Maddie stood. “I’m not listening to this. I’m not listening to your sob story. I’m sorry you had some mental breakdown, but it wasn’t my fault. Get over it. Stop living in the past. Watching you hate my father is getting old.”
She followed Maddie in her pursuit to the front door. “Don’t you dare walk out that door. I’m not done.”
Maddie laughed. “Well, I am.”
“He hit me.”
She stopped, hand on the doorknob. “No, Mom. He didn’t. He told me you lost control and sometimes he had to restrain you from hurting yourself or anyone else, but he didn’t hit you.”
“He’s lying.”
“You’re lying.” She turned back around. “You’re a fucking maid with no education, barely a dime to your name, a failed marriage, and some psycho boyfriend who is too young for you. What is wrong with you? The last thing you need to worry about is if I love you. What should bother you the most is I don’t respect you. My number one goal in life is to be nothing like you.”
Something unrecognizable took over inside of Ryn. With three long strides she had Maddie’s hair clenched in her fist. She dragged her up the stairs. Her little girl with venomous words stumbled and cried in protest. Ryn heard nothing. Her need to protect her child from the ugly, that seemingly unbreakable bond, snapped and so did Ryn.
“What the fuck?” Maddie looked ten years younger with tears in eyes as Ryn shoved her on the bed. Maddie pressed her hand to her head where Ryn had attempted to pull a chunk of hair from her scalp.
“Reality is a bitch, baby girl, and there are some things in life that cannot be unseen. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I’m going to give you a million words.” She retrieved her fire safe key from the dresser drawer and opened the safe in the closet, pulling out several large legal-sized envelopes.
Maddie shook her head while pulling her phone out of her pocket. “I’m calling Dad or the police, you’re losing it.” Her voice quivered.
Ryn snatched Maddie’s phone, opened the window, and threw it outside. “Well, if I am…” Ryn opened one envelope and dumped the contents onto the bed in front of Maddie, followed by a second, and finally a third “…then I think I have a damn good excuse.”
Maddie didn’t move, not even a blink. She stared at hundreds of photos spread out on the bed. Tears rolled down Ryn’s cheeks. She grieved her baby girl. She grieved her lost innocence. She grieved that exact moment because Maddie would never be the same again.
With a shaky hand, Maddie picked up one of the photos. “Oh my God,” she whispered, her other hand covering her mouth. Her body shook and then she released a sob.
“I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t have time for college. I was busy raising a daughter. I don’t have a dime to my name because I chose to leave—chose to live. And Jackson … he gave me my self-esteem back. I love him, but he has to leave and if you don’t come too, I’ll have to choose between the two of you. He loves me. You? I don’t think you love me and I know you don’t respect me. But here’s the thing. I choose you, Maddie.”
She saw her little girl in pigtails playing with Barbie dolls and kissing Ryn’s boo-boos. Maddie rarely saw Ryn without something broken, bruised, or stitched up, but by the time she could understand or ask real questions, Preston limited the number of marks he left on Ryn that Maddie could see.
Ryn blinked, time vanished, and her baby girl was a young woman sitting on her bed, sobbing as she sifted through the pictures of her mother with black eyes, a broken jaw, stitches, bruises, cracked ribs—a human punching bag. At the time, Ryn wasn’t even sure why she took them and hid them from Preston. She just knew that someday she would need them. It never occurred to her that she’d need them to make her daughter believe her, trust her.
“I only had to show the judge three of these pictures and a copy of my medical records to get the restraining order.”
“Mom …” Maddie said her name with a tenderness Ryn hadn’t heard in years.
She always wondered if somewhere in Maddie’s subconscious she remembered kissing her mama’s boo-boos. The horror on her daughter’s face confirmed that she did not remember those years.
“I hate him,” Maddie whispered, tears splattering the pictures.
“Come with me, Maddie. Let’s start over some place a world away from your father and—”
“No.” Maddie shook her head and held up one of the worst pictures of Ryn—her face barely recognizable.
That was a “biking” accident. Ryn didn’t own a bike, but Preston caught her snooping through his stuff after he came home from a business trip with everything in his suitcase smelling like perfume. She wasn’t proud that the trips to various ERs included questions she couldn’t answer. When the nurses or doctors asked what had happened, she always looked at Preston for the explanation. He always had one, perfectly recited, not so much as a breath of hesitation.