Page 32 of The Way Back Home

I’m afraid for my mamma. We might not get along at the best of times, but I still love her. She’s my mom, or she’s supposed to be, and I don’t trust Steve not to hurt her, so I stay. I know better, but I stay, and it’s the worst decision any seventeen-year-old girl ever made.

I stay, and I regret it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Olivia

IT’S A LONG TIME BEFOREI pick myself up off the floor, and even when I do it’s as if I’m in a haze. The same one I found my mamma in time and time again. My throat aches, but it’s no longer August’s hardened hands crushing my windpipe—it’s the past. It’s demons, and the blackness of regret, the hollowness of a childhood that cannot be changed, no matter how much you might want it to. I close the door and walk out to my bike. It’s already going on dark, which means I’ve been sat on that floor all day. I don’t care. Let the darkness have me. I deserve it.

My stomach growls with hunger, and I swallow through the pain in my throat, always hungry. When you spend your childhood starving, food becomes your comfort when you do have it. Excess, warmth, nice lingerie—all the things to cover how ugly I am inside. I shake my head.How ugly I was. I’m better now. I’m here for a reason. I’ve saved so many with the work I do, and yet it still feels like that little girl inside me is drowning, because I couldn’t save her.No one came to save her.

I pull the bike to a stop at the end of the long drive. Tanglewood sits like a shiny beacon in the dark, picturesque, beautiful, and sturdy, even though it’s crumbling around us. When I was a little girl, I dreamed of living in a house like this. I thought if I could dust myself off, make clean my dirty clothes, and wash away the stain of grubby handprints, that everything would be better, but demons live in pretty houses too. I didn’t know that then, but I do now. I’d thought that homes like this were for good people—they weren’t reserved for the heroin addicts or sullied children or Steves of the world. Boy, how I was wrong.

I climb off the bike and slowly push it up the drive before abandoning it in the graveyard of broken mowers, tractor parts, and cars that make up the Cottons’ garage. I’m stalling. I know this. I know that he didn’t mean to hurt me. It was my mistake—I screwed up. I ache all over, and I want to just melt into a hot bath, but the second I walk in the door August is there, towering before me.

“Olivia,” he says. His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot, and stricken.

“No.” I shake my head and step back. I’m afraid if I let him apologize, if I don’t walk away now he’ll see between the cracks. He’ll discover why my arms are scarred. He’ll find that darkness within me, and I won’t know how to put it all back inside. I won’t be able to reel in the thread that’s unraveling from my center, promising to smother all that’s good like so much black tar and sorrow. “I can’t. Not tonight.”

“I’m so sorry. I feel sick to my stomach.”

“I can’t do this now,” I say more firmly, pushing past.

“Olivia, please?” August grabs my arms, drawing me against him. I struggle in his grasp, but it’s useless.

“Don’t touch me!” Tears spill from my eyes, and I shut my lids against the pain that feels as if it will tear me in two. “Let me go, please?”

“Auggie?” From the top of the stairs, Bettina’s cry causes us both to cease fighting. I stare anxiously up at her, wondering how much she saw and what she makes of it. “Why are you hwurting her?”

“Goddamn it!” August releases me and stalks away, toward the kitchen, and I’m left staring up at this poor innocent little girl, who’s likely just as confused as I am about what she just witnessed. I clear my scratchy throat as the back door slams.

“Wivvie?”

I wipe away my tears with shaking hands and smile up at her. I’m sure she knows it’s as forced as it feels. I hate that she had to see that. I hate that my own demons are raring their ugly heads when I thought they were long since dead and buried, and I hate that I can’t do my job properly because my feelings are getting in the way. “Come on, pretty girl. Let’s get you back to bed.”

“Did Auggie hwurted you?”

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