Page 78 of The Usual Family Mayhem

“Sonofabitch.” Jackson mumbled the word but his anger rang through loud and clear.

“I’m convinced she married Edmund Dennison because she craved a home and stability. She wanted to secure her future then help me escape my situation, and she thought he was her ticket.”

Gram had never hinted at this before. I’d read a lot about spousal abuse and spousal violence over the years, trying to understand how things could go so wrong. I’d assumed Mom’s choices fit a pattern. She’d married a man like her father because that’s what she knew, and the cycle continued.

“Edmund Dennison seemed fine at first. A bit too smooth-talking for my taste, but attentive to your mother. Somethingsinister lurked under the surface. Something he hid until he exploded. He convinced people he was one thing when he was really a monster. A narcissist who valued how the public viewed him above all else.”

Jackson took my hand under the table in an unspoken gesture of support. I grabbed on.

“His controlling behavior escalated at home. Nora saw the signs. She knew what a dysfunctional household looked like because she’d grown up in one, but he couldn’t allow her to leave and... you know the rest.” Gram’s words abruptly stopped, the pause echoing through the house. “It keeps me up at night to think she didn’t come to me because she thought I would tell her to stay with her husband like I did.”

The haunting words sat there. Hearing them, seeing Gram’s stark expression as she opened the vault to her most secret memories made every sentence sound so much worse.

“You and Mom deserved better. I’m so sorry you lived like that.” Gram had made sure I didn’t. I’d thanked her many times over the years. How she raised me was a gift I never wanted to take for granted.

The stress around Gram’s mouth eased. “I know, honey. It’s been years. While I can’t pretend the trauma didn’t leave a mark, and I am nowhere near ready to forgive the unforgivable, I have moved on. I married your grandfather to escape my father and all his drunken screaming and then walked into a much worse situation. Nora repeated the pattern. That’s my fault. My failure.”

“You’re not to blame for how either man acted.” Celia’s soft tone didn’t match her message.

“It’s okay.” Gram nodded. “I was blessed with Nora and Kasey. I got a second chance with you. I found love and a much better life.”

Jackson nodded. “I don’t know how but you thrived. Despite the odds, you trusted Celia and then the two of you built a life with Kasey. That’s the kind of personal strength people claim to possess but don’t. You actually do.”

Hearing him say the words confirmed what I already knew. He wasn’t anything like his father. Jackson might resemble Harlan on the outside. On the inside, Jackson surpassed Harlan in every way.

“Your aunt’s situation was different from mine. Her husband was a loser. Insecure. Incompetent. Far beneath her and threatened by how much smarter she was.” Gram squeezed Celia’s hand. “He took everything. Lied. Ran up debt in her name. Squandered every cent. She had multiple jobs while he wasted it all.”

I couldn’t hold one job and Celia had juggled multiple jobs. The women who raised me impressed me more every day.

“The medical supply business. A department store sales job. For a time, some bookkeeping work. I also cleaned offices at night. Anything to keep food on the table. My car that I had before marriage and thought was paid off got repossessed. That’s when I found out my husband had leveraged it and forged my name to do so. The house foreclosure notices. All those calls from the credit card people for cards I didn’t know he had.”

Jackson’s pained expression showed his sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”

“We know.” Celia treated Jackson to a small smile. “After all we’d been through and all we’d lost, we tried to teach Kaseyshe deserved better. That she deserved an equal who loves and respects her.”

“Not every woman knows her worth or believes she has value outside of her marriage. Add in children and money strains and other daily issues and walking away becomes an unscalable mountain,” Gram said.

“We felt sick and angry and helpless whenever a new rumor popped up and traveled around town about a woman in an abusive household,” Celia said. “We vowed to help them.”

I dreaded asking this, but the topic was how we landed here. “Is now the right time to ask about the poison?”

“Poison is only part of it.”

Thanks, Celia. Not exactly the answer I was hoping for.

Gram was more direct. “It would be too obvious if we drugged every abusive man in the area. They’d be dropping all over town.” Gram glanced at Celia and waited for her nod before finishing. “So, we came up with a compromise.”

I bit back a groan. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Gram treated me to a satisfied nod. “This will teach you to snoop around.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Vigilante justice. People debated the appropriateness of terrible individuals who did terrible things to their supposed loved ones facing retribution outside a formal system. What was fair? What did justice require? No one ever asked the victims those questions. The burden to survive rested on them while the attacker could depend on the prejudices and faults within the system and the fickle demands of society to escape culpability.

Despite that, we had choices. We were sitting in a house, not operating in a courtroom with all its rules and limitations. This was real life, where the answers weren’t so clear. If you felt alone and no one stepped up to help then that bright line between right and wrong could blur.

Maybe that’s why I would have made a terrible lawyer. From my vantage point, the law malfunctioned many times when needed and delivered harsh blows often when unnecessary.

---