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All this time, Pim came across as stoic, making me believe that with him being dead she’d found a degree of closure.
Yet with those two words, I knew how wrong I’d been. How much she still had to work through. How the stages of grief were tracking through her without my input. Anger was this stage. Despair, disbelief, denial.
What would be next, and how could I help her through it without her being in this much agony?
Her mother shook her head, her own tears spilling faster as her teeth lodged deep in her bottom lip. She barely managed to say, “Oh, Minnie Mouse…” She clutched Pim’s fingers, dragging her closer to kiss her knuckles, begging for forgiveness. “No wonder you hate me.”
I didn’t understand.
What did her mother understand that I didn’t?
What family connection just flew over my head?
She wasn’t just referring to Pim’s accusation of her upbringing. It was something worse than that.
Pim sighed heavily, squeezing her mother’s hands, relieved that she understood even if I didn’t. “I remained your daughter even though I cursed you. I chose death over speech because, thanks to you, I knew what he ultimately wanted from me.”
Sonja wailed. “I know. I know. I’m so, so sorry, Min. Please…I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t my body, my pain, my pleas he wanted…was it, Mum?” Pim choked, her own sadness switching to sobs.
The fact she’d flipped from mother to mum released the last of the barriers, and her mother collapsed over Pim’s hands, falling to the floor on her knees. Her chair toppled backward as Pim remained sitting like a queen with a tormented smile on her face.
She didn’t wait for her mother to answer her, delivering her question as vicious as a blade, stabbing me right through the heart. “It was my mind. He wanted my mind. He wanted to know how it felt to be raped by him. He wanted me to tell him how his fists bruised, how his chains bit, how every little thing he did changed me from my past to his future. He wanted to take my thoughts and hoard them, chipping them away, slowly stomping them to dust. He wanted to take my memories and taint them with his possession, so I had nothing left. He wanted every single scrap that made me mine and ruin me until I became nothing but his.
“And thanks to you, Mum, I understood that even when I didn’t. I stayed silent to spite him. I remained mute to protect the pieces of me I thought were long-lost dead and gone. But now I understand I was doing it for another reason. A reason that perhaps trumped all of that.” Her voice strangled, hanging itself from her lips. “I was still obeying you…even then.”
Her mother cried harder.
Another wracking sob clawed through Pim’s throat. “Are you proud of me? Did I do the right thing? If I was on your couch right now, would you wrinkle your nose like you did at the weaker or would you stare with pride at the stronger? Am I strong in your eyes? Did I do well? What, Mother? Tell me so I know if I’ve finally earned your admiration.”
My heart motherfucking broke.
That was what Pim carried?
That was what chewed her inside?
The need for her mother’s approval? A mother who had twisted her up long before she’d ever been stolen?
The fact she’d survived more abuse than anyone and instead of needing to be hospitalized for a broken mind sat there demanding parental admiration undid me.
Who the fuck cared if her mother approved?
I’d never been so goddamn proud. So humbled. So traumatized by another’s cravings.
Fuck me.
I couldn’t…I can’t…
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My mind exploded with noise and shame and humiliation and utter self-disgust.
Her mother dropped her head in her hands and cried deep, ugly tears that dripped onto the floor.
My own eyes pricked to think how similar I must’ve seemed to Pim. How my commandments to know her mind must’ve petrified her. How my demands she speak and give me everything must’ve overridden so many terrible memories of Alrik demanding the same fucking thing.
I’d done exactly what that rapist had done.
I’d saved her and delivered her to yet another battle of wills.
I might not have physically hurt her, but I was just as bad.
Just as cruel.
Just as fucking evil.
Christ!
I wanted to punch something.
I wanted to throw my chair across the room and tear myself apart.
I wanted to get on my knees and put a gun to my head for ever thinking I had a right to Pim’s innermost thoughts.
Who the fuck was I to demand her secrets for safe passage on my yacht?
Who the fuck was I to expect her innermost thoughts in return for taking her from that disgusting white torture chamber?
I was nothing.
I was no one.
I’d already earned everything she’d kept from others by reading her letters like the thief I was.
