Page 240 of Wicked Brutal

For a long moment she doesn’t move. Then, slowly, her shoulders drop, and something in her gives out. She turns toward me. Up close it’s worse. There’s a red mark blooming high on her cheekbone where his hand caught her. A scrape along her shoulder from the wall. Her wrist is already ringed where he grabbed it. And when I reach for the hem of her blouse, she lets me lift it enough to see the dark, spreading bruise along her side where she hit the island. Then the table.

“Oh, Mom.” My throat closes.

“It looks worse than it is.”

I know that lie. I’ve told it. She reaches up to fix her hair, to cover the mark on her cheek out of pure habit, and I catch her hand.

“Don’t hide it. Not tonight.” Her eyes fill. “Let me.”

She understands before I say it. Her face crumples, and for one second I think she’s going to tell me no. To make me put the phone away. To protect him the way she’s protected him for however many years this has been happening in rooms with the doors closed.

Instead she closes her eyes. And she lets me.

I photograph her cheek. Her wrist. Her shoulder. I lift the edge of her blouse again and photograph her side, the bruise dark enough now that there’s no walking-into-a-cabinet story that could ever cover it. She stands still through all of it, her jaw tight, tears sliding down without a sound. Not fighting me. Not laughing it off. Just letting the pictures happen, one after another, like she’s finally too tired to keep it invisible.

When I lower the phone, she opens her eyes.

“He can’t know I let you do that,” she whispers.

“He won’t.”

For years, I’ve learned how to make Dad’s anger disappear after it happens. Long sleeves. Makeup. Silence. Apparently so has she. We learned it in the same house, from the same man, and we’ve spent all this time each pretending the other didn’t know.

Tonight, we don’t erase it. Tonight, we save it.

Mom’s hand finds mine on the counter. She grips it hard. Neither of us says anything else. We don’t have to.

I reach for the first-aid kit shoved on top of the refrigerator. It’s higher than I remember. I stretch onto my toes, fingertips catching the plastic edge, and my sweater pulls up with me.

Mom makes a sound. Small. Barely anything. But I hear it. I get the box down and turn. She’s staring at me. Not my face. Lower. My stomach. My sweater has fallen back into place, but it’s too late.

“What?”

Mom doesn’t answer. Her eyes slowly lift to mine. “Alison.”

Something about the way she says my name sends cold straight through me. “What?”

Her face changes. I watch it happen. Confusion first. Then something else. Her eyes drop again. And I know. I know before she says anything. I pull my sweater down even though it’s already covering me.

Mom notices that too. “Oh my God.”

“Mom—”

“No.” She takes a step backward. Not away from me. Like something just knocked the air out of her. “No, no, no.”

“Mom.”

“The mornings.”

I stop.

Her eyes are moving over me like she’s seeing the last two months all over again. “You’ve been sick.”

“Mom—”

“You stopped drinking coffee. You couldn’t stand the eggs.”

I say nothing.