Their vicious insults were so chilling to him and his little brothers that one of the boys would bloody or bruise the other until their parents would have to stop their fighting temporarily to take care of their sons. It was a heavy price to pay, but one they believed was worth it. I’d held our future baby in my stomach then, and he’d promised that he would never turn into his parents. He vowed to take care of me and our children, and he vowed to love us harder than either of his parents had ever loved him. He promised me the world, and I believed him.
I’d never met Tav’s parents, and after that story, I’d never wanted to. I ached for the little boys that cowered in closets and under beds, and I was reminded of my own moments spent cowering in the shadows of my own house. With tears of sadness in my eyes, Tav and I swore to be better parents than we’d both had. I think it’s something that connected us more than we realized. And I think I lived for that connection more thanIrealized.
I unstrapped the snowshoes from my boots, planted my bottom on the top stair of the chalet and took in the stark beauty around me. The thought crossed my mind that these mountains could be like calm, benevolent parents or traumatic, terrorizing tempests.
One of my own worst childhood memories came back to me then, and with head pounding and teeth on edge, I stumbled into the chalet trying to forget the night a series of small horrors unfolded into tears and terror.
The first time I’d gone on antidepressants was because of one entire night spent curled up under my dingy mattress.
I gulped, trying to distract myself by punching at the smart house screen, suddenly feeling the need to confirm the security system was operational. I needed a distraction, any distraction. These were the moments my medication was prescribed for. For the seconds that stretched to eons when it felt like the world was crumbling down on my shoulders.
I continued tapping through the menus until I found the one thing I knew how to do on this house: the weather report.
“What’s the weather?” I could hear the crack in my own voice.
I dropped down onto the leather couch, letting the sun-warmed hide against my back loosen my tense muscles.
“Today: clear with a high of twenty. The overnight: snow showers with a chance of gale-force winds. Tomorrow below zero temperatures and heavy cloud cover will make visibility low.”
I groaned.
Sliding deeper into the leather, I let my mind wander as I thought it was odd that the smart house wasn’t connected to the internet but was still able to give me a current weather report. Maybe the weather radio was powered by a satellite. Or maybe the internet wasn’t broken, but only disabled. Maybe the fact that the chalet could feed me the weather report and not my social media messages was afeature, not aflaw.
I remembered Tav’s fingers whipping across the keyboard, the incessanttap, tap, taplike a soundtrack to my life with him.
I loved Tav, but what had that gotten me?
Where did love get mom?
Tears burned at my eyelids as I wiggled myself deeper into the couch, furry blanket wrapped around my shoulders while I hummed softly to myself in an effort to keep the memories at bay.
LoveandSundays. I hated them equally.
Twenty-Five
“Look at this pretty girl in her Sunday best.”
Thick fingers shaped like calloused sausages tugged at my shoulders. I pressed my knobby-kneed legs against the metal bed frame, wedging myself under the mattress to avoid his contact.
“Come to papa Chuck. Give me a hug, girl.” I cringed at the slur in his words.
Tears leaked at the edges of my eyes as I squirmed out of his feeble grasp, my lungs screaming with the need for fresh air. Chuck’s palm yanked at the last place he could reach then, my strawberry dress from church tore at the seams, the dainty spaghetti strap not nearly strong enough for a grown man’s grip.
I crammed my eyelids tightly closed, fresh tears melting down my cheeks as I prayed over and over for someone to deliver me from under this mattress. With the smell of cat excrement in my nostrils, I prayed for deliverance from this desperate place. I prayed for a miracle and I believed that if I prayed hard enough, maybe Bradley or someone else would knock on the door and interrupt all that fighting they were always doing.
I fell asleep clutching my strawberry dress to my chest and blocking out the vicious insults mom and Chuck hurled at each other late into Sunday night. At some point he shuffled out the door, fired up his car and left mom early before he had to be at work Monday morning.
I hated Sundays.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Twenty-Six
The Second Sunday
I shot off of the sofa, heart in my throat after another terrorizing dream-memory. At the edges of my vision I saw someone rushing away from the chalet.
Another box.
