I feel nothing. He’s still my husband, but he’s also a rapist and a murderer. He said he loved me, but I no longer believe it. I thought he did, but it can’t be true. How could he watch me grieve for my father and never say a word?
“It’s hard, baby, and it’s unfair, but it’s going to be all right. We’ll make it through this, you hear me?”
“Who called the police?” I ask, even though it doesn’t really matter anymore.
“Mayleen shot that cruel woman, then she called the police.”
“I don’t understand.”
There’s more coming at me and I don’t know how much more I can handle. How could my aunt have been there, and how could my mother know so much about what happened even though she wasn’t?
“Your aunt was the maid at the ranch.”
“May?”
Oh, my God. May isshort for Mayleen.
That’s why she looked so sad when I lost the baby, why she took care of me even when I resisted. I was not alone. My aunt was with me, and I didn’t even know it.
“I know you were upset because I didn’t support your union with Alex, but now you understand why. He’s an evil person.”
“And you and Dad let him get away with murder? He killed an innocent girl. He strangled her to death.”
“You don’t understand.” My mother’s shaking her head from side to side. “If someone offers you $500,000, what would you do?”
“If it meant I had to go to prison, to leave my family, to have everybody turn against me and think of me as a criminal, I would say no, Mom. That’s what I would do.”
I feel betrayed by all of them, including my father. I wish he were here so I could tell him how I feel, but I have to live with the words I wish I could say to him.
“I love you so much, my child. But I couldn’t tell you the truth because there was a contract, and if I broke it, they said they would hurt you and send me to prison.” She wipes her eyes. “But I was terrified for you. You might think I left you, but I never did. I’ve watched over you as best as I could. Some of the money we got helped me with that.”
I just stare at her, words stuck inside my throat, my head spinning from the impact of the truth. I allow her to continue speaking. It looks like she has a lot she wants to get off her chest.
“I grieved with you for my grandbabies when you lost them. I carried your pain from a distance.” She inhales sharply. “I pretended to be an employee at every hospital you went to. I was a housekeeper for one of your neighbors in Colorado. and when I couldn’t watch over you, I paid someone to do it.”
“Someone like Aunt Mayleen?” I ask.
“No. She did it for free. She wouldn’t take money.”
A memory from not too long ago sneaks into my mind to confirm what she’s saying.
“I saw you,” I whisper. “I saw you sometimes.”
All along I thought I was dreaming or imagining things. Not long after I lost a baby, I always thought I saw my mother in a crowd somewhere.
“I never left you,” she repeats.
I suddenly remember the woman who was staring at me at Maple Leaf Park, the woman who ran off before I could speak to her.
“It was you? You were the woman from the park?”
“It was me,” she confirms. “I wanted to talk to you, but I… I couldn’t.”
When she tells me it was also her who left the cashmere blanket in my hospital room in Denver, I reach for her and hold her for a long time. We cry in each other’s arms.
She’s the first one to let go. She’s not done talking.
“I followed you because I needed to make sure he never laid a hand on you while I waited for his sins to catch up with him. Now that they have, you’re safe.”
