“He does it because he loves you in his own way.”
There are phrases that sound like patience when you still love.
Then you realize they were just a more elegant way of abandoning you.
When Miriam uttered that phrase in front of the coffins, something inside me broke with a very clear sound.
Not like an explosion.
Like a definitive crack.
I looked at her face with eyes full of old and new tears, and for the first time in years I didn’t try to be proper.
“Can you at least shut up today?” I yelled at him.
My voice echoed off the wood-paneled walls, against the wreaths, against the frozen guests, against the image of my dead children who suddenly seemed to observe the scene like a mute accusation.
Miriam took two steps so quick I barely saw them coming.
He slapped me with brutal force, a sharp, perfectly calculated blow that turned my face and filled my mouth with a metallic taste.
Before I could react, he grabbed my hair.
His hand closed on my head with an intimate, obscene violence, very different from the clumsy brutality of someone who loses control.
No, she knew exactly how to hurt.
He pulled me down and slammed my forehead against the shiny edge of one of my children’s coffins.
The blow pierced me like a white lightning bolt.
I saw lights.
I felt my skull buzzing, my scalp burning, my knees buckling, and then his breath in my ear with that devoted viper voice he always reserved for serious threats.
—Shut up or you’ll end up in there.
I haven’t forgotten that phrase.
Not because it was original.
But because it was the obscene confirmation of something I had been sensing for years without daring to name it completely: that woman not only hated me, she fantasized about erasing me.
I staggered, dazed, and before I could regain my balance I felt other hands on my arms.
For a second I thought someone was helping me.
No.
Era Trevor.
