I shook my head, trying to reconcile what he was telling me with what I knew about my parents.
“Isn’t that contradictory? A restraining order, but he wanted her back?” I asked.
“Your dad hasn’t been a rational man in anything concerning your mother for many years,” Alex said. “Your mom never gave up on getting you back in her life.”
“Why… why would shewantme back? After the lies… The things I said in court…” My voice trailed off, the sick coil of guilt wrapping around my midsection.
This time it was Alex who reached out and took my hand in his.
“You were her son, Nicki. She loved you. You need to listen to me and believe when I tell you this,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Your Mom knew why you lied in court.”
I looked up at him, startled.
“Your father—Willis—liked to gloat. He made sure she knew that those werehiswords you told the court.Hislies. She just didn’t have a way toprovethat they were lies. You were a teenager, Nicki. You did what you had to, in order to survive,” he said.
I shook my head, unwilling to be so quick to forgive myself.
“No! I should have found another way, done something else to stop him. To protect her…” I began. “We had an agreement!”
“What do you mean?” Kaine asked. “What kind of agreement?”
I looked up at him, wanting desperately to get lost in them and forget all of this. Anger and grief threatened to suck my soul into darkness, and I finally admitted out loud the cancer that had been eating at me.
“Dad… Dad was going to kill her. Me. The day she served the divorce papers,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “He held a gun to my head, and I promised… promised that if he let her live… I’d stay.”
I heard the shocked silence in the room and felt the tears running down my face. I rubbed at them angrily. Tears weren’t going to fix anything anymore. They never had.
“That’s why you broke up with me…” Kaine whispered, realization hitting him.
I nodded, my head down. “He threatened you. He said if I didn’t break up with you, stop all communication, he’d kill you, too.”
“Fuck, Nicki…” he whispered, stricken. I looked at him.
“I’m so sorry, Kaine. I didn’t want to leave you. I knew what it would do to you, but I had to,” I answered. “I’m sorry, but I… I couldn’t let him hurt you.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Nicki,” Kaine insisted, wrapping me in a hug. “You were a kid. Your father was insane. You were doing what you had to just to survive. I just wish… I just wish there had been a way for me to help you.”
It felt so fucking good to have his arms around me, to have everything out in the open.
“Your momlovedyou, Nicki,” Marty said, his voice breaking slightly as he spoke. “She loved you so much. She knew you told the court those lies because you had to. She forgave you a long time ago.”
“She— she wrote you something…” Rhiannon slid an envelope toward me. I looked up at her in surprise.
“Your mom knew that with her disease, there was no telling when it might… might claim her,” she said. “She wrote you this and asked me to give it to you if— if the worst happened.”
The envelope was long, the paper stiff under my fingers. I opened the seal and pulled out a couple of pages of unlined paper, filled with her handwriting.
My Darling Nicki,
When you read this, I will be gone. I am only hoping that it has occurred years after we have had a chance to rebuild a life together, you and I, far away from Will’s influence.
I don’t know what kind of an arrangement you made with your father, but I know that, somehow, I owe you for the fact that he granted me the divorce without a fight, much less a settlement and medical care. I know Will, and I know how he operates. He would never have let me go without getting something in return. My skin crawls at the thought that you paid for my freedom with your own flesh and blood. I would gladly have taken your place, but he wouldn’t have let me. Will is an “all or nothing” kind of man.
I want you to know I didn’t willingly leave you in your father’s care. I was injured far worse than I let on. After Will beat me, I called Alex for help. He flew to Florida and stole me away from your father and hid me in a private hospital under an assumed name. I was in a coma for several weeks. Unfortunately, I had never told him about you, so he hadn’t known to take you, too. By the time I woke, your father had already taken steps to keep us apart, and I have been
heartbroken ever since. I’m so sorry that I left you alone to face him! It was never my intent.
As I ask you to forgive me for leaving you, please know I forgive you for the things you said in the court hearing. I know you had to lie to survive your life with Will. I do not blame you, and you should not blame yourself. We have all done things we had to do, to survive.
