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I’m still in my headon the drive back to Brockville. My unease worsening when I feel Dee studying my profile.
“Having second thoughts?” she asks, attuned to my disquiet.
“Yeah,” I admit, keeping my eyes on the road. “I know you need answers, Dee.”
“I do. But I want you to want to tell me.”
“It’s not that I haven’t wanted to tell you. It’s that protecting you comes first.”
“Keeping me in the dark doesn’t actually protect me, you know?”
“So I discovered.”
“You’re not the only one that feels protective, Mick. I want to look out for you too. I want to be there through the good and the bad. You can trust me.”
“Beauty.” I look over at her. “There’s no one I trust more than you.”
She reaches for my hand balled around the gearshift. Brushes her thumb over my ring then lifts my hand to entwine our fingers in a silken link that inextricably binds us. And in that moment—for better or for worse—I decide to tell Dee everything.
“Where do I even start?” My pulse accelerates.
“At the beginning.” Her voice is patient and those big luminous eyes give me every bit of her attention. “Start there.”
I take a breath and ease in from a familiar launching pad.
“My mom met Malcolm soon after she immigrated from Brazil. She’d lost her parents at an early age and was taken in by an aunt who had five other mouths to feed. She fended for herself mostly, and set her sights on moving to the US. It seemed so big and glamorous to her. The Land of Opportunity.”
“I remember you telling me that she wanted to be a teacher and write children’s books.”
“Yeah. She had so many plans and dreams for herself. But she never got the chance.” Guilt eats at me like acid. “She was in awe of Malcolm at first. This cool, good-looking guy. A basketball player. Rode a motorcycle. My mom had never even gone on a date before. She fell hard for him. Even when she began to see glimpses of his mean streak, she made excuses for him. That was my mom, she saw the good in everyone.”
“He exploited that.”
Dee’s understanding makes it easier for me to continue. “All Malcolm cared about was basketball. Not just the sport, but that it meant money and fame. Power and prestige. He was obsessed with it. A wife wasn’t in his plans, certainly not a baby.
“He blamed her for trapping him, then he blamed her for crashing his motorcycle and ending his basketball future. But through it all she romanticized that he would eventually come to love us.” I shake my head at her wistful naïvety. “I’m sure he only married her because he’d lost the only thing he cared about and wanted to make her life a living hell. And he did.”
A cauldron of hate and fury boils inside of me. “After he recovered, he went into the police academy. It wouldn’t give him the money and fame he craved, but I think he chose it for the power. Beyond that, it shielded him. No one saw the real him behind the sheen of his badge. Except us.”
I stare out at the road but it’s not just the stretch of highway that fills my vision, it’s the memories. “As much as he hated me for being born, he needed me to fulfill his dreams and that made him hate and resent me all the more.”
My chest heaves and I feel Dee’s hand tighten on mine. “I knew when a beating was coming. He’d get this look on his face. Cold. Icy. Then he’d slowly remove his belt, getting off on my fear. Making me anticipate every fucking action that would lead up to that first hit. But I could take that. I didn’t cry. I made my mind go elsewhere. Escaped into another world until it was over. But what I couldn’t take, what I could never escape from was him hurting my mom.”
I try to swallow past the dry knot in my throat. When my voice comes next, it’s sandpapery rough. “She always intervened, trying to stop him. But that only made it worse for her. One night he looped the belt around her throat and dragged her from my room like she was a fucking dog, calling her a mongrel.” The memory of it still slicks my skin with sweat.“I just stood there as I always did. Shaking like a fucking coward. She gave up everything for me. She took those hits that should have been mine. And I never, not once, fought back for her.”
The dark pain of the past blurs my vision. Too fucked up to keep driving, I withdraw my hand from Dee’s and pull over to the shoulder. I put the car in park. My hands grip the wheel. My breathing is ragged.
Mick.” Dee unbuckles her seat belt and, coming up on her knees, leans across to pull me in for a hug.
I hug her back, a grip brutal in its intensity. My body trembles as if I’m sobbing. But I don’t shed any tears. Dee sheds them for me. Sad, heart-aching rivulets.
“I never wanted you to hear those details,” I choke. “I never wanted you to know how badly I’d failed her.”
“You didn’t fail her, Mick. You were a child. There was nothing you could have done to stop him.”
“She stayed because of me.”
“She stayed out of fear.” Dee eases away, revealing those golden eyes, wet and anguished for me. “That kind of abuse takes a psychological toll. Your mom was scared, she was alone. She didn’t have any family or money of her own. Her husband was an esteemed police officer, popular with the department and the community. That can make a woman not see options to leave or get help the way others might.”
