Chapter 7
Audrey asked to see me before I finished with Enzo.
I left the council room immediately.
My uncle noticed.
Good.
Let him.
My daughter sat on my mother’s bed wearing dry clothes and fresh gauze.
She held one of my mother’s bracelets between both hands.
“You mad?”
“Yes.”
Her lip trembled.
“At me?”
My chest tightened.
“No.”
She relaxed.
Again.
That question.
Always that question.
Children around cruelty eventually assume anger belongs to whoever is weakest.
I sat beside her.
“Did Vanessa ever tell you I wanted you to live somewhere else?”
Audrey nodded.
“Where?”
“Mommy’s house.”
St. Catherine’s.
She still called it Mommy’s house even though Isabella had been dead two years.
“What did she say?”
“That Daddy is busy.”
I looked away briefly.
True enough to weaponize.
“And?”
“That if I keep getting hurt, you send me away.”
My hands became still.
“She said that?”
Audrey nodded.
“Did she say why you get hurt?”
My daughter whispered:
“Because I’m bad at walking.”
There are moments when rage wants to become movement.
I forced mine into stillness.
Vanessa had not only staged accidents.
She had rewritten Audrey’s understanding of her own body.
Every bruise became proof she was defective.
Every fall became her fault.
I touched her hand.
“You’re not bad at walking.”
She frowned.
“I fall.”
“So do I.”
She looked skeptical.
“You’re big.”
“I still fall.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Not often.
Irrelevant.
I continued.
“And if you fall, you don’t get sent away.”
Her eyes filled.
“Never?”
“Not for falling.”
“Or crying?”
“No.”
“Or being dirty?”
“No.”
She thought carefully.
“What if I break stuff?”
I almost smiled.
“We’ll discuss the expensive stuff.”
She laughed.
Tiny.
Necessary.
Then she looked toward the door.
“Vanessa says Mommy died because she wasn’t careful too.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“What?”
Audrey stared at the bracelet.
“She says Mommy had accidents.”
My breathing changed.
Isabella died after falling from a horse at St. Catherine’s.
An accident.
May you like
At least that was what I had believed.
Now my wife was teaching my daughter that accidents ran in her blood.
