Page 73 of Losing a Piece of Me

I feel the rest of the weight lift from my shoulders. I can stand taller than I ever have and with Striker by my side, I’m even stronger.

Chapter 18

Walking into his office, my whole body is rigid. I know he’s going to give me her information, but I’m not sure I want it.

I understand why she had to leave the way she did, but what kept her from coming back for me? Why couldn’t she have at least checked up on me?

“Have a seat,” Gary says, pointing to the chair across from his desk.

I sit down and watch him warily as he grabs the bottle of Scotch and pours a shot in both glasses. He sets one in front of me and downs his own.

He sets his empty glass down and turns his back to me once again, rummaging through a filing cabinet.

His expression changes from concentrated to satisfied when he finds what he’s looking for. He withdraws a file from the drawer and drops it on the desk in front of me. Go ahead, read it.” He then retreats to his brown leather desk chair and makes himself comfortable. My adrenaline kicks in, dictating me to run screaming from the room and never come back, but I summon my courage and force myself to pick up the file. The small folder and stack of papers contained within feel as if they weigh a ton, and every movement is a labor. This file is like Pandora’s Box: whatever I discover in here cannot be unseen, there will be no turning back. Am I really sure that I want this glimpse into the past? Not just my own past, but also my mother’s? I take a long breath and look at Gary. He nods, motioning for me to continue.

Sitting on top of the pile of papers inside the folder is a wallet-sized photo of my mother, faded and slightly worn around the edges. She’s young and beautiful, just as I remember her. Her blonde hair falls over her shoulders in soft curls and her blue eyes shine brighter than clear ocean water. Her wide smile causes a small dimple to form in each of her cheeks, the sight of which makes my heart ache.

God, I miss her. Why didn’t I realize this before?

I pick up the photograph and flip it over, revealing the shocking photo beneath it.

It’s a picture of her in a hospital bed. Her eyes are swollen shut and bruised. She has gauze wrapped around her head, and her arm is in a sling.

“It was worse than it looks. That picture can’t show all her bruises and internal damage,” Gary says. Try as I might, I can’t pry my eyes away from the horrifying image.

The difference between the two pictures rattles me to my core.

The first one, before she met my father, shows a happy, healthy woman full of life. The second, after she was unfortunate enough to have my father come into her life, shows the shell of a woman beaten and bruised, virtually devoid of life.

I push my anger down and flip forward to the rest of the documents.

Under the photos sits a pile of legal papers. Rifling through these, my eyes stop on a divorce document stating that she wanted full custody of me. She wanted me. She didn’t want to leave me.

Knowing she wanted me should alleviate my anger, but instead it deepens it. My father kept me from her, for no reason other than to keep someone around to beat on.

I feel tears sting my eyes, but refuse to let them fall.

The last page in her file contains her contact information and current whereabouts. I remove the paper and close the file.

“How did you do it? How did you get my father to sign the divorce papers?”

He pours another glass and throws it back.

“I threatened him. I told him I would ruin him. As a lawyer, I can do enough damage by myself, but with the connections I have, he wouldn’t come back from that.”

“So why didn’t you include me in on this deal too?”

“We tried, he wouldn’t go for it. Kate said he never laid a finger on you. She said that he was a good dad to you and that she didn’t think he would ever hurt you.”

I thought back on the times we shared before she left. She was right, he was a good dad, at least on the surface. He picked me up from school and ball practice. He would take me out to eat and to get ice cream. Hell, he even took to fishing and played catch with me. I never would have thought that he was beating her all that time.

I dip my head and rub my eyes. “Did you know that he was beating me?”

When I look up at him, he dips his head. “Not at first.” He shakes his head and slowly swirls the liquid in his glass. “I didn’t know until it was too late. You were practically old enough to leave then. I didn’t know until that night in the police station.”

I did do a good job of hiding it from everyone. Nobody knew but Lex, and that was only because she walked up and saw us through the window one night.

I made quite a name for myself in this town as a brawler throughout high school. If I had a black eye or bruises, people just thought they came from that, not the hands of my father.

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