Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
The truth was, I knew she wouldn’t have. She was twisted up in my father. Embroiled in a toxic kind of love that sickly trumped the love she had for her daughters.
I didn’t know what went wrong with her, how she could’ve been so different from my grandmother. My mother was the truest example of how loving the wrong man could not only kill you but warp you into an unimaginable version of yourself.
I was there in front of Knox telling my story, and even that didn’t tamp down whatever feelings I had for him.
“As we got older, my father decided that the summers spent in Appalachia weren’t good for us girls.” I sucked in a deep breath. “He realized that we were getting ‘too smart for our own good’—his words—since there is no such thing as a young girl being too educated.” I sneered with anger, fresh and visceral after all these years, recalling the things my father had said that made it clear he hated women, his children and wife included, yet my mother stayed.
“My guess was he sensed that we were eventually going to tell our grandmother the truth.” I clicked my tongue. “She fought against his ruling. She even came out to New York once.”
I leaned over to grasp some leaves from a bush, needing to rub the pieces in my hands to ground me as I remembered the last time I saw my beloved grandmother.
The memory was foggy, but I remembered raised voices in our small apartment, my grandmother far too big for the space. Not because she was large in stature but because she existed in such a large place in my mind.
“She likely would’ve fought harder, until she got to the bottom of it, but she died later that summer.” My nails bit into my palms as I spoke, willing my voice not to break.
To that day, the pain I felt over losing my grandmother was still visceral and agonizing, nothing like the way I felt over the loss of my mother.
“A fall.” I shook my head. “She just tripped, broke her hip and then died because the night was cold, and Appalachia is unforgiving and brutal to even those who reside there. Even those who love it fiercely.”
I looked out upon the silhouettes of the trees, standing like ancient sentinels observing us. Though there were a lot of legends I didn’t believe about this place, I believed it to have a kind of sentience to it and that it decided on a whim whether it was benevolent or malevolent.
“It broke my mother, I think,” I whispered. “Or maybe that’s me being overly generous. Thinking she was still whole at that point. Because if there was even an inch of me still put together, I’d use it to give myself strength to take me and my children out of that situation.”
I shook my head, punishing myself for the ugly thought. The resentment I carried like cancer in my insides for my mother. Blaming her for my father’s sins.
“It wasn’t her fault—” I tried to reason.
“It was,” Knox interrupted coldly.
I glanced up at him. “My father, he—”
“Was a piece of shit,” Knox finished. “And so was your mother. For staying.”
“It’s not that black and white,” I argued. “It’s more complicated. She loved him.”
“More than she loved her children?” he replied, his words coated in acid.
It seeped through skin and flesh and bone, right to the core of me.
“Yes,” I rubbed my eyes. “Yes, I think she loved him more than she loved us and hated herself even more than that.”
Having grace for my mother was hard, as I had longed for her to protect us, to have changed our lives. For her to be something different. Even if it was to just be strong enough to let our grandmother have us.
But it was never that simple.
“You, putting your hands on Daisy,” I continued, determined to bring this back full circle, to show him the gravity of what he’d done to me when his hands landed around my sister’s neck. Raging at him and calling him names was tempting, but I was attempting a softer route with the hardest, cruelest man I’d ever encountered. As if that would soften him to me.
“Not the same,” he ground out.
I tilted my head to eye him. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it that black and white? You had your justifications for what you did, just like I’m sure my father did. How can I be sure you won’t hurt her? Hurt me?”
It was the most vulnerable thing I’d said.
It was a plea.
Please don’t hurt us. I’m already too deep to wrench myself out. Please don’t turn me into my mother.
“I would put a knife through my heart before laying a hand on you in anger, Piper,” he vowed.
I rubbed my neck, the pulsating from his touch. Not with pain. With an electric awareness, a wanting that vaguely sickened me, given the violent gesture.