Page 89 of Storm Bound
“Oy vey, that tokhes! How? What did he do?” she exclaimed.
“I don’t know, Mom. You-you didn’t tell him where I was, didja?” I asked.
I didn’t like asking, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d opened her mouth without meaning to.
“Of course not, sweetie. I wouldn’t. I know how long it took you to get the chutzpah to leave him. I wouldn’t tell him a thing. He tried calling, but I blocked him.”
A sigh of relief came out of my lips.
“Wait, you managed to block someone? How didja do that? You can barely use your phone to call me,” I said.
“Feh! Is that how little you think of your mother?”
“Mmm… Yup. When it comes to technology, yeah,” I said with a chuckle.
And here I thought I’d never be able to laugh again now that Justin was back and I’d lost Charlie.
Oh, Charlie.
We’d barely been apart, and everything inside me screamed how much it was missing him.
“Your brother helped me,” she sighed.
“I knew it. But if it wasn’t you, who was it? How did he know?”
“Maybe he reached out to the hospital?”
“That stuff is confidential, Mom,” I said.
“And when has that ever stopped him? You remember when we went to Florida for our family vacation and he rocked up like he’d been invited?”
She had a point. Maybe it was confidential, but Justin had a way of getting people—men especially, although he’d been known to charm a woman or two—to tell him what he needed.
“What am I going to do, Mom?”
“Do you want me to come down there and kick his tokhes?” She raised her voice. She meant business.
“Maybe. No. I don’t know. What am I going to do?”
“What about Charlie? Can’t he help you?”
“Charlie…” I started, but I didn’t want to say it. Saying it would only make it more real, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to hold on to the hope that things weren’t over.
Even if they were.
“Let me guess. Justin got to him?”
I nodded. And Mom didn’t even need to see me to know the answer.
“Oh, when I get there, there’ll be hell to pay. I’ll make thatkholeryebeg for his mommy.”
That made me smile.
But it wasn’t anything more than words. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried to do that before. She’d even had my locks changed, but somehow that asshole managed to get my landlord to let him in.
He was like a bug that infected everything he touched. And he didn’t stop until he poisoned everyone and everything around him.
Not that there was anything left to infect in my life. He’d cut me off from my friends, he’d turned my love into need, he’d made me run away from my own home to be free of him, and he’d still followed me here. And poisoned Charlie with the lies. Or half the truth. I had nothing else for him to destroy.
