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Mom’s lips trembled. “He picked her up and slammed her down on the table. The top broke off from the base and she fell to the floor. He picked up a chair and... she broke her arm.”
“Hebroke her arm,” Rose snapped.
Rose saw her father in her mind slam that chair down on Poppy, who tried to defend herself with her hands up to ward off the blow.
“When did this happen?”
Her mom sighed. “She was fifteen and rebellious. He’d warned her not to be late again.” Sadly, her mom really believed that if Poppy had done everything their father wanted, none of this would have happened.
So not true. Her father had pushed, shoved, slapped, and kicked Rose in the legs since she was in fifth or sixth grade. Rose had been his favorite target, and when he did go after Poppy, whom he mostly ignored, Rose had stepped in betweenthem. She was willing to take the punishment to spare her much younger sister.
She’d even stepped between her mother and father more often than not.
But after Rose fled, Poppy had been left to fend for herself. And Rose had to live with the guilt that she’d left her sister behind, even though she knew that if she’d stayed, he’d have killed her one way or another.
Still, it pissed her off that her mother fell back on defending her father, trying to keep the peace even though he was no longer here, and blamed Poppy.
“Dad broke all of us. And let me guess, when you took her to the hospital, you didn’t report him. You made up some lie to protect him and made Poppy feel guilty for being the one to set Dad off. You begged her to go along, not make things worse, just this once.” There had been a lot of “onces.” “You promised it would never happen again. You told her he loved her. He didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Stop!” Her mom had never raised her voice. She had never showed emotion during most of Rose’s young life.
But Rose heard the anger, fear, and self-loathing in that one word. And she didn’t let up. “Isn’t that what you should have said to him the first time he laid a hand on me? You. Poppy. How many times did you stand by and stand back and let it happen?”
Her mom leaned forward, her gaze sharp. “What did you expect me to do?”
“I wanted you to stand up for us. To tell him he was wrong. To leave. I expected you to end it!”
Her mother shook her head side to side in a slow sweep, her lips pressed tight. “You have no idea how hard it was for me.”
“All you had to do was walk out the door. Call the cops. Tell someone, anyone, that could help.”
Her mom frowned. “Walk out with two little girls and no means to take care of them?”
“He would have had to pay child support,” she snapped. “You could have gotten a job. Grammy and Grampy would have helped.”
“They were barely getting by themselves.” More excuses.
“They’d have put a roof over our heads.”
“He was my husband. If we’d all tried harder—”
Rose smacked her hand on the table. “That’s him in your head telling you how to fix it. But guess what? Nothing we did was the cause of his abuse and nothing we did would have stopped it, aside from us leaving. That is the truth, Mom. That is the only thing you could have done. But you didn’t. You still haven’t. You’re stuck here in this house with all the memories. You’ve barely changed anything because you’re afraid. He’s not even here and you’re still worried about what he’ll think about the new paint on the cabinets, or that you bought a used table, and that you changed your hair and your clothes.” Rose shook her head this time, then put her hand over her mother’s. “Stop.”
Her mom’s gaze snapped up to meet hers.
“Stop letting him rule your life.”
“I’m not.”
“Stop lying to me, Poppy, everyone outside these walls. Stoplying to yourself. It’s obvious to me and everyone else. Just stop. Because every time you make an excuse for him, or lie, or don’t do and say the things you really want, thenhewins. Stop letting himbeyour life andliveyour life.”
“You have no idea how hard it is to let it go after all that’s happened.”
“Don’t I? I walked away, Mom. I left. And it took a long time for me to stop hearing him in my head, to make my own choices, to learn to see myself, not through his eyes, but the reality of who and what I am. It wasn’t easy. And yes, sometimes I still hear him or believe something that he thought about me, but when I do, I stop. I take the time to search within myself to hear my own voice and see things through my eyes, not his. Sometimes, I still think to myself,Would he approve? Would he finally be proud of me? Would anything I’ve done and accomplished have made him want to change?And I know the answer, even if I wish it was different. The answer is always no.” She let that sink in for a moment with her mom. “No matter how badly I want it to be yes because he’s my dad. I want so badly for him to have turned out to be a good one, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t ever going to be a good father, because he wasn’t a good man. You know that. You felt it.
“And now he’s gone, and you don’t have to ever think about him again. You can start over. You can have whatever life you used to see for yourself. You can even find someone else, who will love and respect and take care of you.” She paused. “You deserve happiness like that, Mom. Be bold. Be brave. Live your life like he’s not watching.”
The hint of a smile and flash of brightness in her mother’s eyes told Rose she’d hit the mark.
