Brody was a steady, constant presence in the background.A fresh stack of split birch appeared by our back steps, and a small wooden fox showed up on the hall table outside my room, its grain running like flame through its body, with no note or explanation.Sometimes I’d look up from a sink full of dishes and catch him cutting across our yard, jacket open, head down, and he’d lift two fingers when he noticed me, like a wave scaled down to fit what I could manage.
The town didn’t change.It had just learned new ways to intrude.In the pharmacy line, in the bakery, at the post office, eyes slid over me and then away, like touching a hot stove; sometimes pity, sometimes judgment, sometimes both.When it got loud in my head, I went to Adam’s on off-hours: a back door, a bar stool at the end, a plate slid in front of me by a teenager with a nose ring who called mebabeand bullied me into finishing my soup.At closing, Adam would lean on the bar and talk about produce orders and new beers until the noise inside me quieted.I never mentioned that I could feel Brody’s attention the second I walked in.I didn’t need to.It felt like standing in a patch of sun you didn’t know you were desperate for until it found you.
The rumour mill swirled again when, somehow, people found out about my pregnancy test, which quickly turned into a love child that I may or may not be keeping.
Jackson saved me in ways he didn’t realize.He’d tear outside and demand I help with a snow fort “witharchitecture,Aunt Cass,” which meant I would hollow out a door with a stick and declare itstructurally sound.He’d throw himself into the drift, leaving a perfect imprint, and then repeat the process until the lawn was covered in snow angels that had crash-landed.Once, his face pink, with bright blue eyes and blonde hair sweaty under his hat, he asked, “Are you happy today?”I told him yes.It was true, for that hour.That counted.
At night, when the house finally went still, I worked.I finished the pages for the contracts I’d promised, I did the research, and smoothed someone else’s voice across scenes until the edges were invisible.Then I opened a different notebook and wrote the timeline my therapist asked for, in clean lines and unemotional entries, as if thesheinside those pages wasn’t me.I wrote the truth like I was laying down track: here is where he made me feel seen; here is where my ribcage learned the shape of waiting; here is where he promised; here is where he pressed harder when I pulled away.
The stack of journals grew.So did the little victories for Mason’s business.So did the small, ordinary moments I didn’t recognize as healing until later, the way my shoulders didn’t jump at every sound, the way the cold didn’t bite as deep, the way laughter came out of me one afternoon when Adam dropped an entire tray of cream puffs and Chase swore it was amedical emergency.
The last Sunday of the month, I took over the family room.Journals were scattered around me on the rug, dates flagged with sticky notes, receipts clipped together, and my therapist’s questions scribbled on an index card:Where did he push past your no?What story did you tell yourself to survive that moment?What did you trade for the promise of later?I’d been writing for hours, legs going numb under me, when Mom came in with two mugs and that soft clatter of bracelets I’ve known my whole life.
She stopped just inside the doorway, taking it all in, the ink on my fingers, the mess of pages, the way I was sitting like a guard dog who would bite anyone who stepped too close to the pile.She didn’t ask permission to join me.She set a mug near my knee and folded herself onto the rug, knees to the side, like she had all the time in the world.
“What are you doing, baby?”she asked, voice gentle, as if I might retreat if she spoke too loudly.
I kept my hand on the journal in front of me, the way you hold a palm on a sleeping dog.“Homework,” I said.“My therapist wants objectivity.Third person.Facts first and then feelings.”I swallowed.“Write the story the way a stranger would read it.And...she asked me some questions that I didn't have answers for right away, so she asked me to think on them, write my answers and come back to her next week with what I figured out.”
Mom traced the spine of the nearest notebook with one finger.“And what does the stranger see?”
I flipped to the page I’d just finished.The words wavered and then steadied.“He made her believe,” I read, my own voice too calm.“He figured out where she lived in her head, the part that always worried she was too much and not enough, and he moved in there.He promised the future and gave her pieces of it.Just enough for her to believe.He watched her give up things that mattered and called it proof of love.”I blew out a breath.“She thought their love was real.Maybe it was just a lie like everything else.”
The room went soft around the edges.Mom’s hand found my ankle and stayed there, warm through the knit of my socks.We sat like that for a long time, steam curling from our mugs, the house humming its winter sounds, the heat kicking on, wood popping in the stove, the far-off thud of Dad’s footsteps upstairs.
“Have you decided yet?”she asked eventually.“When your contracts are done.What are you going to write for you?”
I laughed, a thin sound.“I will finish these two contracts I am working on now.Then… I don’t know.”I stared at the pages fanned around us.“I don’t know if I even have a story worth telling.”
She didn’t argue right away.She let the quiet hold us again, then tapped one of the journals, softly.“This,” she said simply.“This is the story, from your voice.You do not owe anyone your pain, but youownit.If you want to, you can turn it into something that belongs to you again.”
I shook my head, the old fear lifting like a reflex.“If I write it, everyone will know.They already think they do.”
“Then let them be wrong on the record,” she said, not unkind.“Wrap the truth in fiction.Change names, details, and places.You know how to do that better than anyone.Protect yourself.But tell your story, Cassidy.Not his version.Not hers.Not theirs.Not what strangers are whispering.Yours.”
The words landed inside me with a weight that felt like relief.
She angled to catch my eyes.“And listen to me, really listen:Ibelieve you.”Her voice didn’t shake.“I believeinyou.You were hunted, lied to.Cornered.That isn’t love.It never was.None of this makes you dirty.Or tainted...or anything else you've been calling yourself in that beautiful brain of yours.”Her mouth trembled, but she kept going.“You are not what he did to you.You are not what they say.You are my daughter, and when you are ready, you will write the hell out of this, and you will take your voice back.”
Something in my chest cracked open and let breath in.Not entirely, but clean enough.
I looked down at my hands, smudged with ink, and then at the journals we’d made space for on the rug.My life lay out like constellation lines.If I connected them differently, could I create a new shape?A story where I wasn’t made small to fit someone else’s need?
“I don’t know where to start,” I admitted, voice small.
“Start where it hurts,” she said.“Or start where it stopped hurting.Start anywhere.Just… start.”
I reached for a blank notebook, the top one from the stack Mom had bought at the stationery store, with creamy pages and a soft cover, the kind that invites a pen to glide.I smoothed my palm over the first page, felt the old familiar thrill rise in my blood.
I dated the corner.Wrote a title I might change.Then, because my therapist would approve, I wrote the first line in third person:
She thought love arrived in grand gestures.She learned it survives in quiet ones.
Mom didn’t move.She stayed beside me while I kept going, sentence after sentence, until the light outside shifted blue and the heat kicked on again and the house began to smell like dinner.
When I finally stopped, my hand ached, and something inside me did not.I capped my pen and leaned back, letting my head rest against the couch.In the doorway, I caught a glimpse of Brody crossing the back step with a crate of kindling for Dad.He glanced in, met my eyes through the glass, and didn’t come in.He just tipped his chin, likekeep going,and vanished toward the woodshed.
I looked down at the page.My page.My voice.Not clean, not tidy, but mine.
