Page 58 of The Me I Left Behind

“Carol…” Maggie grasped her arm.

“No, Mom. He needs to know the truth.”

Jason sat, staring at the wall. “The truth? Right. No one is telling the truth here.”

Maggie shifted in her seat so she could catch Jason’s eye. “Jason, listen to me. I’ll admit I’ve kept things from you kids, a lot of things over the years, but I did that to protect you. In fact, everything I’ve ever done since you’ve been alive is to protect you.”

“Sure. Right.”

“Jason!” Carol reached out and punched his arm. “Stop. You don’t have a clue, do you? God, Mom, just tell him or I will.”

To be honest, Maggie wasn’t sure which thing Carol wanted her to tell. The part about the night in January when Max beat the shit out of her? Or the part where he’d knocked up some random woman in Brisbane? Or that Jason had a sibling he didn’t know about.

Carol glared. “All right, then I’ll say it.”

Jason stood and took a step away. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Oh yes, you do.” She reached across Chloe and grabbed his arm.

He jerked back and glared.

“Carol…” Maggie warned.

She ignored her. “Dad hit Mom, hard. I was there. I saw it. He wanted to hurt me, too.”

“What are you talking about?” He scowled.

“Do you remember when Julia was here in January, and you and Chloe stayed with her in the hotel? Well, Dad came back home that night and attacked Mom—because she was protecting me. Dad was mad because Tyler was in the house, and grabbed me hard, shaking me. Mom went after him, and he hit her more than once. He hit her so hard, he knocked her out, Jason.And he choked her. Mom told Tyler to get me out of the house. We tripped the alarm and called 9-1-1, and the cops came, but Dad slipped out of the house and left. Mom spent the night in the E.R.”

Jason glared, looking first at Carol, then Maggie. “What did you do, Mom?”

“What do youmean, Jason?” she said.

“You must have really done something bad to make him hit you like that.”

Carol interjected. “She didn’t do a damn thing! Don’t you get it?”

Suddenly, Maggie realized what a dangerous example Max had set for the kids, whether or not they realized it. Jason, inparticular. In his adolescent mind, Max was—probably always had been—punishing her for something she apparently had done wrong.

If the kids did something wrong, something he didn’t like, they got punished.

Therefore, if Max punished her in that horrible way, then she must have deserved it.

Shit.

She took a step closer to her son. “Jason, your father is a mean-spirited, controlling asshole of a man. He is mentally and physically abusive to me, and to all of you, whether or not you realize that. And my only fault in all of this, even though I tried to protect you as much as a could, is that I didn’t see it, stop it, sooner. But now I can, and I will. And all of us—you, Carol, Chloe, and me—are going to stick together so we can stay together because, frankly, I can’t lose you.”

She sniffled briefly, still focused on him. “And yes, I made him mad. I found out something over Christmas that changed things.”

“Christmas? We were at Tuckaway Bay then.”

“Right. Remember when your dad missed the call on Christmas Eve?”

“You said he texted and something came up.”

“Yes.”

Carol sighed and pushed closer. “Jason, I tried him again later on Mom’s tablet. He had logged on but forgot to sign off. I saw him in a bedroom with another woman and a baby.”

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