Under the Circumstances

Published in A Capital Mystery, an anthology of 21 short stories by Ottawa authors, published by Ottawa Press and Publishing, released October 2025.

I know something’s wrong as soon as I enter our Barrhaven townhouse, closing the front door behind me. There’s a disturbance in the air, or maybe something I smell—a faint odour that jogs a dark memory. I pause, my senses alert. Instead of dropping my keys and purse on the hall table, I hold on to them.

At a glance, everything in the living room looks the way we left it this morning. Ella’s Grade 4 science project is still spread over the coffee table, and my accounting textbook is beside the couch where I was studying.

But Oscar, our aging tabby, has retreated to his safe spot under the couch. That’s where he hides when strangers appear. Only his glowing eyes are visible.

I hear a noise deeper in the house—a shifting sound, like a foot moving on the floor. The skin on the nape of my neck tingles. I back up, my rear hitting the closed door behind me.

A shadow moves in the next room, and a lanky figure steps into the archway. “Hello, Sarah.” His voice is deceptively soft. “Don’t hover there. Come on in.”

A cold shiver runs up my spine. “What are you doing here?” I ask. But I’m not really wondering; I always knew this was possible.

“I’ve come for Ella. You can’t keep her away from me. I’m her father.” This time, the menace in his tone is obvious.

I’ve been dreading this for three years, ever since we escaped and left him behind. Using a new last name and staying under the radar, we’ve built fresh lives in Ottawa. Ella has made friends at school, and I’m to finish my accounting qualification next year.

No. This can’t be happening. My mind reels. We’re having fish and chips for supper, and we’re going camping this weekend.

I can’t let my abusive husband wreck this now.

****

Michael and I met at university in Saskatchewan. I was drawn to his quiet manner, and we laughed at the same jokes. We married right after I graduated. With my freshly minted but impractical arts degree, I got a job working in a hardware store while he finished his final year in veterinary studies. We had a little apartment, and life was good.

After Ella was born, though, he insisted we move to the rural community where his parents lived. His family had very conservative views on the roles of men and women. His father, manager of the local feed mill, was the unquestioned head of the family. His mother took pride in being a traditional housewife: cooking, cleaning, sewing, gardening, doing up preserves. She had nothing but scorn for women who worked “outside the home.”

Michael got work at the local vet clinic, and I looked after Ella and the house we rented. He started pressuring me to model myself after his mother. I tried, learning to bake pies and can vegetables. But as time went on, he increasingly treated me like his subordinate and an inferior one at that. Our marriage, which had started so happily, no longer felt like a partnership.

And he began changing in other ways. His quietness turned into brooding. He became suspicious of outsiders and discouraged any friendships I started. He started claiming a variety of strange and shifting allergies: foods he suddenly couldn’t eat and things that he said made him itchy like fur, feathers and some kinds of detergent.

When I questioned any of these, he became enraged, viewing any disagreement as disloyalty. The first time he hit me, he begged my forgiveness and promised not to do it again. I believed him that time. This was the guy I’d married, after all.

But it did happen again. And again. He stopped being contrite—now he blamed me for causing him to do it. He started lying to explain my injuries and made me tell the emergency department that I’d broken my arm by falling off the porch.

Why I went along with it, why I stayed as long as I did, is a mystery. I know it’s an old story shared by many abused wives. We tell ourselves that staying is better than leaving.

Ella was my saving grace; watching her grow was a pleasure. Michael loved her too, and I told myself that his attachment to her was a redeeming quality. He disapproved of any hint that I was teaching her feminist views, though. I received a couple of black eyes over that.

The final straw was the day he hit Ella. She’d started school that year. Over supper one day, she declared she’d like to be a teacher when she grew up. That was acceptable—Michael’s mother had been a teacher before marriage—but then she said, “Or maybe I’ll be a doctor or an airplane pilot.”

He frowned. “Those would get in the way of looking after your kids.”

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow—a trick she’d been practicing in the mirror. “Maybe I won’t have any kids. Women can choose, you know.”

He stared at her and suddenly swelled up with rage. When he flung his arm out, it wasn’t a slap: he backhanded her so hard she flew off her chair and hit the wall.

We left a week later. I grieved for the marriage I thought we’d had.

****

He moves forward into the living room now. “Ella’s coming home with me,” he says.

My throat tightens. No. I can’t allow that.

I’m still backed up against the front door. If I can open it, I can run to the neighbour’s and get help. I reach behind me to turn the knob.

But he’s already in my face. He grabs my arm, drags me away from the door. “You’re not leaving,” he says. I can see the steel in his expression, the tension in his jaw. He flings me toward the couch, and I land heavily, my cheek scraping on the rough upholstery.

