She almost looked...scared? Guilty?
“My first husband, he was not a good man,” she said. “If you knew him, were friends with him, worked with him, you would disagree with that. Because he was polite. Handsome. Charismatic. For all intents and purposes, he was the ideal husband and father. On the surface. But when he closed the door and loosened his tie, put down his briefcase, he was no longer burdened by the surface. And I didn’t realize this until I married him.” She took a long breath. “Until I got pregnant.”
The words hit me with enough force to take my breath away.
Mom saw this, but she kept going. Because there was obviously more.
“And it started to slip, his mask, after your sister was born,” she said. “And I should’ve seen that, should’ve done more. But I couldn’t. For a number of reasons. Mostly because I had been so blindly in love I gave him control over everything. He counted on this and made it so I couldn’t leave with anything. By this point, I had you as well. And it didn’t get bad until you were talking. It was bad, don’t get me wrong. Bad in a way no man should scream at his wife the way he did with me. Treated me the way he did. But I was in love and I made excuses and I thought that loving someone was forgiving them for their ugliness. Until his ugliness was all there was and he felt entitled to my forgiveness. And then he started to get violent.”
My stomach dropped. Literally dropped.
I had to put my hand on it to make sure all of my organs are still in place, that’s how violent of a reaction I was having to the mere thought of someone hurting my mother.
My father hurting my mother.
My biological father.
“And he was sorry, and he loved me,” she whispered. “And he had brainwashed me into thinking that it was my duty as a wife to forgive him. I won’t make excuses because I don’t need to.” She squeezed my hand again and more tears trailed down her cheeks. “You know what love for the wrong man can do to the right woman. It’s a soft heart that gets manipulated by hard souls. I was making plans to leave. Saving. It was taking time because I had no one to lean on. He had made sure of that. To slowly isolate me from my support system, from people that might’ve seen the signs, tried to help me had I not shut them out at his gentle probing.”
My stomach lurched again.
Because Craig had done that.
He had tried to do that. With subtle comments about my family, about them stifling me. Not understanding me.
It might’ve worked not on a weaker woman, but on weaker bonds. As it was, no one was ever breaking the connection I had to my family. Though he did fray it. More because when I loved someone, I wanted to give them my all. Life and breathe them. But Lucy was used to this, as I’d been doing it on and off over the years.
And she understood it.
And never judged me,
I wondered what it would’ve been like for me if I hadn’t lost my baby, if Craig had managed to separate me from my family.
“It was you,” she murmured, jerking me out of that dangerous game of ‘would’ve beens.’
“What?”
“You were so tiny,” she whispered, eyes watering. “You had figured out a way to escape your bedroom at night, because you liked to explore. And you were bad at sleeping even then. You never cried once you figured out how to get yourself out of bed. You didn’t need attention in the night. You were just curious.”
She smiled through her tears.
I gripped her hand so hard my knuckles were white.
“I had burned dinner that night,” she said. “Or maybe I didn’t iron a shirt correctly.” She tilted her head. “I don’t remember now. It’s funny, it seemed so important at the time. Like it would be etched into my mind forever. But it faded. It took time and love and a life that I’ve been blessed with to make it happen, but it faded.”
I struggled with my tears.
“Whatever the reason, what won’t fade, what can’t ever fade is seeing your wide, beautiful, curious and pure eyes fixated on me on the floor. My nose was bleeding. You wiped it with your security blanket. The one that up until then, you hadn’t let me even wash without screaming. But when you see people hurting, my little baby, you would give them everything you had if only to make them feel better. And I was not going to take everything I had from my precious daughter. I was not going to let your first memories of the world be tainted with violence and pain. I planned on leaving. But then, your father did the only good thing he ever did.” She sucked in another strangled breath. “He left, after beating me enough to require your sister, at eight years old, to somehow get me and you to the hospital.”
Her voice cracked.
“And that’s where your dad found us. Your real dad. The one who took you to softball, who plaited your hair, who cared for you when you were sick. Because of your father, I found your real dad. But it was at the expense of Lucy’s innocence. I waited too long with Lucy and that’s my sin I will carry with me. It’s why she’s different than you. Because I left her in that place too long.”
“No, Mom. Lucy is different because she’s different,” I said firmly. “Because that’s how beautiful the world is, to give us that. You did not stop her from being who she was meant to be by being human. By having hope.”
“And the world has somehow not stopped you from being who you are, despite everything,” Mom murmured, cupping my face. “I’m so sorry I kept it from you,” she said.
“I understand,” I said, crying freely now. “I didn’t tell you and Dad what happened because I wanted to protect you from any and all kind of pain. That’s what you do when you love someone. You want to be true to them to show them you respect them, but sometimes the truth hurts, and you can’t hurt someone that precious to you without losing respect for yourself.” I squeezed Mom’s hand. “I respect you, Mom. I love you. And I’m proud of you for being strong enough to live through that. To find Dad. To give us a beautiful life without any inkling of that ugliness you carried around inside.”
Mom was sobbing now. We were notoriously the emotional half of the family. “My baby,” she croaked. “It takes no effort to create a beautiful life when you’ve got beauty around you. When you’ve got family. You need to remember that. What’s inside of us can alter the outsides, I know my little yogi is an expert on this.” She smiled at me. “But it’s the people on the outside, like your Heath, who can help repair the inside. I know that because your dad did that with me.”
I was sobbing too.
Because she was right.
Weren’t moms always?
Heath
The drive was silent at first.
Heath didn’t mind that.
Didn’t feel the awkwardness most people felt in silences. He preferred them. That—and many, many other things—had enchanted him about Polly. This bright, seemingly loud girl, was happy in silences. Didn’t rush to fill them. Just bathed in them.
He suspected she might’ve gotten that from her father.
Though he knew the man was not bathing in silence right now. He was stewing in it. In blame.
Because he was a good man. A good father. Heath recognized that because he knew what a bad one looked like. He spent the first sixteen years of his life looking at a bad one. Being beaten up by one.