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But maybe there was a different explanation.
Maybe this woman before me, who had a black hole for a heart, maybe she had been one to find so much fault in her daughter that she sliced her open, made her bleed.
Now that was a reality I could easily accept.
Maybe that was what she meant by they.
My mother and grandfather, who kept this from me, protected me from it.
Not sure what to say, not wanting to show a weakness by protecting my family, I said nothing at all, just listened to my own heartbeat, the steady whooshing sound of my pulse in my ears.
"I've seen them, you know," she went on, clearly having it in her mind to have a heart-to-heart with her long-lost granddaughter. To what end? That was yet to be seen. But if she wanted to talk, it meant more time for me to think, to process, to plan to figure how I could play this to my advantage.
"My daughter. That thug she calls a husband. Your brothers. Those people you call aunts and uncles. The same people who have refused to tell you about me since you were born, who also conveniently left out that they kept me imprisoned in a cell on your grandfather's property for even longer than that."
I tried not to let her words have impact, tried not to feel anything about them. Which was clearly her motive in telling me.
But how could I not think about it? Feel about it?
Even if I didn't want to - because I loved these people more than I had words to express, and I had a lot of words - there was no stopping it.
The sinking sensation in my gut, a sensation I had no other word for except horror.
I wanted to deny it, to say they weren't capable, no matter what this woman had done to deserve it, of illegally imprisoning her for decades.
Even if that was where she was headed - to a cell - it had to be done right. Right? You couldn't just catch people, throw them in a cell, and act like life could just go on as normal, like you weren't some makeshift warden.
It was especially hard for me to picture my mother being a part of that. My father, Aunt Lo, I got that. I wasn't naive. Their operations were the types that operated on the fringes of society, that crossed lines normal law-abiding citizens didn't even want to think about.
There were things I generally didn't let myself think about.
Even knowing what I knew about their operations.
I didn't let my mind drift to the uglier things.
Like to maintain their reins at the top, Daddy and Aunt Lo likely had to do things that weren't simply questionable morally, but outright wrong.
Torture.
Murder.
It was hard to accept that about these people who had braided my hair, who had held my hand at my first dentist appointment, who wiped away tears, who treated bloody knees.
These were people who had taught me fundamental life lessons that had shaped me into who I turned out to be.
But for all that love and light, there was no denying there was also a healthy dose of dark, or heartlessness.
That was a hard thing to accept.
But there was no way to avoid that harsh truth when there was a woman before you - like it or not, a family member - who was telling you that these people you shared meals with, trained with, laughed with, had put her in a cell to rot.
That being said, I know these people. I knew that whatever it was she had done meant she had earned such a fate.
"I can't imagine you were innocent," I said, shifting my gaze to her man who had decided it was safe to approach me.
It would never be safe to approach me again.
That was the odd, rather unwelcome thought, that crossed my mind right then. But even as I wanted to deny it, I saw the truth in it.
In what she had allowed to happen to me.
She had made it so that even if I escaped, even if I took every precaution to make sure nothing like this could ever happen to me again, it would never go away.
The pulsating, undeniable distrust that flowed through my veins as sure as my blood did.
Any man's gaze who lingered would set me on edge. Anybody that got too close would make my hands curl into fists to protect myself. Any basement would bring images flooding back like a riptide trying to pull me under the crushing weight of them.
It wouldn't matter how much I trained, over-trained, tried to make my body the weapon I knew it could be.
More determined even than Aunt Janie.
More hardened than Uncle Pagan.
More diverse than Aunt Lo.
More relentless than Lenny.
I would make myself into a whole other beast entirely
