AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Logan frowns. “Can you explain that?”
“We got into a fight yesterday when I came home with stitches in my face.” I motion to my chin. “A visit to the hospital is an expense we normally avoid. I tried to tell him it was covered by the hockey program, but he just…lost his shit. Accused me of…” I tip my head up and focus on a fluffy cloud floating in the sky, gritting my teeth against the prick behind my eyes.
“You’re a useless fucking whore. You think that boy likes you? He knows you’re easy. Gonna treat you like the trash you are. Just you wait and see.”
“Mostly he was looking for a reason to fight, and he wanted someone to take his frustration out on, and that person is usually me or my mom. Playing for the women’s team is a dream come true. BJ and your sister Lovey and Rose are all great. Everyone has been so nice, and it’s hard to be part of that and then go back to the arguing. To see the other side is one thing, but to live in it…” I sigh and shake my head. “It makes me want to keep it.”
He shakes his head. “You’re talking like that’s not possible.”
I give him a look. “Come on, Officer Butterson.”
“Just call me Logan.”
“Okay, Officer Logan, even if things go great this summer and playing for the women’s team opens doors, how will I walk through them? My mom won’t be able to work for weeks, maybe even months, because of her injuries. She’s got pins and plates in her leg and her arm. She’s suffered a concussion, so who even knows what the lasting damage of that will be. Logically, working at the diner is probably out after this. It’s too physically demanding. And she doesn’t have her high school diploma. Neither of my parents does. So what kind of job can she get? She only qualifies for minimum-wage work, and her tips were a big part of how we got by, because at least we could hide some of them from my dad so he wouldn’t blow everything on fucking beer and smokes.” I raise a hand. “Sorry about the swearing.”
“No apology needed. I’d be pissed too if the fridge was bare, and the garbage was full of death darts and empties.”
“It’s just so frustrating. And she’s gonna need so much support when she gets out of the hospital. How will I work and take care of her, let alone make time for hockey or school or anything else? You see what I mean, right? How uphill this battle is? How hard it is to have all these great people trying to make things happen for me, and it’s just one barricade after another.”
“Not much has worked out in your favor, has it?”
“I try to enjoy the good things while they last, but this…” I shake my head. “The night before my mom fell, my dad and I got into it, which is obviously a pretty freaking regular occurrence. I told my mom I was at the library, but I was with BJ, and my dad saw me on the lake, which pissed him off because it meant I wasn’t home doing chores or whatever. But it got worse when he found my acceptance letter to college, and the money I’d saved for tuition. I’m trying to take more than one course at a time so I can complete my degree faster. I kept the money in a lockbox in my dresser. I planned to put it in my account when it was time to pay for classes. But he took it all, and my mom just…let him.”
His expression darkens, so I rush on, compelled to defend her. “I don’t blame her. She can’t take him on the way I can.”
His cheek tics. “What does that mean, ‘take him on the way I can’?”
I pick at a hangnail. “I think you know what it means.”
“Can you spell it out for me, so I’m sure we’re on the same page?”
I look away. “Sometimes he gets physical.”
“Physical how?”
“He’ll push her around. Or me. One time he went after her, and I’d been playing a lot of hockey—street and ice, lots of time slapping a puck around, and he’s…wiry. I stopped him before he could do any real damage.”
“How’d you manage that?” He’s so calm, his voice even and gently inquisitive. But there’s a tic in his right eye that gives away the undercurrent of rage. I appreciate it, even if I don’t need him to defend me.
“To be clear, I know that violence isn’t the answer, but he was hurting her, and I needed him to stop. So I knocked him out. With one punch.” I’d been so scared. Afraid he would do something we couldn’t come back from. Afraid I’d done just that. But he came around five minutes later. Washed down a couple of Tylenol with beer and went to the trailer park for a couple of days.
His jaw tics. “Seems like self-defense. Did it stop after that?”
“The physical stuff, yeah. But the other night when he took all my tuition money and found out I’d been lying, he got real angry and grabbed my mom’s arm. She might even have bruises. It was only a couple days ago.” It feels like a year has passed. I explain what happened, how I backed my dad into a corner to scare him, how I told him to take a drive and cool off, and how the next night my mom fell off the deck in the exact same spot. “I’m worried, though, because even if she does remember, she might still say it’s her fault—and not because she’s lying for him, but because she believes it’s true. They’ve been together since she was in high school. She had me when she was seventeen. Twenty years is a lot of time with someone telling you it’s always your fault. It’s hard not to believe it’s true, you know?” I bite the inside of my cheek and fight to keep my emotions locked down. “She’s conditioned to believe she’s the problem.” And I’m conditioned to protect her from him. To take the heat off her. To absorb the abuse. But I’m so damn tired.
“It doesn’t sound like much of a coincidence.” Logan rubs his chin, his frown deepening. “I think you probably already know this, but I’m going to lay it out for you anyway. Without a corroborating story from your mother or some proof, like a video or photos, it’ll be hard to prove he’s at fault. But what I can do is take the information you’ve given me and start building a case.”
I press my fingers to my temples, squeezing my eyes shut. “I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t remember, or worse, if she owns it.”
“Sometimes people have to find the bottom before they start looking for a way back to the surface,” Logan says softly.
“I don’t want the bottom to be a grave.” I dash away the stupid tears as they fall.
He pulls one of those little tissue packs from his pocket and hands it to me. “We’re going to do everything we can to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
“But how?”
“You’re hooked up with families who have a lot of connections. One thing at a time, though.” His expression is full of empathy. “This hamster wheel your mom is stuck on, it doesn’t have to be yours too. I know you want to protect her, but who’s protecting you?”
