“Don’t touch me.” I keep my voice flat, but we are already drawing attention through the windows and from the other shoppers walking by.
Joelle doesn’t seem to notice or care. She steps closer into my space, and I fight the urge to back up. “What did you do to my son?” She’s louder this time, her chin high, hands tight on the strap of her purse. “What did you do? Iknowyou did something. He wouldn’t stay away like this willingly.”
Once upon a time, I liked this woman, and she liked me. We joked and shared glasses of wine at her country club while waiting for Aaron and his brother and father to finish their round of golf. Back when I thought this might be a family—a normal family—I could belong to.
Even after Aaron and I broke up, I had no animosity toward his family. Not until they began covering up his crimes.
“I have nothing to say to you.” I step sideways and attempt to go around her.
“Well, I have something to say to you.” Her heels snap hard behind me. “You won’t answer my calls, and you only respond to my letters through an attorney. What are you trying to hide, Sera?”
People are pausing on the sidewalk to watch the growing spectacle despite the stiff wind. I can feel Hannah’s eyes hot onmy face, and when I glance at her, she angles her head toward her car. I give a tiny nod, and she hurries away to pull the car around.
“I trusted you. Took you into my home. I should have listened to my husband.” She sneers, but the pain on her face is clear. “You were never going to fit in. You weren’t ‘wife’ material. Not coming from where you did.”
The words slice through my heart, finding a soft spot in my armor, and I bite hard on the inside of my lip to prevent it from giving me away, by doing something so pathetic as to wobble.
“White trash.” She spits. “I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn who your real father is. A disgusting, vulgar man who makes his living beating people.” Her chin shakes with outrage. “The police might not be able to prove you were behind the assault on my son, even though it was obvious. But blood will out, won’t it? Solve your problems with violence.”
“That’s your son’s MO, not mine.” The words are out before I can stop them. “Your precious son is a monster, and you can’t admit it even to yourself. He didthis.” I yank my hair back and gesture at the scars on my face.
“Because I wouldn’t give him what he wanted. So, if you want to throw accusations about parenting around, maybe you should look at your own.”
Joelle’s eyes dilate, the only sign my words have found a target. Her gaze narrows as she takes me in, and I instantly regret my outburst.
“Look at you.” She shakes her head in disgust. “You’ve been in another fight… are you going to blame that on my son, too?”
I grit my teeth.
“You’ve done something to him, or you’ve made him too afraid to come home.” Her voice breaks, and part of the icy shield around my heart does, too.
“All I get are emails… He hasn’t called me in over a year. Do you know what that does to a mother? I’ve begged him to come back, but he only writes, ‘I can’t.’ It’s you.” Her voice rises again. “He can’t come home because he’s afraid you’ll accuse him of something. Or that your degenerate brother will hurt him.”
I stay silent. She’s not wrong. Aaron is never coming home.
I don’t know the details of what Brady and Vincent did. I didn’t ask, and they wouldn’t have told me anyway, but I know they’ve been behind the ruse of making Aaron’s family believe he’s still alive and traveling the globe. Maybe it’s cruel, but they did it to protect me the same way this woman lied to cover for her son after he threw acid in my face.
Emotion rises in my throat. “I can’t give you what you want. I don’t know where he is.”
That’s the truth.
“You took him from me.”
“And he took something from me!” The words come out so clear I’m momentarily stunned. I stand taller. “For months before our relationship ended. Piece by piece. And then the months he terrorized me, while you covered for him, before ultimately throwing that acid. You understand he meant to kill me, right? It was sheer luck I didn’t take the acid straight to my face.”
I shiver thinking about the conversation I overheard when Brady and the doctor thought that I was sleeping. The doctor had explained to my brother how fortunate I was.
If the acid had struck me as Aaron intended it would have gone in my mouth or up my nose causing damage to the tissue and making it swell. I would have suffocated. The exact words the surgeon used are seared into my brain: “gruesome death.”
I force myself back to the present. “But that’s over.” I harden my expression. “I’m done letting your son and your family take from me. Stay away. Don’t call, don’t email and never…evertouch me again. Or maybe I will ask mydegeneratebrother to help me.”
Joelle’s eyes flick to the raised phones around us recording the confrontation. Her breath shudders, and her eyes gloss. She blinks hard but then resets her jaw.
“You wanted him, and when he didn’t want you anymore, you made up stories and ruined his life.” She swallows. The line of her throat works as her fingers whiten on the purse strap. “You’ll get what’s coming.”
My lungs pull in the crisp air as I watch her stalk away, and for the first time in a long time I feel like… me.
I don’t say a word the entire ride to my therapist’s office, where we hold the group sessions, but I can feel Hannah’s gaze return over and over to my profile.
