Page 97 of Run for Her Life
Two lines.
Her breath caught, stuck somewhere between her chest and throat. For a second, everything stopped moving, like the world had been wrapped in glass. A single breath and everything would come crashing down.
She turned to the mirror.
Her reflection stared back, stunned and pale. Awkwardness flared, steeling into full-blown panic. She turned on the tap and splashed cold water over her face.
The one thing she’d wanted for years and now she had it. Did she even want this anymore? What the hell was she supposed to do now?
A knock sounded at the door.
“You fall in or what?” Toby joked.
She closed her eyes for a beat. Her voice cracked. “I don’t know.”
The crystal-clear clarity came to Dawn one rainy morning.
It was a soft, persistent patter against the windows. Outside in the gardens, she could see her daughter’s grave. The househad been built in such a way that it was visible from every window. She had spent years drowning in the grief of living without her daughter. That’s why she had never moved, why she had kept the view of her grave. She wanted to stare her pain right in the face to defeat it. But over the years, she had been buried deep under it.
When David walked into the kitchen, she was nursing a hot tea. “She was always jealous of you.”
David froze in his tracks. Dawn had never talked about her to him. It was a poisonous subject that percolated between them. “Why?”
“Because I gave you more attention. You were my firstborn. That’s the thing about that first child. Love is equal, but the impact isn’t. Your first child changes you and the rest just grow from what you’ve already become.” She looked up at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, exhausted. “And then losing your child destroys you.”
He winced like she’d slapped him. “Mother, you havenoidea the guilt I carry?—”
“I know, my sweet child.” He almost reeled from her softness. It was a side to her that he hadn’t seen in decades. “I used to only think about you and your future, and I neglected her and minimized her achievements. And now I’ve lived the majority of my life only thinking about her and trying to find my way back to who I was. But I never will. I have accepted that.”
A long silence hung between them. Thunder rolled in the distance.
“I didn’t just lose a sister that day. I lost a mother too.” David sat next to her, staring out the window.
“When did we start hating each other so much, David?”
He scoffed. “We don’t hate each other, Mother. We’re just angry. All the time.”
Dawn placed the bottle of her pills silently on the counter between them. She didn’t look at David but heard his breath hitch.
Another silence stretched—this time it made her skin crawl, like something ancient was shifting between them.
“I’ve hated you,” she admitted at last. “Every goddamn day. But not because you failed her. I hated you because you reminded me that I failed her too.”
“You’ve put me down. Every single opportunity you reminded me that I wasn’t good enough and that the purpose of my life was to bear your wrath and be punished for being negligent that one night.”
“And so you decided to slowly kill your own mother.” Her voice cracked and her eyes stung with tears.
His nose turned red as he sniffled, tears running down unchecked. “I… I don’t know, Mother. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t know anything anymore.”
She reached across the table, her fingers brushing against his hand. For a second, the years melted away, and she was just a mother holding on to her boy. “We’ve forgotten the love we had, David. We have felt nothing but pain,” she said, softly, “but I can’t carry it anymore. I’m tired of the weight.”
David’s shoulders shook. He bit back a sob and covered his face with one hand. She let him wallow in it. She let both of them wallow in it. She was tired of blotting it out. Somewhere she was still holding on to David, that’s why she was punishing him by trying to control him.
She could either forgive him or she had to let him go. There was no other way to overcome the pain that haunted her.
Slowly, she pulled her hand away. Her voice came out cold and sharp. “I’ve accepted I can’t forgive you, David. I never will.”
He looked up, confused. “What?”
