Julian always hated restaurant food. He said it never tasted right. He loved home-cooked meals. Loved when I cooked. He would come home from work and sit at the table and eat the food I had prepared, and he would tell me it was perfect.
My eyes don’t leave his face. “You can ‘fix’ yourself. But I’m not going back.”
Something sharp flashes across his face—a flicker of visceral, impatient irritation—but it’s gone in an instant, snuffed out as his gaze darts behind me, then down to the mop leaning against my leg.
His jaw tightens.
Then he says, carefully gentle but cruel in its softness:
“Do you think your father would be proud to see you like this?”
My stomach clenches.
He doesn’t stop, completely blind to the nuclear ground he’s just touched.
“He provided for you your entire life. Made sure you had everything. Kept you safe. Raised you properly. He protected you.”
Protectedme.
The words are absurd. They are so far from the truth that I almost laugh.
His hand gestures vaguely, dismissively, at the café around us. “And this is what you choose? Mopping floors for strangers?” His eyes cut to Maeve, sharp and ugly. “Hanging around with this crowd?”
This crowd. He is talking about Maeve. About Kieran. About the people who have given me more in a few months than he gave me in five years.
He is using my father—the man who terrorized me, who locked me out, who left bruises on my body and scars on my mind—as a weapon.
Julian always loved my father.
He always praised him.
Your father is a remarkable man, Julian would say, on the drive home from family dinners.The way he carries himself.The way he commands a room. He would shake his head, half-admiring, half-envious.I hope I can be half the man he is someday.
Always called him “a strong, honorable man.”
Honorable.
My father didn’t know the meaning of the word. He knew only power and the pleasure of wielding it.
At the funeral, Julian cried more than I did.
He stood beside me, his arm around my shoulders, his body shaking with sobs. People came up to us afterward, patting his arm, murmuring condolences.Such a devoted son-in-law. Such a caring husband.
I stood there, dry-eyed, watching them comfort him.
He cried for a man who terrorized me.
I didn’t cry for my father at all.
There were no tears. No grief. No sense that something precious had been taken from me.
When they lowered my mother’s casket, a deep, terrifying relief settled into my chest. Quiet. Sharp. Shameful.
I had to hide it. I had to press my lips together and look down at the ground and pretend that I was mourning.
But inside, I was breathing for the first time.
She would never have to flinch at a slamming door again. She would never have to whisper an apology for breathing too loud. She would never have to wonder what mood would greet her when he came home. The guessing was over. The walking on eggshells was done. The long, slow suffocation of her life had finally ended.
