Page 64 of Keys

It might not have been ethical, but we were placed into a room with one of those mirrors in it where we could see and hear everything going on as my mom talked to her therapist. Grady didn’t bother to tell the therapist or my mom, he just put a finger to his lip and led Quickshot and me to what looked like a janitor’s closet, where we were able to watch through the mirror.

I felt sick to my stomach as we listened to my mother wax poetic about her love for my father.

“June,” her therapist addressed her cautiously. “Do you remember what we talked about just last week?” When my mother only stared at her blankly, her therapist continued. “You were telling me how thankful you were to be making progress because you thought you were almost well enough and ready to go find your daughter.”

“Sarah,” my mom whispered my name, and just the sound of it broke my heart.

“Yes, Sarah. Do you still want that?”

My mom nodded her head.

“Then we have some work to do. You know your daughter won’t like you defending her father to her.”

“But he was good to me,” my mom insisted.

“He kidnapped you in order to lure your daughter to a house where he planned to kill her or maybe sell her to very bad men who would harm her.”

My mom sat quietly for a moment before we watched as her shoulders began to shake and her head dipped lower in front of her shoulders.

“I know it’s wrong. I know he was a horrible person. The first time I was ever with him, I told him ‘no’.”

Quickshot’s arms came around me, pulling my back flush against his front while we listened to my mother recount how she had been raped by my father.

“After a while, it became the norm, and I knew the other girls had it far worse. They were horribly mistreated and sometimes they just disappeared. I was so afraid that if I didn’t please him that I would disappear too.”

“You survived,” her therapist suggested.

My mother nodded. “I did. Things changed though. He took me away from that place and put me up in the house. He would come visit me often and after a while he didn’t leave me locked up anymore. I never bothered to leave because I knew they could find me again. His uncles were important men. There was no one I could go to for help.”

“So, you stayed thinking you had no choice.”

Again, my mother nodded as we watched. “Eventually, I grew to love him. He was kind to me. He brought me everything I needed, took care of me, and made sure I had a nice little house. When I fell pregnant with Sarah, he didn’t make me get rid of her. I thought he would, but when he saw how important it was for me to keep her, he allowed it.”

“Did you ever stop to wonder what her life would be like?”

My mom shook her head. “By then, I thought Brian loved me and I loved him. I wasn’t his captive. He let me get a job. I became June, his lover and friend. It was after Sarah was born, when he told me that he had to marry someone else, that I grew unhappy with our relationship again. He never really paid much attention to our daughter, and in a way, I was thankful for that because it meant she would be safe.”

“Why did you keep going back to him after he left you alone when he got married?”

“If he found out I was with someone else, he would come back around and remind me that I was his. He bought me. He gave me the little freedoms that I enjoyed. Brian reminded me that I had a daughter only because he allowed it.”

I gasped as my mother answered the question I’d always wondered. Why in the hell had she always taken him back? I always thought she was crazy, brainwashed, or something. Now, learning that she kept going back time after time because he was threatening me, I felt as if someone had just kicked me in the chest.

“You didn’t know,” Quickshot whispered.

“Now, June, I need you to really think about that and remember why you no longer have to be concerned about it.” She smiled softly at my mother. “He doesn’t have that hold over you anymore. Remember? Sarah got away. Your daughter was smarter than he could ever be.”

“My daughter is perfect,” my mother told the therapist.

“She’s here and she wants to know if you’re ready to go home and see Jack now? If you’d like, I can go with you to help.”

“Jack is going to be so upset. I don’t want to hurt him, but if I didn’t do it, Brian would have killed him.”

“He knows that June. Your Jack knows what you went through.”

I couldn’t watch anymore. I knew it was a violation to have witnessed any of that, but still, a part of me had to know and I didn’t think my mother would ever be straight with me about what she went through. Hell, up until the past day, I had been unaware that my mother was also a victim of the human trafficking ring we had been attempting to take down for years. My own birth was a direct result of their actions. My body shook as Quickshot quietly led me out of the room and down the hall to wait on the okay to take my mother back home.

“Sorry for taking over your offices so long.” I offered my apology to Grady, who stood and moved into my space so that he could wrap his arms around me.

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