Page 94 of Traces Of You
“Do you think you are by watching out for me?”
He sighed. “No. I’m trusting that you haven’t broken the law.”
“I haven’t. I’m not lying. The most I’m guilty of is trying to get Oliver held there while I had time to escape. He’s never gotten arrested for what he’s done to me.”
“Reenie, you could have pressed charges.”
He didn’t understand. “Ford. You don’t get it. I told you, he knew people. When I went into the hospital for my ribs, I lied and said I fell. I hadn’t been in before, they had no reason to doubt it.”
“What about your jaw?” he asked.
“Same thing. A few people gave me curious glances, and others asked me some serious questions. They suspected it, but I said I was fine.”
“And your arm?”
She dipped her head down, her voice lower. “That time, they questioned it. There was an officer there for another reason and a nurse must have gone to get him to check on me. Oliver was with me. He knew the guy and I got a once over as if I was invisible.”
“Nothing happened?”
“They were talking about getting together in a few days and a few other things I didn’t understand. Things they were posting together online. I knew anything I said would fall on deaf ears. When the officer left, Oliver smirked at me, said that I’d get nowhere if I opened my mouth.” It was a reminder to stay in her lane.
“I hate that.” His fingers curled into a fist on the table.
She reached over and put her much smaller hand on his until he relaxed, then threaded their fingers together.
“It’s in my past,” she said. “I want to keep it there. Remember, I grew up like that. There was nowhere to go. No one to talk to. You learn to accept it as part of life. ”
“Sometimes you need to talk about the past to move through it.”
He was relentless when he wanted answers. “My mother was not a nice person. There was always a man in her life and one that shared her bad habits. She knew what she did to me was wrong. Why do you think we moved so much? But there was this evil in her that just liked to prey on people. Drugs and alcohol magnified it. Maybe she got abused as a child and was doing it to feel powerful? I don’t know. It’s not as if we had heartfelt conversations like that.”
“How did you get through that? Because you made it out. You’re here.”
“I internalized it. I sat in my room and thought of all the things I wanted to say to her but couldn’t because I knew the outcome. It wasn’t worth the physical or mental pain, but it was building inside. I moved out when I could. I went from men to roommates. More roommates then men, but I just had this hope someone would take care of me. Stupid on my part.”
Ford made her believe even as a child that she could have someone in her life that would care for her. That would be there for her. It never happened.
Every man in her life had offered a sliver of hope only to slowly chip away at another piece of her. Cheating. Abuse, both physical and emotional. Being used, manipulated, discarded. She’d endured it all, clinging to the belief that someday, one man would finally show up and stay.
That would be the man in her corner to have her back.
Never once did she find it again. Other than at age twelve when Ford couldn’t really be the hero she needed.
Until now. Could that be why she had to come back there? Why she had to say goodbye and hope that she got some internal strength to move on.
But there he was, the boy that turned into a man giving her the hope she needed at the worst time in her life.
“Not stupid,” he said. “Because you learned to stop accepting those things in your life.”
“That’s right.” She lifted her chin. “I can’t do it anymore. I won’t. I was smart enough to know that it’d only get worse. All those internal conversations that I had, they were screaming at me to GO. To MOVE. I was going to listen this time.”
“I’m glad you could see that. There are way too many women who don’t and don’t make it.”
Reenie lifted her head to look into his eyes. “I didn’t want to be another statistic.”
“You won’t be.” He pushed back from the table and walked toward the stairs. She heard a door open and close and figured he’d gone into his office.
He returned with a small box in his hand and set it on the table.
