Mom replies to something the other person said.
“She saw too much. You remember that, or do I need to remind you of what happened with my first husband?”
The words land like ice water dumped over my head. My heart trips. I press harder against the wall, suddenly afraid she will hear it pounding.
She continues. Her voice has dipped lower now, but there is a manic brightness threaded through it.
“I’m not going to repeat history,” she says. “I cleaned up that mess, and no one has ever connected me to it. Minxy does not get to walk around repeating stories she doesn’t understand. She’s safer where she is, and so are we.”
My skin prickles all over.
Cleaned up that mess.
That mess.
My first husband.
For years the only version I got was he died, suicide, he couldn’t handle the marriage, he ended it. There were whispers, sure, but nothing I could ever pin down. Any time I edged closer, Mom shut it down with tears or anger, depending on the day.
She never once said anything that sounded like she had to “clean up” anything.
Mom scoffs. “No, you do not give her my number. You don’t let her call. If she writes, those letters stay with you. The only thing I want from that school is reports. Grades. Behavior. You send me bills, I send you money. That is the arrangement.”
There it is again.
School.
But it doesn’t sound like a school.
It sounds like a facility. A place you keep problems, not educate them.
I press my head back against the wall and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment.
Minx saw something. Something big enough that our mom is still scared years later. Big enough that she thinks her own kid is a liability.
What did you see, kid?
Mom’s voice goes higher, impatient. “I don’t care if you think she’s lonely. She made this bed. She poked her nose where itdidn’t belong, and now she has to deal with the consequences. Children don’t get to throw around accusations and then go live a normal life.”
If there is a world record for how fast a person’s blood can turn cold, I think I am close.
Children. Accusations. Consequences. First husband. That mess.
Something ugly slides into place in my mind and refuses to move.
I hear her sigh then. “Look. Just keep her there. I’ll send the next tuition payment on Monday. That should keep your board happy. She stays quiet, we all move on. If she doesn’t stay quiet, and she tells anyone what she thinks she saw, then we all have a problem. You included.”
I’ve heard enough.
I push away from the wall as quietly as I can and slip down the hallway, each breath feeling too loud. The party noise grows again as I move toward the main room. People laugh and talk like the world is normal.
Nobody here knows there’s a girl locked away somewhere in a school that doesn’t feel like a school, because she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. Something to do with a man who died and a woman who just told an administrator she “cleaned up that mess.”
I drop into a chair near the back balcony and stare at an empty glass on the table in front of me.
I knew my mom was cold. I knew she liked control. I knew her story about my father never added up. I didn’t know it scared her enough that she would stash her own daughter somewhere and force her silence with tuition payments.
Heat crawls up the back of my neck.
