Page 125 of The Sound Of Us

But being asked to have a word with Mrs. Saxon alone, without Eli, invites panic in like an old friend. Eli simply kisses me, right on the lips, right there in front of his mother. My face explodes with heat and I must look like a bright red tomato. And then he leaves.

“Come sit by me,” she says, patting the space next to her on the oversized couch. It feels too close, but how can I say no?

I sit next to her.

“Eli told me a few things. I hope that’s okay with you,” she says.

“Yes, of course. He asked me and I told him it was okay.” My voice shakes.

“How are you feeling?”

She means about the cancer. “Uhm, good. So far.”

“You’re getting tired a lot these days, huh?”

She sounds like a mother. Like my mother. Like Mrs. Dalton. This place isn’t good for me. All I do is cry when someone is nice to me.

“Yes, but it’s not too bad. I—I’m managing okay. And, uhm, how are you doing?”

I’m struggling to make eye contact with her. She knows about the abuse, about Frank. All I want to do is hide from her.

“It’s not too bad. I’m managing okay.” She smiles when I finally look at her with a smile for repeating my answer.

“Are you settling in nicely at home?” she asks.

Home. She doesn’t say Eli’s place. She says home. Like it’s my home too. I drop my eyes to my lap when I think about how she must know that I’m living with her son while I’m married to someone else.

She reaches over and lifts my chin. “Eli would never have made these difficult choices if you didn’t mean that much to him,” she says softly.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I—I should have divorced my husband first.”

“I’ve lived long enough to know that life isn’t that simple, Axel.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Saxon.” My voice is soft, grateful, daring to sound happy.

“Is Eli being good to you?” she asks.

My eyes fly to hers, stunned. Oh my god, what a question. “No one’s ever been as good to me as he’s been,” I say sincerely.

She grins. You’d never think she’s almost eighty and had just got out of the hospital. “He’s pretty great, huh?”

Her smile is infectious. I can’t help the upward tug of my own lips. “He is amazing, Mrs. Saxon.”

His smile widens. “Yeah. I really like him, that son of mine. You like him too, huh?”

I laugh. “I like him very much.”

***

I’ve been in therapy now for just over eight weeks. Eli comes with me once a month and I go alone the other three times a month. On days when Eli comes with me, Pepper comes too. The only place Pepper doesn’t go with Eli is to his work, and even that, I think he would have given in to if I hadn’t given Pepper a good scolding. She acts like he’s abandoned her every morning and then every evening she sits by the elevator doors, watching the light. She’s learned that when the lights flicker, it means Eli is on his way up. Today, he has a late meeting. Pepper doesn’t believe a word I say anymore, so when she ignored me after I told her that Eli will be late, I left her there.

I cook dinner for us every night. Eli loves everything I cook. It’s an effort not to make the comparison to my other life, but I try very hard. Sometimes, the guilt over what Frank would be eating, how he’d be coping, overwhelms me. But I try to remember all the reasons I had to leave. And not only that, but the way I had to leave. Sometimes, I feel like I let him down. Like I abandoned him. But I know now it’s my loyalty talking. My empathetic nature. It has nothing to do with Frank, except the part where he exploited that part of me to control me. I see the difference now.

I’ve obtained a whole new set of vocabulary since I started therapy. Narcissistic abuse. Gas lighting. Trauma bonds. Emotional neglect. Reactive abuse. I used to have a vague idea about some of these things before, but when you’re using those words to dissect your own memories and experiences, it becomes utterly terrifying that a person could endure such pain.

It was liberating to find the word that described those times I’d scream and scream and scream like a madman. And Frank would just sit there and laugh. Or record me. Or tell me that I was insane. There is such a thing as reactive abuse. A kind of abuse where you’re pushed and pushed and pushed until you snap and your reaction is used to inflict more abuse on you.

My divorce was finalized today. Eli’s lawyers were ruthless in making sure everything went through and that Frank didn’t try to delay the proceedings. He was also ordered to destroy the video he’d taken of me and Eli at the lake.

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