Page 344 of Wicked Brutal

“That she was coming with us.” Ally presses her lips together, hard, and when she speaks again her voice barely holds. “And she started apologizing.”

“For what?”

“For not leaving before. For not getting us out years ago. For all of it.” The whole room has gone silent, the kind of silence that has weight to it. “And I told her to stop. I told her she didn’t have to apologize to me for being scared of him too. Because I finally understood — she wasn’t weak. She’d been surviving him the exact same way I had, the whole time, and neither of us ever knew the other one was doing it.”

Roman looks down at the table. Good. I hope he never looks up again. I do not have a word big enough for how much I hate him, and I have spent three weeks trying to find one.

Arthur waits until Ally has steadied, and then he walks her through the days. Friday — Jane kept both kids home, because all three of them were bruised and she wouldn’t let anyone see them like that. Saturday, quiet. Sunday, when Roman told her the Switzerland plan had changed.

“Tell the court what the original plan was.”

“He’d already pulled me out of Edgewood and enrolled me at a boarding school in Switzerland. L’Institut Sainte-Catherine, in Vevey. I was supposed to leave April sixth.”

“Had you chosen that school? Applied there? Agreed to leave Edgewood at all?”

“No.” She looks at Roman. “None of it. I wasn’t being sent to school. I was being shipped somewhere I’d have no one, so that Victor could collect me with nobody around who’d notice or care.”

“What had your father already arranged, without your consent?”

“Everything. Enrollment. My medical paperwork. My passport. A private flight. Someone to drive me after I landed.” Her voice hardens. “It was already done. All of it. Around me, over me, without one word to me.”

“And what did he tell you Sunday?”

“That April sixth was gone. That I’d be leaving that Saturday instead.”

I remember that text. I remember reading it three times in a row because my brain flat-out refused to accept that a whole week had just vanished.

“How did you react?”

“I panicked.”

“Why?”

“Because we weren’t ready.” Arthur doesn’t ask who we is. He knows. The whole room can guess. “I knew people were trying to help us. I knew getting Tobias out clean was complicated — that I could walk out because I’m eighteen, but I couldn’t just take a six-year-old across state lines without handing my father a kidnapping charge and losing him for good. We needed time to do it right. And Sunday, all our time disappeared.”

“Let’s move to Monday.” Arthur flips a page. “Did anything unusual happen at school?”

“No. School was normal. It was afterward.” Her face changes again, going tight. “When I got home, Dad and Victor were both there. And Victor told me the plan had changed again. That we were leaving Friday.”

“Who was leaving Friday?”

“Victor and me.”

“Your mother?”

“No.”

“Tobias?”

“No.”

“Your father?”

“No.”

Four small words, and every one of them is a door closing. Arthur lets them hang.

“What did Mr. Tremblay say the two of you would be doing?”