“I told you,” Marcus said, his voice distant and warped, like it was coming from underwater. “Why do you always have to be so difficult?”
I lay there with my hand over my eye, feeling the swelling rise, the heat turning into a deep, throbbing pulse. Marcus stood over me with the paper in his hand, waiting.
With shaking fingers, I took the pen and put my name where he pointed. I didn’t know what I’d agreed to. I didn’t know what I’d renounced. I only knew I did it because I was afraid—because my son had hit me, and because in that moment I understood the boy I raised didn’t exist anymore.
Marcus folded the paper carefully and slid it into his pocket. He pointed at my eye like it was a warning label.
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” he said. “If anyone asks, you fell.”
“Understood?”
I nodded.
“Good. I’ll call you later.”
He left and slammed the door. I stayed on the floor for hours, watching daylight fade into gloom, feeling my eye swell until it nearly closed, feeling something inside me break for good.
That night I didn’t sleep. I sat on the bed and stared at the wall, touching my face carefully, wondering how my life had become a nightmare.
And then, three weeks later, Ruth arrived.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I never expected anyone. Days passed the same way in that room: I woke when sunlight crept through the broken window, ate a little bread with watered-down coffee, sat on the bed watching the cracks in the ceiling, counting hours until I could sleep and forget for a few hours where I was.
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