SAWYER
He leavesus alone in this room and everything I want to say balls in my throat. I don’t know what to do. I want to hate him. I want to scream. I want to hurt him even a little bit the way I’m hurting.
Instead I look at our sister. “Is she okay?”
“They gave her some sort of sleeping medication. She’ll be fine. Koda and Tagar are taking her back home tonight.” I nod, looking away. “Sawyer?—”
I shake my head. Whatever he wants to say I can’t deal with it. “I don’t want to hear it.” I scrub my fingers through my hair. I can’t fucking believe this. What am I going to tell Jane? We have a sister. And a brother. Holy shit. We have siblings. While we wait for Kenji, every single thing that has happened these last few months plays like a reel in my mind.
“I can’t believe you lied to me. After everything.”
I refuse to look at him, but I feel him looking back at me.
We’re going to die here and it’s all my fault.
All because I let this asshole into my life.
Part of me wonders if Ivan would have found me anyway.
It hits me then. “Fuck.”
“What?”
I want to glare at him. Just his voice sends shocks of pain to my system. I’ve had heartbreak before, but this is... I don’t even know. It’s a pain so sharp it’s stealing my breath.
“The obituary.” I say. “That’s probably why didn’t want an obituary. Jane used a picture and everything.” Something my mother never did. She went by her nickname and never used her last name. It makes sense. The only thing that makes sense.
It’s why she was so adamant about not having one. It was almost to the point of angry determination until I finally agreed. I’d thought she was feeling unwell, but no. She was terrified.
Even dying she wanted to protect us.
The last few months she was alive things changed. She became more paranoid. I thought it was because of how ill she got, but she was afraid. Afraid, yet she never told us. Maybe she didn’t think Ivan would find us. How would he? We’re adults. How would he even know. Still, why not tell us? She had to have known this was a possibility.
Or maybe not.
My head hurts.
Then it all flashes before my eyes. Truly, it all hits me. Flashes of understanding like a reel in my mind.
In high school, we weren’t allowed on field trips.
In college, when our restaurant was set on fire, my mother was frantic with terror. She expected the person who did it to come for our home.
No. She thought they’d come for us.
She kept to herself. Didn’t go anywhere. Her restaurant was her life because it brought people to her, since she was afraid to leave those walls.
It was him. It was all him.
She expected him to find her and their children.
Her own personal boogeyman.
My mother loved people, loved to feed them. She never left her home for longer than she needed to, had most things delivered to us. Her restaurant was her sanctuary, the place she could socialize and be a little bit of the person she wanted to be.
She got pregnant with me. Took his daughter, stole that statue for some reason, and started a new life away from him. I thought she was reclusive and paranoid.
I’d been so stupid.
