He missed her, though. You could see it in the way he flipped through old photographs, or waited by the door, hoping she would return as though she had never left.
I did not miss her.
My bruised wrists were finally healing, the skin able to breathe without the threat of restraints.
Fear was no longer my constant companion, though it was impossible to forget the cold hatred in her eyes as the smoke crawled toward us.
And yet, there were rare moments, as I lay in bed in the late hours of the night, where I yearned for her fingers to comb through my hair, for her voice to filter through the room as she read me a bedtime story. I missed her. But I was glad she was gone.
***
Auden started his first year of school with a vocabulary of a nine-year-old. It had taken me a while to adjust to a world where Auden could communicate his thoughts and feelings, but it was a world I had wanted for him since the moment he first opened his eyes.
Making friends, however, proved just as difficult for him as it had been for me. Despite no longer being non-verbal, he was certainly no chatterbox. He kept to himself in class, and spent his lunchtimes with me, glued to my side until the chiming of the bell.
We were on the way to our usual spot in the woodlands when a ball almost tripped Auden over. I steadied his arm and looked around, sighing as a group of boys from my class ran over.
“Kick it back, freak.”
Jensen Loyd and I had been in the same class since year one. We had never been friends, but we'd been civil. He’d never been outwardly cruel. Not until my family left the church and rumours spread about my mother joining a cult.
“Who are you calling a freak?” I demanded.
“You. Your whole family.”
Although we were the same age, Jensen towered over me, his curved lips directly in my line of sight. His friends hung back, not wanting to get too close to the ‘freakish Saints’.
“We are not freaks,” I said, hands curling into fists at my side.
“I heard your psycho mum tried to get a demon out of you.”
“Shut up.”
“Father Andrej says your family is crazy.”
“Father Andrej is an old cow.”
Jensen’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”
“I said Father Andrej is an old cow.”
“You’re going to Hell for that.”
“What wouldyouknow?” I scoffed.
Jensen’s gaze slid to Auden who hid behind me, hands fluttering anxiously in front of his chest. “I know that you and that freak are the reason your mum went psycho.”
Shut him up.
I acted without thinking, hands slamming into Jensen’s chest with enough force to send him to the grass.
“Guses!” Auden’s fingers enclosed around my wrist, pulling me away from Jensen as he rose with a snarl.
His fist struck my nose with a crack, the metallic tang of iron flooding my mouth, blood spattering on the white collar of my school uniform. I staggered backwards, ears ringing asa teacher intervened, sending Jensen to the principal’s office before guiding me to the first aid room.
My father was quiet on the drive home, only speaking to tell me to keep the ice on my nose every time I lowered it. He didn’t yell at me for getting into a fight, nor did I receive a physical scolding of any kind. Instead, upon returning to Uncle Brady’s, he sat me down at the dining table and pulled up a chair to apply ointment to my throbbing bruise.
“He called mum a psycho,” I said quietly.
