He stiffened. So that man...broke her heart but she had remained engaged to him? Did she really love that man so damn much that—
‘Do you know Evianne caught him cheating on the very day she was to start working here?’
Veil went still.
‘At the airport. She thought I didn’t know. But I saw what she saw.’
His mother’s hands slowed down now. Moved more deliberately. Like she was making sure he understood every word.
‘She saw him kissing another woman. Her own cousin, Glenda. And she just...broke. She couldn’t make herself confront him. She was too destroyed. So she pocketed her ring on the plane, cried herself sick, and flew here with me.’
Veil suddenly had a hard time breathing—
‘She never answered his calls. Never went back. Never planned to.’
A hard time thinking.
‘She ended it the moment she saw him betray her. She just couldn’t make herself say the words—’
“Mother.” Veil’s voice barely worked as he cut her off. “I need you to start from the beginning.”
She looked at him oddly.
“Please.”
But at that one word, his mother simply nodded.
Because that was how she had always been.
Empathetic and intuitive...
His mother started signing the whole story.
In a way that he had never been...and maybe that was why he had ended up possibly making the biggest mistake of his life.
Geena suddenly paused, her hands hovering in the air like she was deciding whether to continue.
‘There’s something else you should know about that man.’
“What?”
‘The way he treated her.’His mother’s expression became pained.‘Do you know what he used to say to her about her virginity?’
Veil’s blood went cold.
‘He mocked her for it. Called her a tease. Said she was using it to manipulate him, to control him.’His mother’s hands moved sharply, angrily.‘He made her feel dirty for wanting to wait for someone who would cherish her. Made her feel like there was something wrong with her for having standards.’
No. God. No.
‘He weaponized her choice every chance he got. Made her feel like she was the problem. Like saving herself was some kind of character flaw instead of a gift.’
His world stopped turning at just about the same time his mother’s signed words came to an unexpected end. “Oh, Veil—” She was speaking out loud in her dismay. “You’ve done something...haven’t you?”
He couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t form the words.
Because every sentence his mother had just signed was playing against his own words in his head, side by side, like a mirror held up to a monster.
