The Path to Sunshine Cove (Cape Sanctuary #2) - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,78

the whole thing but the box was open now. Perhaps the telling of it would help her gather all those memories and stuff them back where they belonged.

She released a shaky breath, twisting her hands in Cinder’s fur. “My parents married when my mother was only seventeen. My father was twenty-six.”

“A wide age difference.”

“Yes. Disproportionate in every way. They had a horrible relationship. My father was in the army and his favorite assignment was drill sergeant. He was the worst kind, cruel bordering on sadistic, and he ran our house just like his troops.”

“I know the type. I’m sorry.”

The compassion in his voice told her he understood exactly what she was talking about. “Our mom, Roni, adored him. She wouldn’t listen to a word against him. Even when he ground her self-confidence to nothing, she loved him.”

“Did he...abuse her?”

“Physically, no. At least not that we ever saw. In every other possible way, yes. He cheated on her, verbally abused her, made her feel like nothing. And basically did the same to me and Rachel.”

The darkness seemed to surround her and she was grateful for his presence, solid and reassuring. Not that she couldn’t fight off the memories herself but sometimes it was nice to have someone else there to give her strength.

“Your mother didn’t try to protect you?”

“All she ever saw was our father.” Jess had figured out even at a young age that their mother wasn’t healthy, either mentally or emotionally. Her complete, unquestioning loyalty to her husband, no matter how he treated her or their children, was wrong on every single level.

“I don’t want you to think it was all horrible. He was deployed for long stretches at a time, which was great. We could all relax for a time. And Rachel and I always had each other. We talked about how we were going to move out as soon as we could, just the two of us, and get a place together. We were going to go to college together. She was going to be a schoolteacher and I was going to be a veterinarian.”

She was silent, remembering nights in whatever base housing they currently called home when she and Rachel had talked long past midnight about what they would do when they were free of the tension inside their family.

Those dreams seemed so far away now. Another lifetime.

“I told you Doug cheated on Roni. He always made sure she knew, just to twist the knife. What would she do? Leave him? He knew she wouldn’t. He knew just how much she loved him, how far he could push her, and he used her love to control and manipulate. Looking back, I think it was a game to him. He was a sociopath at the least, more likely a psychopath.”

Her father had taken Roni’s love and twisted it to his own ends. It had been horrible to watch as an impressionable young girl. Even then, she had known it was wrong.

Her mother had loved him so much and Jess would have been surprised if Doug gave his wife and family even a passing thought throughout his day.

She was silent for a long time, listening to the wind and the waves and the dog’s soft breathing. She didn’t want to tell him the rest. How could she stop now, though?

“When I was fifteen and Rachel thirteen, he...pushed her past the breaking point. He threatened to leave, which of course was nothing new. I can’t count the times he had done it before. Something felt different this time and I think...I think she felt it, too. He started packing his bags, telling our mother the whole time about the other woman he was leaving her for. Her name was Susie. She was younger than Roni. Prettier. Smarter. Everything my mother had once been but that he had ground out of her over the years.”

Once upon a time, her mother had been soft, loving. Jess had flashes of memory of Roni reading to them, of her making cookies, of her playing dolls with them.

Sometimes it shocked her to remember her mother had been seventeen when she had Jess and would have only been a few years older than Jess was now when she died.

“This was apparently her breaking point. As he walked out into the living room with his suitcase, Mom followed him, begging him not to go. When he...when he laughed at her, she pulled out his own handgun that he kept stashed by their bed and, without saying