“Thank you.”
“Come on, let’s grab something to eat.”
I slide off the bed when he stands and as I put my journal away he looks at it again.
If he read it, all he would have is more questions and he’s had no shortage of those since we met. But this time he’d have questions about Ted I’m not supposed to tell anyone, or I’m dead.
I’m just at a fragile place in my life where I’m not sure about living anymore.
* * *
As Eric and I speed down the highway, the bright morning sun beams down on my trembling hands.
I’m a nervous wreck and I can’t swallow past the ever growing lump in my throat. There’s a dryness right at the back that keeps threatening to lock off my airways and suffocate me.
When we turn on to a country road I start looking around. I’ve never been to Dad’s house in L.A before so the newness of seeing the surroundings fascinates me.
After Mom died Scarlett would have finished school here. Ted, of course was more than agreeable for her to live with Dad, there was no question in it.
By then she knew the truth, the same as Mom and Dad did. She was just the only person who believed me. She tried to get Dad to listen but I knew he wouldn’t hear of it. Then my sister spent years trying to bridge the gap between us, refusing to believe the bridge had been burned down and there was nothing left to fix.
I was already broken. I broke that night after Ted married my mother and would use their bed in the dead of night to molest me. I was thirteen when it first happened and it continued for three years. Before they got married he’d look at me and I knew something would happen one day. Then he came with his threats and I was helpless.
As the years went by it became evident something was wrong with me. On the face of it I had what looked like anorexia, but beneath that was just the symptoms of what was really going on. Then when I got pregnant I started to eat again, not knowing why. Everyone thought I was okay, until I wasn’t.
Dad was the first to know about my pregnancy. I fainted at school and was rushed into the ER when they couldn’t wake me. My blood pressure was too low. When the doctors couldn’t reach Mom they called my father instead and told him the news.
I told him what Ted had been doing to me and he didn’t believe me.
He then told Mom and I know she would have known straightaway whose baby it was. She acted like she didn’t believe me either. A week later she killed herself after she and Ted had the worst argument ever and left me that note I’ll never forget.
In the end we all ended up with nothing and Ted’s threats he used to control me over the years meant nothing. I was the one who got hurt in the end. He fucked up my life and my mother died hating me with her last breath.
Eric taps my hand, cutting into my thoughts.
“You all right?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“We’re here,” he announces and I gear myself up for disaster.