Luke snaps his eyes to her, and she stops at his glare. She deflates, turning her gaze to the floor, dejected and submissive. I can see how Luke’s expression cracks, like he’s upset being the one putting her down after years of the abuse she’s faced, but he won’t back down.
“I’m asking you for once in your goddamn life tolisten to me.” Luke’s voice trembles. “I don’t know if we’ll get past this, butright now is not the time to try. Fix yourself, and then come back and see me.”
His mother stands frozen for a moment, silent tears streaming down her cheek, her jaw working as she trembles. She doesn’t argue. She doesn’t push past the boundary Luke has erected or test the limits of his patience. I can see the anguish on her face as she grapples with the reality that her relationship with her son might be more broken than she could have known. But she does take the last steps forward, reaching out with her good hand. She runs her fingers through Luke’s hair, and he doesn’t stop her as she leans down and kisses the top of his head.
“I hear you, baby,” she says as she stands back up. “I love you.”
Luke won’t look at her, but he nods slightly in acknowledgment. Then his mom gives me another pitiful smile, like, at the very least, she’s glad Luke isn’t alone right now. But she doesn’t say anything else as she turns and walks from the room where she isn’t wanted.
As soon as she disappears around the corner, I can feel Luke’s chest go tight beneath me, and he lets out a soft sob. I pull my arm around his waist a little more tightly, and he grips the back of my shirt.
“I’m sorry,” he says to me. I’m not entirely sure what he’s apologizing for. That I witnessed their argument? For his mother’s behavior? Or that he’s a mess after their interaction? Maybe a bit of all of it.
“Was it always that bad with Pete?” I ask. It weighs on my heart to think about young Luke and what he must have gone through at the hands of that monster. He’s lucky his ass is in jail already.
Luke shrugs. “For the most part. It wasn’t always physical, but it was abusive all the same.” He sounds like he wants to leave it there, but after a moment, he keeps talking—letting it all out. “When he and my mom met, Pete was charming and kind. Hefilled her head with all kinds of promises to take care of her after my dad had died, telling her to quit her job, and that she wouldn’t need to work another day in her life if they got married. He’d protect her—provide for her. It sounded great. But Pete was a chameleon like that. The moment they got married, he changed into a completely different person. He’d lied to tie her down and then made sure she was trapped. She had no income of her own. No means of escape. I didn’t even realize how bad that was until this year…
“For me, he knew I was gay when he met my mom. She’d told him that right out of the gate. He gave her all kinds of sweet lies about how he was accepting and would support me in whatever way he could. But in reality, he was disgusted by me. And as soon as he felt secure in his position with her, he let me know it. She’d turn around and defend him to me, trying to keep the peace. I knew that was only because he started hitting her when she’d talk back to him. She was just trying to save her own skin.”
“When did he start hitting you?” I frown.
“Right around the time I got outed to the whole town.” Luke frowns. “He was humiliated to be associated with me through my mother. He felt like he was as much of a pariah as I was. Marked by it. He beat on my mom, claiming it was her fault I was this way. I stepped in between them, and he turned it all on me—almost like it gave him permission to start. And then it was a pattern where I’d step in to take it for her because I didn’t know what else to do.”
He laughs humorlessly. “At the time, I didn’t think there was another way to live. I knew it wasn’t right, but what sixteen-year-old knows the complexities of mental illness and manipulation tactics? It wasn’t until I got out and put myself in therapy that I unpacked a lot of this. Tried to heal from it.”
“What made you come back and try to help her now?”
“Because she wasright. She was the one who got me out of there as soon as I graduated high school. She sacrificed her own freedom to give me mine.” Luke lets out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t know if it was atonement for marrying the bastard or her way of feeling like she’d done some good in the world. But she cashed out her entire 401k to pay for me to get to New York and get my degree. She took all of Pete’s wrath for it, too, when he found out.”
“So, you felt like you owed her?” I frown.
“Yes. And no. Things started to degrade with Pete after the 2016 election. He joined a bunch of conspiracy-theory white supremacist Facebook groups and bought into the lies and propaganda they spread. He got more paranoid—more psychotic. Then came the pandemic, the 2020 election… He went so far right listening to that shit that he wasn’t the same person by the end of it. My mom was trying to hide all this from me. Whenever we talked, she was holding back how bad it was. When I came home to visit, I saw it for myself, and I was desperate to get her out of there.”
I think of the back of Pete’s truck—the concerning amount of bumper stickers and rhetoric that told anyone who looked at it what he thought about a lot of things. I can clearly see how that’s a sign of a radicalized man.
Luke releases another shuddering sigh. “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. I should have seen that. Should have given up on her a long time ago.”
“Do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive her?” I ask softly.
“I don’t know,” he mutters, closing his eyes. “Probably.Yes, eventually. I know why she did it. I understand her issues. But I can’t force her to get better. At the very least, she’s safe for now while Pete’s in prison, so I don’t need to worry about her so much. The rest is up to her.”
“Are you okay?” I ask, pulling him closer to me. He melts in my embrace, dropping his head on mine.
“No. Nothing about this is okay. My therapist is going to be pretty fucking busy with me the next few years.”
“Mine, too.”
Luke barks a laugh at that. It’s a little unhinged, but it makes me smile.
“I’m sorry I woke you up with all that,” Luke groans.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Only a few hours. But you were very out of it. The police were here at one point to take my statement, and you slept right through it.”
“Seriously?”
Luke nods. “It’s no wonder. You’ve been here this whole time… You should go home and sleep in your own bed. Get some real rest. I’ll be fine.”
