This Love Hurts (This Love Hurts 1)

“You know what I told your mama?” my auntie Susan speaks up, and the bluntness of it forces me to meet her gaze. “I told her when she went back to him, that I was always there for her. If she wanted to come stay, if she needed money. I told her if she wanted a family dinner, I’d sit next to him but not in his house. I would never step foot in that man’s house.”

Hate seeps into her words, her disgust showing through and the first crack in her armor showing. My auntie’s frame is larger, not at all delicate like my mother’s. She shifts her weight and corrects her expression before continuing, hardening her disposition.

“We make choices, and your mother made hers. Your father made his. I make my own too. I’m not leaving her, but you can’t make sense of it with your mother.”

I don’t speak. Not to her. Not to my sister. Not even to my mother.

I’m silent as I take it all in. Collecting the bits of evidence and forming my own conclusion. I feel dead inside. There’s this pit in my stomach that’s cold and unforgiving.

My mother says it was an accident and that’s all there is to it as far everyone else outside this room is concerned.

I leave before everyone else and without telling them. The last thing I want is to be alone with my father. I don’t want him to look me in the eyes and lie to me. Worse, I don’t want to believe him when I feel so certain that he assaulted my mother and should be behind bars right now.

Flowers are waiting for me at the hotel desk when I check in. I wish they made me smile, but they’re so much more beautiful than daisies. That’s all I can think.

They’re the first thing I see and that smell… the smell fills the entire room. Tossing the keys onto the dresser and letting my purse and the luggage bag sit at the front of the room, I make my way to them.

My fingertips trail down the deep red petals, the smell of the roses covering up the memory of the daisies. A dozen deep red roses.

After washing my face and changing into sweats, I text Cody: You didn’t have to send flowers. But they’re beautiful.

His first text hits me like an ice bath washing down my bare skin. I miss you and I’ve been thinking of you, but I didn’t get you flowers.

A follow-up text from him does nothing to help: Now I wish I had.

He’s the only one who knew I was staying in this hotel. I only told Cody because he asked if I was staying with my parents and I told him, I always stay here.

My limbs are shaky as I move to the window of the hotel room. I’m on the second floor so there’s no reason I should see anyone there, but still, I look over every inch and then do a search in the room, checking in the closet, in the bathroom. I search every inch and then lock the door before heading back to the roses. There’s no note. No indication of who they’re from and the clerk at the desk said she didn’t know. They were simply left here specifically for me when I checked in.

A dozen red roses that keep me up most of the night until I slip into a light sleep, filled with brutal memories.

Delilah

Three days in my hometown is plenty.

Add in two family dinners with forced smiles and my mother doing her best to tell us she’s fine and everything’s all right, and I couldn’t wait to leave. I spent every moment I could in the hotel providing lies about how much I was needed at work.

There was only one moment I was alone with my father and he called me out on that lie subtly. All he mentioned was the article and he told me the same thing that everyone else did: it’ll pass.

He didn’t say a word about Mom. He didn’t let on that it was obvious there was tension between us. He knows I think he hit her. He knows everyone thinks it.

But in that moment at the restaurant when everyone left and I had to go back for the to-go box of leftovers I’d forgotten, he didn’t mention a damn thing but the article when I ran into him scribbling on the receipt at the table.

Three days of feeling insignificant and like I’m only playing a part in a poorly written film. Four times I tried to reason with my mother, coaxing her to tell me the truth when we were alone. All four times she denied anything had happened other than her being careless. Even when I stared at the other bruises. I’ve never seen a sad smile on my mother’s face until I said I was leaving. I’m just not sure what she’s most sorry about.