I think to taunt me.There, Belly, look at what you can’t have because I’ve got you imprisoned in your own apartment.
But it didn’t matter. I snatched the notecard up, too eager to hide my excitement over hearing from them.
The message was sweet and carefully worded:
Happy Birthday and Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. We know we haven’t been seeing eye to eye on things this year, but we love you so much, no matter what. And we’d really like for you to come to our Joining Ceremony in July and meet your incoming grandchildren.
They still thought I’d chosen this. The compromise in those careful words broke something in me.
Tears pooled in my eyes.
“Okay, that’s enough.”
Dennis ripped the notecard out of my hand. A few seconds later, both it and the flowers were deposited into the kitchen trash can.
The flowers set Dennis off again. “This is a travesty….” he said in the same politician voice he’d used to convince the people of Saint Everette that he deserved to be their next mayor.
He ordered me to text them back.
To tell Noelle he wanted to walk her down the aisle.
To insist to Holly that he had every right to be there at the summer double Joining Ceremony I fully planned to attend. By myself.
Of course, he could have just texted them himself. He’d been holding my phone hostage since November. But no, for some sick reason, he wanted me to do it. To give him that one last piece of my dignity.
Or maybe he just needed the excuse to hit me.
Who knew? Either way, I ended up nursing another black eye over the next two days while Dennis grumbled about me being ungrateful and how it was his money that paid all the bills. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that the only reason I wasn’t paying my own bills with my own money was because he was holding me hostage.
But I kept my mouth shut. And a couple of days later, Dennis went out again.
I couldn’t wait anymore.
That night when he returned to the apartment, I pretended to be asleep when he came over to release me from the handcuff he’d used to attach me to the floor mount.
The moment he unlocked the cuff, I bolted for the door.
I might have made it—if not for his latest installation: a chained lock.
It wasn’t enough to fully trap me, but just complicated enough to slow me down.
I had the door cracked open when?—
His hand slammed down on my mouth, and he pulled me back inside, kicking the door shut behind us.
He released me after redoing the lock with one hand, but I’d barely taken a step back from him when he slammed his fist into my face.
It didn’t matter.
No pain in the world could compare to the despair I felt as he hit me again and again.
I’d had one chance,onechance, and I’d failed. That meant there was no getting away. I wouldn’t be attending my daughters’ double wedding.
No… While they walked down the aisle with flowers in their hair, they’d think I’d abandoned them. They’d never know the truth.
That I’d tried.
That I’d failed.
