she got back from her honeymoon in Europe, all Kathleen Collins wanted to do was build her dream house. Her husband wanted a house in Deerfield that was close to Route 19 and his office. But the newly minted Mrs. Collins didn’t spend all that time freezing in a backyard to buy somebody’s “used” house. She wanted everything to be new. It would be elegant. Modern. Glass and steel. Not aluminum siding. A big fireplace to keep her bones warm. A beautiful bathroom to wash away the ugly memories. Mr. Collins agreed to everything she wanted because he loved her back then. His wife was as beautiful to him as that house was to her.
God, you’re ugly, Kathy Keizer.
“My name is Kathleen Collins, God dammit!” she hissed out loud.
She listened to her voice echo off the imported marble floor. The floor she brought back from her third trip to Italy, which her father had never seen once. She closed her eyes and locked horns with the voice. She had done it before, and she had always won.
You’ll never cover up the scars, Kathy Keizer.
You’ll never get warm, Kathy Keizer.
God, you’re ugly, Kathy Keizer.
Even through her father’s burial, she beat the voice. She hated the man in the casket with all her heart, but she made damn sure to shed a tear for him because that’s what a Collins would do. She watched him being lowered into the cemetery’s ground in the dead of winter. He would be buried in a cold backyard for eternity. Buried with every secret because she wasn’t about to turn her past into a daytime talk show to sell commercials to the people stuck on gurneys. She wasn’t going to be one more God damn talk-show victim walking around with the idea that all parents who abuse their children were abused themselves. She would never be buried. She would be cremated. She would never be cold again.
“Mom?”
Mrs. Collins opened her eyes. She saw Brady standing in the doorway.
“Brady, what are you doing here?!” she asked.
“I was cold,” he said.
Brady started to walk toward her.
“What are you holding behind your back, Brady?”
“It’s a secret.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I’m going to give you, Mom.”
Brady took another step toward her.
“That’s it, mister. You want to be out in the doghouse all night?! If you act like a dog, you’ll be treated like a dog.”
“You’re the dog, Mom. Your diamond necklace is just a dog collar. You’re just some rich man’s bitch.”
Brady took another step toward her. She looked into his eyes. She had seen him be willful before. But this was different. This was frightening. Something told her this was the final showdown with her son. Someone was going to blink first. This was the war.
And she was going to win.
“Mister, you march your fucking feet outside, or you will spend a week in that God damn doghouse, do you understand me?”
Brady said nothing. He just walked closer. His face was so calm. He had no fear of her anymore.
“Bradford Wesley Collins, I am counting to three.”
“Good. I will, too.”
Brady took another step toward her. Mrs. Collins had stared down everyone she had ever met, but Brady’s face was filled with a dull, quiet rage that she had seen before. It felt like she was trying to stare down her own reflection.
“ONE!” she hissed.
Brady smiled the sickest frown upside down.
“TWO!”
Brady moved his hands from behind his back.
“THREEEEEEE!” Brady screamed.
With that shout, Brady raised the knife and jumped toward the bathtub. Mrs. Collins pushed him away and jumped out of the water. Any thoughts of disciplining her son were long gone. This was self-defense. Her feet hit the slick marble, and she tumbled over, slapping her head on the floor. She lay on the imported Italian marble. She saw her son walk over to her, towering like a giant. She began to feel woozy. She wasn’t even sure if she was awake or still asleep in the bathtub.
“Mom?” Brady said. “Grandma is sorry for all the things Grandpa did, but we have to stop thinking about that now. Okay?”
Brady touched her arm. She could feel the tingle running through his fingertips like the dying embers of a campfire. Brady handed her the knife. For a moment, she thought about cutting her own throat with it. Or maybe stabbing him. But that’s not what the knife was for. No. It was for something else. Brady opened her makeup drawer and handed her all of her favorites. Eye shadow.