Page 315 of The Professor's Wife

My knees buckled and I swallowed down a cry. I sniffed, trying to gather my voice. I could only manage a whisper. “Rowe…”

His breath caught in his throat. He choked out, “Mom?”

“It’s me.”

His breaths came out harder. Panting now. “It’s been weeks…Mom, it’s been weeks…Mom…”

“It’s over.”

Now his breathing stilled. There was nothing but silence on the line. Then, “What’s over?”

“Sweetheart, we’re out.”

“What does that mean? Where is Oliver?”

“He will never hurt us again.”

“Mom…” Doubt crept into his tone.

My voice came stronger, surer. “Rowe, it’s over.”

He didn’t speak for so long, but I knew he was there. He didn’t challenge me. His breaths grew steady as his disbelief ebbed away. “What do we do now?”

I smiled, tears spilling down my face. The answer was so simple and easy. “We live.”

“He can’t hurt you anymore?” he demanded.

“No.”

“I can finally see you?”

My smile grew wider. “Yes!”

“How did you do it?” he asked, his voice breaking as he cried softly.

It had been so long since we’d seen each other. I’d made sure Rowe was out of Oliver’s grasp. Over the years, I’d found solace in him going to boarding school. Now he was still there. Hiscontact with Oliver was infrequent, but only because his contact with me had to be, too. We had agreed it had to be this way. Rowe knew what Oliver did to me when I stopped him from going to school that summer he was eight. When the shuttle he would have been on crashed, Rowe understood that I wasn’t crazy. He played his part for Oliver, though he secretly believed me. While Oliver believed he’d dampened the bond between Rowe and me, he couldn’t be more wrong. Rowe and I had an unspoken bond, one confirmed through exchanged looks and hidden touches.

He knew I was trapped. In the rare moments we shared alone, he vowed that one day he would save me.

Except…

“I needed to save myself,” I told Rowe.

Perhaps Rowe understood what I was implying in that moment. If he didn’t, he would in the weeks to come when police discovered Oliver’s body on that cabin property. They would find the texts from his student and discover he’d plagiarized the content his own students fed him.

They would find me eventually. They would question me, perhaps even suspect me. I would break apart and tell them he was not the man he appeared to be. They would search the property and finally put names to the faceless victims.

The world would know the real Oliver Black.

I stared at my shaking hands. I was dizzy, anxious, confused.

Alone.

I was completely alone, and though I was used to that feeling, this was a different sort of alone. I kept thinking of the many “lasts” in my life. Like the day Rowe held my hand for the last time when he was eleven. We were about to cross the street to his summer jiu jitsu class, and when I had extended my hand out for him, he’d held it, but it was loose. I felt it slipping thecloser we got to the studio. By the time we reached the doors, he had let go, and he’d never held it as we crossed a street again.

Or the day he’d packed up his suitcase, gave me a hug and said, “Goodbye, Mom. I’ll see you during winter break. Hang in there. Alright?”

The fact my sixteen-year-old boy knew to say that to me. Like he could sense the fragility of my spirit. Without him, I was going to spiral.