I had a few fits and starts, but eventually, I got it all out. How I’d been packed off to boarding school at a very young age, how I’d never seen any of my relatives since then, and had only spoken to the woman who calls herself my mother a handful of times in my teens. What I knew of my family was learned from newspaper clippings and gossip.
I’d remembered my dad and the time we spent together, but those memories were a bit hazy since something had blocked them off for a while. I remember laughing and playing with him and being extremely comfortable and safe in his presence, something I never did in my mother’s.
I told her of my running away from the boarding school and changing my name and everything leading up to the day I met her son. Then I told her about the phone call that had ended it all. “What made you think that she could hurt my son? Did you think he was that weak?” Her question is one I’d been asking myself only lately.
At the time, it made sense; this lingering feeling of dread I have where the monster is concerned had convinced me that when she said she’d destroy him, she meant it. “I’m not sure why; I just know she’s capable of hurting him. Besides, I didn’t want your family dragged into my mess.” That was really the leading reason behind my decision to leave. I couldn’t bring myself to involve Calen with the darkness that was my mother.
I may not remember everything about my childhood and why I have such a deep intense fear of her, but what I do remember is horrible enough. I got the idea the second time she left me stranded at the boarding school when all the other girls had gone home, and there was only a skeleton crew left, usually the strictest and most unbending nuns there who were barely better than she was.
I got it when I had to go without so much that the other kids had and when they’d laugh at me and call me poor and other less delightful things. I didn’t understand fully until I was about twelve, and a new girl had questioned me about who I was and why I was the only one stuck there when everyone else went on holiday.
She’s the one who looked my father up on the Internet. I hadn’t thought of him in years because each time I did, the pain in my head and heart was too much to bear. But each night, she’d come to my room and read about him. It was then I learned about the buildings he’d designed, and a whole new world opened up for me.
I could see a part of my dad in his buildings, could read what others thought of this great man I barely remembered from my youth. My memories of him had already started fading by then, and I could hardly remember what he looked like. “I think that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard you say. You’re my family now too; how could you think so little of us that you’d think we’d want you gone to spare us whatever ugliness you suspect your mother of?”
When she put her arm around me, I felt like a fool. I wish I could be as nonchalant as she about this, but she just didn’t know what kind of person the monster is. By the time we pulled up outside, I was a nervous wreck. First, she walked over to Calen’s car that was parked in front of ours and knocked on the window. I approached just in time to hear her warn Jeremy, the driver, not to call her son or else.
The poor man looked torn but withered under the look she gave him before turning back to me. “Where are your keys?”
“Calen took them, but I have a spare in the sconce next to the door. Follow me.” All the way up in the lift, I wanted to turn around and go back as much as I wanted to burst through the door and save Calen from her.
My knees shook, and my hands began to sweat when we stepped off into the hallway leading to my apartment door, and I knew I was going to be sick. I found the key and started to unlock the door, but my mother in law stopped me with a finger to