Menace is radiating off him, and with a sinking heart I recognize this stage. He has already worked his way up to fury. From there, it was never much distance to full violence.

My purse is on the couch beneath me, under my right hip, close to my hand. Sitting up to mask my movements, I reach in and feel for my phone. Without looking, I adjust it in my hand, my fingertips gripping the side buttons. I try to remember what to press to activate the emergency SOS feature.

But something in my face or body alerts him. He leaps across the room toward me, yanking my arm up and sliding his other hand down to grab my phone. His face looms over mine, and I smell the acrid scent of his breath.

He smiles a cruel smile, the one I’d come to know so well. “No way,” he says. “I’ll just take that.” He drops me back against the sofa cushions and moves across the room, slipping the phone into his shirt pocket. He gazes out the front window. “Ella’ll be home from school soon, right?”

Yes, her school bus will be coming down Fallowfield Road in about 15 minutes. If he knows that, knows our daily routines, he must have been watching us. Maybe for days.

“How did you find us?” The words spill out of my mouth.

He smiles again, this time the false-charming one he uses. “Your mother told me you were here,” he says.

My heart sinks. Yes, my mother never accepted how dangerous he’d become. I’d tried to get her to promise to keep our secret, but I should have known he’d get around her.

I have to get away. Have to try something else. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I say. Maybe I can slip out the window there—I think it’s big enough, and it wouldn’t be a long fall to the ground.

He smiles crookedly. “All right.”

Maybe this will work. But as I head down the hall to the bathroom, he follows close behind. He stops me from closing the door. “We’ll just keep the door open, won’t we?” he says.

He leans against the wall across from the bathroom. A black feeling comes over me. With him watching, I can’t even try the window.

I go ahead and pee. He glances away, a small concession to my privacy. Taking advantage of his short lapse in attention, I palm a nail file that was lying on the counter. I leave the bathroom, edging my way past him.

“Wait a minute. What do you have in your hand?” His arm is blocking my way.

“Nothing,” I say.

But he forces my fingers back and takes the nail file from me, giving a short humourless snort. “That wouldn’t do you much good, Sarah.”

He’s right. It wouldn’t have been much of a weapon. I turn away and walk into the kitchen. “I’ll make tea.” I feel his eyes burning into my back, but he doesn’t stop me.

I fill the kettle with water and plug it in. He’s still in the hallway, watching me, but his main attention is on the front window. He’s waiting for Ella.

My anxiety rises: she’ll be here soon. Her school bus drops her at the corner, and she walks the block to our house with Alice, the next-door neighbour’s daughter. Alice goes to the same school but is in Grade 5.

My mind spins. I have to get out of here and get Ella away. I glance at him: he’s not watching me at the moment. I head for the back door, trying to look casual, but I trip over the open cardboard box that we’ve been filling with camping supplies for the coming weekend.

My stumble makes a noise. My eyes shoot toward him. He sees me.

I’m out of time. I’m still grappling with the back door lock when he slams into me. “No you don’t,” he shouts, throwing me against the wall.

My shoulder explodes in pain and I fall to the ground. I know right away the shoulder is dislocated—I’ve had this before. The pain is as excruciating as I remember.

I see the rage building in him and I recognize the ramping up process. His eyes are wild. He’s working himself up for unbridled violence. The fury in his face is something to behold.

I have to do something, even with my shoulder in agony.

Beside me is the box of camping supplies. I reach blindly into the box with my good hand and grab an aerosol container—it’s either the bug spray or the bear spray; I have no time to check the label.

As Michael lunges toward me, I reach out and spray it in his eyes. He collapses, shrieking, his hands clutched over his face.

I check. It was only the bug spray. It’s stinging him now, but it won’t hold him long.

Reaching with my good hand to unlock the back door, I gather my feet under me.

But as I go to stand, his arm shoots out and he grabs my ankle. His fingers close in an iron grip. I gasp in terror. My shoulder explodes in pain again, and I realize I’ve fallen against the cardboard box of supplies. I reach in and grab a jar at random. Using every ounce of strength I can muster, I throw it at him.

The jar hits him square on the temple. He falls to the floor, the jar landing next to his face.

I stare at him. The jar has a crack down the side, and something has leaked out of it. Peanut butter. A streak of it slides down his cheek, along with blood, and his hand has smeared it further.

We never had peanut butter in our house back then. It was one of the things he said he was allergic to, so we just didn’t buy it. Now I wonder if it was true, not just something he made up.

As I watch, his eyes bulge and he clutches his throat, gasping for breath.

Holding my shoulder carefully, I lean forward and extract my phone from his pocket. I will call 9-1-1.

But not too quickly.

First, I’ll get Ella to go next door with Alice. Under the circumstances.

END