Page 1 of Devotion

1

Layla

The puddle of blood my mother danced in that night belonged to my father.

While the stab wounds she delivered didn’t quite kill him, I sometimes think it may as well have, given the emptiness I’ve seen in his eyes fifteen years later.

They can’t keep me from you, Layla!

This promise—the one Mom shouted as they carried her away—always echoes through these nightmares on repeat like a bad song, tormenting me in sleep, haunting me when I’m wide awake.

I couldn’t blink, my young mind trying to reconcile how the woman who’d just given me warm milk and tucked me into bed less than an hour ago became…this.Blood slathered across her forehead, smudged on both cheeks, streaked in her hair. Her hands were coated in a thin, sticky layer of red, and they made a strange squelching noise as she gripped the doorframe, refusing to leave our home on anyone’s terms but her own.

I recall her being a notably stubborn beast when she wanted to be, and from what I’m told, we’re alike in that way.

I prefer to think our similarities end there.

They can’t keep me from you, Layla!

Paramedics rushed in and headed straight for Dad. An officer blocked my line of sight from Mom, and then swept me into his arms as he tossed a blanket over my head. As I’ve reflected on this night years later, I realize this was that officer’s attempt at shielding me from the ghastly scene unfolding inside my home, but he was too late. Possiblyyearstoo late, but I can’t say for sure. Childhood is mostly a blur for me, a collection of dizzying highs and lows, punctuated by gaps in my memory that I can’t seem to recover.

Gaps I often wonder if I evenwantto recover.

With me tucked underneath that gray blanket, the officer carried me out into the chilled, November air, out into the open where I could’ve sworn my mother’s screams became the night itself, surrounding us all.Consumingus all. I’d never heard anything like that before, and I haven’t since. Thank God.

But hers wasn’t the only voice. There was a man calling out to my father as the wheels of a rapidly moving gurney rolled across our paved driveway. I couldn’t place that voice, but I remember there was a moment that followed shortly after that I stopped thinking about it at all. Simply because a hand slipped into mine, warm and soft, comforting.

Another kid.

I remember them squeezing my hand so tightly that, for a moment, I wasn’t so focused on how my world was being violently ripped to shreds, or how I might not ever see my parents again. That touch, as briefly as it lasted, whoever it belonged to… centered me.

Six words were whispered in a small, adolescent voice, spoken by the one who clung to my hand.“I won’t let her hurt you.”

At first, I didn’t understand why anyone would think my own mother meant to do me harm, but it was in that moment that my perspective of her vow shifted. What I’d first perceived to be the declaration of her unwavering love now felt more like a threat.

They can’t keep me from you, Layla!

“She’s still got the knife! Protect the kid!” someone shouted, and I couldn’t seem to get air into my lungs quickly enough.

Heavy footsteps thundered closer, and the officer’s arms tightened around me as he reached toward his hip. The blanket made it impossible to see what was coming.

Impossible to seewhowas coming.

But then, just as the first few syllables of that same, persistent promise passed between my mother’s lips again… a gun fired.

The rushing footsteps ceased.

A body fell to the ground.

* * *

“Mom?”

Her name’s a whisper on my lips as I’m startled awake, accidentally knocking a glass of water from the nightstand to the floor when I reach for her.

A ghost from a half-forgotten past.

“Shit.”

---