Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits 1.50)

Hunter raises a brow. “Your boyfriend isn’t talking you out of it?”

My spine goes rigid. “My boyfriend supports me.” Then my stomach drops. I slapped him and pushed him away last night, then Noah broke into the gallery for me. He does support me...more than I can comprehend.

“Good,” he says. “By the way, for paperwork purposes, what’s your last name?”

Oh, crap. Just when things were starting to go well... There’s no stopping the train wreck now. “Emerson. My name is Echo Emerson.”

Noah

After five minutes of glaring at a statue of St. Therese the Little Flower, I rub my eyes and push past the red curtain and squeeze onto the cramped wooden bench. The divider that covered the small window between us slides open. Because of how we both sit and the dim lighting from above, I can only catch a glimpse of my uncle’s profile.

“In the name of the father, and the son and the holy spirit,” he says, and I cross myself out of a long ago ingrained habit and hear my mother tell me that I should kneel in the confessional.

One second.

Another.

“Well,” he urges.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been...” This is insane. “It’s been...” Four years since my last confession. Four years. My mother was pissed at me because I hadn’t been to confession. In middle school, I had already started to question my faith.

Another way I failed my mother, and I continue the tradition by failing Echo. I scratch the spot over my eyebrow. “I don’t believe in God, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Sorry to hear that, but for the record, He still believes in you.”

Bullshit answer. “Give me the story about my name.”

“Noah, I didn’t bring you in here to listen to your confession, though I would be more than happy to take it. I brought you in here because there’s another question you’re here to ask, and I made the assumption you’d like to have this discussion with an air of anonymity.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means the question you have is one that you might not want an audience for.”

Uncomfortable, I bend forward and rest my hands on my knees. That tense rhythm that Echo continually harbors spreads into my veins. “Why did my mom leave?”

“And why are we aware of your existence when you didn’t know about us?”

Is there anyone who isn’t privy to the inner workings of my life besides me? “And that.”

It’s a heavy pause. Weighted enough that I consider retracting the question. My mom smiled all the time. My mom laughed almost every night. My mom had a secret that she may or may not have ever told me.

“Our father abused her.”

I press both hands to my face as if I could erase his answer. “Abused her?”

“The devil is in the details with this one. There are some things that are better off left with the dead.”

But the imagination could be worse. My mom.

My mom.

Tears fill my eyes, and I think of all the times she’d stare at me from across the room and out of nowhere say, “I love you.” All the times I took for granted that I’d hear those words again. All the times that she might have craved a hug and I was too damn selfish with my life to comprehend she possessed her own demons.

“How bad?”

“Bad,” he says as a whisper.

To think that someone hurt her. That someone that was supposed to love her hurt her—I slam my fist into the side wall, and when the ache slicing through my fingers doesn’t disperse the anger, I punch the wall again.