Page 53 of Lela's Choice

“It feels surreal whenever I remember it now. Back then I wanted to cry. I’d failed at everything. I’d been too slow to get the kids away, and I didn’t stop the man from hitting her, hitting any of them. I wanted to crawl into my mother’s lap and hold on, but she wanted me to go out to the street with that man and bring Mrs. Brown back inside. ‘He won’t stop you. He’s got what he came for.’ The engine roared as the car took off.”

He paused. “I told her I was scared.”

“She would have known that.” Lela gentled her hold, her fingers stroking his palm, even strokes easing the echoes of helplessness flowing through him.

“She called me her brave boy, said she understood I was scared. That he’d gone, and now Mrs. Brown needed our help.

“I remember asking, ‘What about you, Mum?’ and she told me she had broken ribs. The ambulance and paramedics would come soon.”

“Youwerebrave too,” Lela murmured.

“Says a woman who faced tougher choices at ten years of age.” Hamish pressed a kiss to her temple. “I knew the car had left, but I was shit-scared when I went through the front door. A few houses away, Mrs. Brown lay crumpled on the grass verge beside the road. She was bawling her eyes out. I heard her in my dreams for years. A few people were looking out their windows, but no one came to help her. I knew that was wrong; they should have been helping.”

Lela pressed herself more closely against his side.

“She needed my help to walk back inside. Her body was a dead weight.” He wiped an eye with his free hand. He hated knowing Mrs. Brown and her kids would always have that memory. “I led her back into the living room. By this time, I could hear the sirens, police, ambulance. I tried to tell her we’d get the kids back, but I don’t think she heard a word I said. When she spotted Mum, she came alive enough to throw herself across the room and put her head in Mum’s lap.”

He rubbed a hand across his breastbone. “She was inconsolable. I remember thinking Mrs. Brown was as helpless as me, and like me, she wanted, maybe even expected, Mum would make it all better.”

“What happened?” Lela cared what happened to strangers more than twenty years ago.

“They caught up with the car on the way to the airport. The kids were traumatised, but safe, and with their father locked up, Mum did her magic with various government and voluntary agencies to spirit the family out of Sydney and to a town where they could start a new life. Mum had a few broken ribs, and for weeks, I didn’t leave her side. I was afraid if she went anywhere on her own someone might try to hurt her again.”

“Did she stop?”

“No. I don’t know what the conversations were behind closed doors, because there were closed doors for the first time in our house. Dad looked like he’d had the guts punched out of him when he arrived at the hospital.” Hamish must have looked the same after Olivia was attacked. His father had held him while he cried—both times.

“Was she hurt again?” Lela drew him back to the story.

“No, and she, they, argued that visiting Mrs. Brown’s house was a risk worth taking, because turning your back on her and her kids would reinforce the view that violence wins.”

“You must be very proud of her,” she said.

“Yeah, she’s a force of nature. My sisters and I were always safe and loved. I learned that’s not a given for every child, and it should be.”

“You do important work.” Her praise mattered. Understanding what drove him mattered more. He hadn’t known he’d craved her vindication.

He pushed himself off the car and turned to face her. “Did your father ever hit you?”

“Shouting, banging doors—and we had some of that before Mama died—but we all gathered for dinner and were expected to behave politely at the table,” she reassured him. “Whatever the resentments seething within. There was no physical violence in my family, Hamish. My father never raised a hand to me.”

“Emotional blackmail can be more devastating.”

“I made my own choices, Hamish.”

“I’m glad.” He squeezed her fingers. His choice had cost him his wife, his unborn child, and his belief he could protect anyone he loved.

“Did you learn to forgive yourself by doing pro bono work for women like Mrs. Brown?”

Her insight staggered him.

“I finally accepted there was nothing to forgive. Family consensus at the dinner table was that Mum and I did the best we could on the day.”

“Exorcised over chops and veggies,” she said lightly.

“I’m very partial to lamb chops. We talked about it a lot, about anger and fear and why some people choose to use children as bargaining chips or to punish a partner, as if the children are possessions, not actual human beings. Mum talked about spiriting children across borders and hiding them, and I knew that’s what those kids were afraid of, that’s what was on their faces when their father hauled them out of the kitchen.”

“Helping end the fear for others means ‘the big bastard’ didn’t win,” she said. Finding soul-deep rapport with a woman he’d known less than three days turned Hamish’s world upside down. “Did your wife work with you?” Her follow-up question cut the knees from under him.

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