And then she said something that knocked the air out of me.
“He didn’t just hurt me,” she said. “He hurt his children, too. They grew up under a man who made them believe love had to come with fear. They deserve peace now. They deserve freedom.”
For the first time in my life, someone outside of our family spoke the truth for us. I sat in my office, the television muted, tears stinging my eyes but refusing to fall. I was grateful that she thought enough of us to include that part of the story, to give context to our silence.
Sr. didn’t deserve to be remembered as an honorable man when he was vile in life.
What hurt most was realizing how much more my mother must have endured than she ever admitted. Seeing those videos of his wife, the violence, the degradation, the way she froze when he cornered her, made me sick to my stomach.
It made me realize that my mother had lived through the same hell, just without anyone to save her. That night, I couldn’t sit still. I turned off the television, turned off my phone, and stared out the window at the reporters gathered outside of BlackSphere. Camera flashes lit up the driveway every few minutes. They wanted a statement, a reaction, a headline, but they weren’t going to get it.
Caleb had already handled the public side, releasing a brief statement requesting privacy. It was clean, professional, and detached, exactly what we needed.
No one in this family was mourning the man. We were mourning the damage. I rubbed a hand over my chest, breathing through the ache that refused to leave.
If I was going to move forward, I couldn’t bury this; I wanted to confront it.
Not for him, but for me, and my mom.
Before leaving the office, I picked up my phone and called Dr. Morgan’s office.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Morgan’s practice,” her receptionist answered.
“Hi, it’s Calla Black,” I said quietly. “I’d like to schedule a session for my mother and me as soon as possible.”
There was a brief pause, the kind that carries quiet understanding. “Of course, Ms. Black. We’ll make room this week.”
“Thank you,” I said, my voice catching slightly before I hung up.
When I set the phone down, I leaned back in my chair and stared around the office that had once belonged to him. Every trace of his presence was gone, but his shadow still lingered in small, invisible ways.
Not anymore, because I finally felt ready to face all of it, to untangle what he’d done to us, to my mother, to me, and I wasn’t going to do it quietly.
Dr. Morgan’s office always smelled like lavender and safety. It was quiet there, insulated from the noise of the world, the reporters, the endless phone calls.
The moment I walked in, I felt my shoulders lower a little. My mother sat beside me, hands folded in her lap, her wedding band long gone, now replaced with an engagement ring, though the faint indentation was still visible from her previous band. She hadn’t said much since the news broke, only that she was ready to talk when I asked if she wanted to do therapy with me alone today.
When Dr. Morgan greeted us, her tone was soft but purposeful. “You both carried a lot for a long time. Today doesn’t have to be about closure; it can just be about truth.”
I nodded, unable to find my voice. My mother only said, “Alright.”
We sat on the couch together, the space between us small but full of everything we’d never spoken. Dr. Morgan looked gently at my mother. “Andrea, what would it feel like to tell Calla what you want her to know? And trusting her to see you as more than just her mother, but another woman who has endured?”
My mother took a long breath, her fingers trembling slightly. “It would feel like setting something down,” she whispered.
She didn’t look at me when she started speaking. Her gaze stayed fixed on her hands.
“When I married your father, I thought I was stepping into the life I’d prayed for,” she said quietly. “He was charming, successful, the kind of man people respected. I thought I’d made it. I didn’t realize that what I had really done was step into a cage.”
Her voice cracked on that word. I felt my throat tighten, but I didn’t move. I wanted to give her space to say it finally.
She talked first about the loneliness, how it crept in slowly, how it disguised itself as stability. She spoke of shrinking to survive, about learning to measure her words and footsteps to keep the peace.
She said it as if she were describing someone else’s life, detached but full of ghosts.
When she paused, I saw the tears welling in her eyes. “I used to tell myself it wasn’t that bad,” she whispered. “That other woman had it worse. That if I just stayed calm, he would too. I thought if I prayed enough, cooked enough, loved enough, sucked and fucked enough, I could soften him.”
My stomach twisted. “Mom,” I said softly, but she shook her head.
