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She didn’t need to say anything for me to feel her pain.
Just like last night, when I could take no more hearing her whimpers through the thin-ass walls, and crawled into bed next to her I could feel the pain. It radiated off her in waves of anguish. It filled the room with thick, noxious poison that made it hard to breathe.
Then and now.
It hadn’t diminished—not a fraction of the agony had been shaved off by sleep. Not that I thought a few hours of shuteye would lessen the betrayal.
Apparently she did know what to say. And it was no less excruciating to hear it a second time.
“I went to her funeral.”
Jesus fuck.
“I didn’t want to go. But my mom’s friend Lori told me I’d one day regret it—not going. Not saying my goodbyes. So I went with her. Now…I regret it. All of it. Wearing the stupid black dress Lori picked out for me. Sitting through the memorial service at the funeral home. Listening to all of my mom’s friends tell stories about how sweet she was, how she’d do anything for anybody, what a great mom she was. I regret sitting there in that front row watching her casket being lowered into the dirt wondering if I’d die if I jumped in after her. Would I die and be back with my mother.”
She didn’t sound like she regretted attending her mother’s funeral, she sounded like she was being tortured by the memory.
Christ.
“I cried for weeks. I couldn’t stop crying. I had nothing. I wanted nothing more than to never wake up again. I wanted my mom. And it was all a lie…” she trailed off and sucked in a breath. “All of it. Everything. How…” she petered out again, took another breath and restarted. “I’ve seen a lot of evil. I’ve sat across from the vilest men on the planet and still I can’t wrap my head around their cruelty.”
Well, fuck. I had to end that line of thinking but in doing that I risked causing her more pain.
“Can you take more?” I asked.
“More?”
I loosened the pressure on her back but only so I could shift away enough to tip my chin and look at her. Instead of looking up at me, she dipped her head, pressed her forehead deeper, and hid.
I understood that play, not wanting to look at me, so I didn’t push when I asked, “Did your mother ever talk to you about your father?”
“My father?”
“Your biological father.”
That pain swirling around us, radiating off Nebraska, suffused the room. It was so big, so ugly she shook with it.
“Don’t tell me, he’s alive, too.” The thread of anger in her voice was nothing more than a front to cover the hurt.
“It fucks me to tell you this, baby, mostly because I know you’re already suffering and adding to that isn’t something I feel real great doing. But, you need to know.”
“Know what?” she asked before I could figure out a way to soften the next blow.
“There’s no way for me to—”
“Just tell me.”
Right.
Just tell her.
Slice her open then hope like fuck I have the tools to stop the bleed.
But first I needed to know what she’d been told.
“What do you know about your father?”
“Nothing. He died before I was born. Car accident.”
