Then she runs off with other men, and cuts off my power, and cancels my cards.

You’ll make her turn it all back on, and pay what she owes me, and get on her knees and apologize, or I’ll take this to the newspapers.” Lorena added that I was cheap, that fifteen hundred a month was nothing to people like us, that I owed her two hundred dollars for her trouble, and that it was no wonder her brother had needed to put me in my place.

And Craig, arms crossed, told me he had hit me because I was out of line, that it was a husband’s right to discipline his wife, and that if I turned the cards back on and came home he’d forget the whole thing.

They said all of it out loud.

They admitted the extortion.

They confessed the assault and called it their right.