“But I do,” she argues. “More than you know.”
For some reason that lump is back in my throat, the one that I can’t swallow.
“You feel that you aren’t valuable enough to take a risk for,” she says ever so gently. “That Mila is better off without you, even though she loves you more than her own life. She has told you that numerous times, you said. And your daughter, and your unborn child, they need their father. Just like you needed yours.”
“But I could hurt them,” I tell her hotly.
She nods. “Yes, you could. And you will hurt them if you don’t go back home. That will do more damage than anything else you could do.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes as I soak that in, as
I consider it.
Could she possibly be right?
Could my absence truly be worse than anything else?
It’s hard for me to comprehend.
“I took the liberty of getting something for you,” she finally says, and she pulls out an envelope. “I called the detective in charge of the investigation, and he sent this to me. It arrived yesterday.”
She hands the last journal page, the one I’d told her about. The one with the bottom torn off.
It’s hard to look at it, because when I do, I remember sitting on the floor with a gun pressed to my chin, ready to take my own life.
“Read it aloud to me,” she says. “I know it’s hard, because saying the words gives them power. But please. Read them aloud.”
I stare at the words, and reluctantly give them my voice.
I’ve thought a lot over the years about why Susanna had acted like she did that night.
She rejected me, and refused to go with me, and I have to admit, that was a surprise. It took the wind out of my sails.
I know now, though, why she did it.
She must’ve felt that I would kill her son.
She didn’t trust me when I said I wouldn’t.
If it had only been her and I, I know she would have gone with me in a split second. I would’ve saved her from that life. But her son came in, and she had to put on a show for him. She had to act like she didn’t love me like I loved her. I know it was a show. I saw how she’d looked at me every time I delivered their mail, day in and day out. She watched me, and she was lustful and she wanted me. I know it now, and I knew it then.
But some women, their instincts to be mothers overtakes everything else.
That’s what happened that night.
I’m sure of it.
She fought for that snot-nosed kid. And in the end, I asked her why. Right before he rushed in and killed her, I asked her why she was fighting so hard for him.
She looked up at me, and her eyes were so wide and full of tears. And she said-
I stop, because that’s the end.
The therapist looks at m, and I swear her eyes are moist with unshed tears.
“What do you think she said?”
I shake my head, and put the page down. “I don’t know.”