He couldn’t even digest it.
I look up to the ceiling, willing the tears not to fall. I wouldn’t allow myself to cry. Not in front of them all. I couldn’t take their pity. I didn’t want it.
“I-I wasn’t expecting you home until tonight.” Lorna’s words are desperate. Her face fell the moment she’d heard her husband’s voice.
“Save it,” Abram spits out, not attempting to hide his disgust.
Lorna squares her shoulders. Her face sobering. She opens her mouth to say something, but it gets cut off before she can.
“I think it would be best for everyone if you leave.” His voice even, but I can hear how it’s on the verge of snapping. “I don’t mean today or even the week. It would be best for everyone in our family if you were gone awhile.”
“You can’t be serious?” she whines, stunned. “What about the gala?”
“We will manage fine without you,” Abram clips out, jaded. His tone was as lifeless as I felt.
She doesn’t move, but then he spews out her name with so much hatred that even I flinch. Dropping her shoulders, she shoves past. Smart enough to know when she’s outmatched. Abram is deadly right now.
I notice Finn is the only one to hesitate as his mother passes but even, he too doesn’t stop her. The vulnerability in his expression nearly broke me.
“How much did you hear?” I ask. My curiosity was getting the better of me. Plus, the sound of my voice filled the room with something other than lingering silence.
None of them answer right away and my skin crawls. I look down, feeling helpless. Fidgeting with my nails as a distraction. I couldn’t stomach seeing those faces anymore.
Finn is the one to speak first and I look up.
Unblinking, he says, “Enough, Rory, we heard enough.” The tone in his voice made him sound so far away. Even though it’s said with nothing but tenacity.
“How—how did you know we were up here?” I croak out.
“We heard the yelling.”
I huff out a noise, but it’s filled with only anguish.
What news to be welcomed home with. Your wife spitting out your daughter’s darkest shame like it was gossip over tea. I should laugh at the irony, but then I’d probably cry, and I already promised myself I wouldn’t do that.
“God, Rory,” Finn says, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hands. “You could have, I don’t know—”
“—Said something?” I hiccup in a rage. “What could you have done, had you known?”
Finn cringes, backing down. Face a wash of guilt. Bone-deep aches settling into my skin. I sounded impersonal, cold. As empty as my abuser.
A headache forms along my throbbing temple. Misery really was a bitch.
“Lorna mentioned the money I’d given to you. You gave it to the man who’d hurt you?” Abram’s tone is icy. Disappointed.
“No,” Cole says. My eyes, like everyone else’s, snap to his sated ones. His focus stays unblinkingly focused on me. “Rory paid off her mother.”
“Is that true?”
For a long moment, I say nothing. Eventually though I nod my head unable to stomach saying the words. Cole knowing me too well.
“But I don’t understand?” Eli questions.
“What’s not to understand.” Cole’s tone is robotic. “Rory paid off her mother in exchange for her freedom.”
Abram’s face twists in revolution. “Lillian allowed that to happen?”
I wasn’t sure if he was asking about the money part or bringing a predator into our home who abused me. So, I decide for him.