Page 14 of Mending Scars

Kamden didn’t reply. He just sat there silently, staring at floor and wringing his hands together.

“Tell me about your mother,” Dr. Lowell said, breaking the silence.

Is she fucking serious? This day keeps getting worse and worse.

Kamden’s jaw clenched and his hands stilled. I didn’t think he was going to speak, but he swallowed deeply, then answered, “My mom has always been different. Definitely not your loving, affectionate type of mom. Well, except with Kaleb. She treated him differently than me and Kaiya.” I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. Listening to Kamden talk about my mom and Kaleb made my stomach turn—they both had made my life a living hell.

“He’d always been her favorite. Kaleb could do no wrong in her eyes. After I’d stopped Kaleb from… from raping Kaiya, she’d been angry with me for hurting him. She didn’t even care about what he’d done to Kaiya, or that he’d been abusing her for years. Hell, she even blamed Kaiya for Kaleb’s actions.”

My face burned with anger and hurt. Tears blurred my vision as I looked down at my joined hands. I hated being reminded about my past, about everything I had to endure my whole life.

Dr. Lowell quickly scribbled on her paper. “Why do you think she was like that?”

I had to give Kamden credit—if she was asking me all those questions, I would’ve lost my shit or completely shut down by now.

Kamden shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m starting to believe that she might have some type of mental illness like Kaleb—it’s the only explanation I can think of to justify her actions. What kind of mother would she be otherwise?”

I’d never considered that before, but I wouldn’t know what normal was even if it smacked me in the face. Mental illness sometimes ran in families, so it could be possible that my mom had some type of condition similar to Kaleb.

I could see her having some type of personality disorder, or a combination of different disorders. It wouldn’t surprise me. My mother acted bat shit crazy sometimes.

“Kaiya!” my mother yelled from downstairs.

Shit.

Kamden and Kaleb were both at football practice, and I was upstairs doing homework. I stood from my desk and headed out my bedroom door. “What?” I called out as I trudged down the stairs.

She didn’t answer, and when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I didn’t see her in the living room. “Mom?”

Still no response, so I headed into the kitchen. She was standing in front of the counter, and the overhead cabinet above her was open.As I approached her, I could see her tightly gripping the edge of the counter. “You called me, Mom?”

Her head jerked toward me. “Yes, come take a look at this, Kaiya,” she gritted through clenched teeth.

I hesitantly inched toward her, unsure what she was angry about. She grabbed my arm and roughly pulled me next to her in front of the open cabinet. “You put the plates up wrong!”

I looked up at the cabinet—everything looked fine. I’d made sure to neatly stack the plates and keep them from touching the other glasses and dinnerware.

“You don’t even see your mistake, do you?” she scoffed in irritation. She squeezed my arm tighter.

“No, I thought that’s how they’re supposed to be.” I replied, trying, but failing to keep my voice steady.

She flung my arm away from her in disgust. “You put the salad plates where the dinner plates go. Dinner plates go on the bottom shelf and salad plates go directly above them on the middle shelf.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll fix th—”

“Don’t bother,” she spat. “I’ll do it since you couldn’t do it right the first time.”

She turned away, dismissing me as she set to work, fixing my mistake. I forced back the tears as I walked back to the stairs and up to my room.

“How do you feel about that, Kaiya?” Dr. Lowell’s voice broke through my stumble down memory lane.

“About what?” I replied, avoiding her gaze.

I really don’t want to talk about this.

“How your mother treated you.” She quickly jotted down something on her pad.

I sat back on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest. “She was a bitch.” I shrugged. “Still is. If her and my dad had been better parents, things might have been different… better.”

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