He Hits You? Suck It Up So I Locked Them in With My Abusive Husband novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: Eleven Letters
My mother's kitchen smelled of lemon cleaner and burnt toast, as it always had.
She had walked out of church in front of everyone, and I had followed her all the way down Alder Street.
Nate waited in the truck at the curb.
I had asked him to.
Carol set her purse on the counter and filled the kettle with her back to me.
"Say it," she said. "Whatever you came to say."
"You told me it cost you something."
"It did."
"Tell me what."
Her hands stopped on the kettle.
"Your father left us this house and a second mortgage," she said. "When he died I was making eleven dollars an hour at the school cafeteria. I was going to lose the house, Jean. We were two months from the street."
"I was nineteen. I'd have worked."
"At the dental office, on what they paid you? You'd have worked to pay the interest."
She turned around.
Her eyes were red.
"Diane Slocumb came to a church supper," she said. "She said her son wanted a nice girl from a good family. She said if the two of you were happy, she would take care of the house."
"You sold me," I said.
"I introduced you to a family that could keep you safe."
"Safe."
"I didn't know what he was," she said. "The first year, he was gentle. I swear it."
"You knew by the second Christmas. You looked at my wrist and you asked if I'd fallen."
Carol sat down at the table.
She took off her glasses and held them in her lap.
"Diane told me it was the drink," she said. "She said Conway's father was the same, and that with prayer he'd settle. She said a good wife helps him through it."
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