Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
I’d been lucky with her, though. In a lot of ways, I’d grown up with her, having her so young. She never gave me the crap a lot of teenage girls gave their mothers. She did not test me or Preston with boyfriends who were bad for her; she did not break curfew or skip school. There were no screaming matches or slamming of doors in our house.
Sure, there was some attitude, some disagreements, but my daughter was gifted. She didn’t win state debate for nothing. She had a way about her, an elegance when she argued. An intelligence. She never lost her cool, raised her voice, and often, you didn’t even know she’d won the argument until hours later. Even Preston wasn’t immune to her. Something he’d always found endearing, despite his hatred for me even hinting that I disagreed with him.
I was afraid, deathly so, that this news would cause my beautiful girl to explode. That I’d get the screaming, the silence, the ‘I hate you’ that many mothers had to weather.
I deserved it all. So I braced myself. I was ready for any and all reactions.
Or so I thought.
“Daddy beat you for almost my entire life, and you expect me to… forgive him?” she asked slowly, a wrinkle forming between her eyes. “You expect me to continue to speak to him, to spend holidays with him, to be in the same room as him?”
It was my turn to blink rapidly at her. “I don’t expect anything from you, Violet,” I said gently. “Whatever you wish to do, whatever relationship you want with your father, it’s yours to have.”
She stood, obviously unable to take this in while seated. I stood, too, in case she tried to do something like run from the room.
“Relationship?” she repeated. She began pacing. “You think I want a relationship with him now?” Her voice had risen, her cheeks reddening with emotion.
“Honey, you don’t have to make any decisions—”
“No,” she interrupted. “You’re right. Dad was at all my games. Only because he knew that’s what everyone expected him to do. What made him look the part. He was at my father-daughter dance even though I didn’t want to go in the first place, but he forced me because some big shot finance guy had a daughter going to my school.”
My breath hitched, unable to fathom that Violet had managed to see those things when she was so young. Unable to fathom that I’d been blind to how much my daughter had seen, and hating myself for not noticing.
Her eyes found Swiss who was now standing behind me, apparently no longer able to watch from afar.
“You’re not going to let him hurt her again, are you?” she asked, though it was more of a demand.
“No, darlin’,” he promised. His hands were tight around my hips. My knees felt like they were made of rubber, so I was grateful he was there.
Violet nodded purposefully after measuring Swiss’s response. “He’s dead to me,” she declared, emanating an iciness I’d never thought her capable of.
I flinched at the tone.
“Violet, you—”
“No, Mom,” she held up a hand, halting me. “I understand what you’re trying to do. I respect it even though I don’t fully understand why you’d defend him after what he did to you.” She stood still, staring at a blank space on the wall for a moment before pulling her shoulders back. “But no. I don’t want a relationship with a father who almost killed my mother.”
She exhaled deeply after she said those words aloud, the reality of them truly sinking in.
I decided there was too much space between us and approached her. No, I didn’t just approach, I rushed toward my daughter and caught her right at the moment she broke down. I found I had more than enough strength to hold on to her as she grieved for the father that she’d loved. The father she’d never have again.
I brushed the hair from my sleeping daughter’s face, watching her sleep for a few more minutes before I quietly left the room, shutting the door behind me.
She had cried herself into unconsciousness, laying on the sofa with her head in my lap.
Swiss had sat on the armchair, watchful, protective, a calming presence. He was pissed. Seeing my daughter in pain. It affected him. Visibly.
I knew he was likely thinking of all the ways he would like to torture and kill Preston.
But he didn’t do that.
Instead, when Violet fell asleep, he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bedroom.
I followed him, fighting tears. Then he’d left me to put her under the covers myself with a kiss on the side of my head.
He was waiting for me in our bedroom, two mugs of tea on the table between the armchairs.
Instead of choosing the one beside him, I crawled onto his lap, desperate for the closeness.