. I still had so much growing up to do,
so much to figure out about how the world worked.
“Because of your text messages, Shelby. You told me you were
scared of your husband.”
“Oh. That,” she says. “I shouldn’t have sent that.” She runs her
hands through her hair, pulls the rubber band out. Her hair falls
around her shoulders. She shakes it out. “We had a stupid fight,
that’s all. I fired off some stupid text. I didn’t mean it.”
“Then why did you say it?” I ask, not sure if I believe her.
“I was mad,” she says.
“You said you were scared.”
“He was yelling at me.”
“About what?” I ask, not sure that she’ll tell me.
“It was stupid,” she says. I say nothing. I wait, seeing if she’ll
continue, and she does. “I spend too much money. He said I have
crap for brains because I went and bought some new maternity
shirts and got one of those prenatal massages. He says we’re broke
and I can’t be wasting money like that, but he has no idea what it’s
like to be carrying around a baby all the time. He doesn’t give a shit
that I’ve outgrown my clothes.”
“Did he hurt you, Shelby?” I ask.
“He was really pissed off,” she says.