“Does he know you’re here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“He’ll be angry at you,” I said.
“Yes. He will.”
“You’re wasting your time, Mother,” I said. “Because it’s too late.”
“Please.” Her voice was so quiet I barely heard it. For the first time in my life, I saw her at her most vulnerable. To the world, both my parents were stoic, commanding, renowned doctors with a long list of accomplishments. I had never seen my mother like this.
“You have to understand, Sloane,” she whispered. “I had no choice. Coming here is a risk for me, a risk I’m willing to take.For you. Because I can’t go on like this anymore. Losing you, my only remaining child… it broke me. I can’t lose you, too.”
“All this time, you were always on his side, Mother. He was more important to you than your children. You would stand there, or you would disappear, and let him do that to us. So I’m sorry if I can’t believe that you don’t want to lose me. Because every time you looked away, you lost us little by little, until there was nothing left.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she didn’t seem to care. She no longer cared if anyone saw her vulnerable, and that baffled me.
“I’ll leave him, Sloane, I swear I will. Just please… take me back. Let me back into your life, let me be there for you and Harper. I’m begging you. I promise this time it will be different. Please, believe me.”
I looked at her, trying to understand this sudden change. She had never been like this.
“You need to stay out of my life. Just seeing you brings back too many bad memories, and I can’t live with that anymore. I’m in a good place now. Please, leave.”
I turned to walk away but stopped when I heard her voice, faint yet clear enough to freeze me in place.
“I took his beating… to replace you.”
I stiffened and turned back to her.
“I couldn’t take Xander’s place. I would have if I could, but he wouldn’t allow it. With you, he could. That’s why he never touched you, because he gave it to me instead.”
I stared at her, refusing to believe it. She saw it in my eyes and stepped closer until only inches separated us.
Then she tugged her shirt loose and lifted the hem, revealing the dark purple bruise across her stomach.
“This hasn’t stopped since he came back from the hospital. Every day, Sloane. Every single day.” Her breath shook as she went on. “And it’s the same every time you talked back to him. Every time you failed to bring home an A. Every time he remembered you refused to be a surgeon like him, or that you insisted on working at a public hospital. Every time he was angry with you, he took it out on me.”
“Why?” My voice was barely more than a whisper.
“Because I told him I would take it for you. That I would speak to you instead.”
“But you never told me.”
She nodded slowly. “I passed along the words he wanted me to say to you, but I never told you the rest.”
It felt as though the earth tilted beneath me, my breath stuck tight between chest and throat. That bruise still burned in my vision, a mark I never thought I’d see.
I shook my head, almost violently, as if I could fling the image away. “No. No, you don’t get to say this now. You don’t get to tell me you were protecting me when you let me believe you didn’t care.” My voice cracked, thick with anger. “Do you know what that did to me? To think my mother looked the other way? To think I was alone in that house? You should have told me. You should have told me, even once.”
“I know I was wrong,” she said, her voice heavy with remorse. “I know, Sloane. But what you said to your father and me in that room… it opened my eyes. I’m proud of you for being strong enough to grow and become better. I want that too. I want to be strong for you. I just hope you’ll give me a chance.”
I shook my head, pressing my eyes shut. “I can’t…” The words broke off before I could steady them. “I can’t deal with this right now. I have patients waiting for me.”
I turned to leave but stopped, my back still to her. “If you really want to be better, do it for yourself first, not for me, not for anyone else. Leave him, Mother. Find the courage. Only then can you truly be there for someone else.”
“You were right to say that to her,” Cameron told me after I explained what had happened with my mother’s visit. We were sitting on the sofa in the living room after dinner. “She needs to find courage for herself first.”
“But I never knew, Cam,” I said quietly. “I never knew she endured it all these years.”
