Page 81 of His Obsession
“If we are going to have this conversation, it’s a necessity.”
I couldn’t continue to avoid this any longer, but I didn’t want to rehash any memories. The past needed to stay there—to sustain my sanity. My reasonings wouldn’t sound rational to Liz; they barely made sense to Tonk, not that that was saying much. Jake and I were the only ones he really cared about. He wouldn’t do for a woman what I’d done.
“So… we will talk?” She sat on the small leather couch beside the desk.
“I don’t want to. I don’t want you to hate me any more than you do.” It was a confession I’d never said out loud. I took a sip and swirled it around my tongue; this glass was going to become a permanent fixture in my hand.
“I don’t hate you. I couldn’t hate you, Alek. I just want to know your reason… your why, for all of this.” She slipped her shoes off and tucked her legs underneath her butt.
I chortled. She would hate me when she walked out of this room. The thought that I wouldn’t hold her ever again twisted my guts and caused my bleeding heart to ache.
“What do you want to know?” I couldn’t even look at her. I picked a spot on the wall and focused on it while I sipped on my drink.
“Did you kill your mother?” she muttered.
I choked on my liquor and beat my chest with my fist. “Jesus, can we start with something lighter, please?”
“I’m sorry,” she flinched. “It was just something that stood out to me, I mean, the other stuff made me mad, but that seemed to be Jimmy’s motivation for it all.”
My sadness morphed to anger that bubbled its way up to the surface, and I felt like breaking something. I clenched my fist to refrain from throwing my tumbler into my paintings. “I get his motivations. I’m just surprised you would believe everything he told you.”
“This is your chance to set the record straight,” she said cautiously. “Was he correct with this?”
“In a way,” I said, taking a deep breath. “What did he tell you?” It would be easier to correct the things he embellished on than going through the entire story, but I had a feeling I was going to tell it all in the end.
“He said you murdered the love of his life—”
I snorted, interrupting her. “That’s rich. Love of his life? More like a punching bag that refused to leave his side.” The flood of memories assaulted my mind.
My mother was a saint of a woman, but she stuck by him even when he should have been left on the side of the road to die, like the animal he was. She always thought he would change and that he loved her, that he was just having a bad day. “He was an abusive fuck, Liz,” I said, trying not to take my anger out on her. “He used my mom and me to take out his frustrations from work and life.”
He would come home from workdrunkand beat my mom. One night, I didn’t get the lawn finished before dark, and he beat me with the belt, locked me outside in the shed, and forced me to sleep out there. I was ten.
She hung her head fidgeting with her fingers; this made her uncomfortable.
“I came home from school one day to find him beating her. It was something that happened often, but this time it was different.” The memory was fresh in my brain, and the terror hit me as if it was happening now. “Usually, it would be a few hits here and there, but this time he just kept punching her. She was a bloody mess. I had seen nothing like that before.” I stared hard at the spot on the wall and continued.
“When he grabbed the knife off the counter, I knew that was it. I tried to get the gun out of my backpack—”
“Wait… where did you get a gun?” she interrupted.
“That was the kind of kid I was. If you want to hear the story, don’t interrupt,” I snipped.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
I felt bad for talking to her that way, but I was already hanging on by a weathered thread, and I didn’t want to snap.
“Anyway, I tried to get the gun out of my backpack when he stabbed her over and over…” I squeezed my eyes closed, not wanting to see the look on my mother’s face. He had never used a weapon against us before, so I knew that he had finally snapped.
My mother knew it too. The fear in her eyes and the look on her face were what kept me up at night—I’ll always remember it. “I pulled out my gun and fired at him. Being the stupid teenager I was, I didn’t know how to accurately shoot it, even though I had it. I…” My voice trailed off, and I couldn’t say those damning words.
She walked over to me and took the glass from my hand. “You shot her on accident?” she deduced. I cleared my throat.
I didn’t acknowledge her rhetorical question. “Jimmy came after me when my mother collapsed, I tried to shoot him, but my gun jammed. We struggled a bit, but eventually, he stabbed me twice, once in the chest and once in the back.” I stopped my subconscious movements to rub my chest. “Someone heard the commotion and called the cops. Thankfully, they were right around the corner because he was ready to kill me too. They took him off to jail and me to the hospital, but not before I watched my mother bleed out while she laid on the floor with the paramedics… they tried all they could, but it wasn’t enough.”
My mother didn’t go peacefully as an old woman in her sleep, surrounded by friends and family. She died in agony, crying and screaming for her husband to stop. Her last spoken words were trying to protect me from that asshole. That’s why when Liz did what she did, it hit me harder than anything in this world. History repeated itself, and I was once again that defenseless teenager watching it all play out before me.
Her tiny hand touched my cheek and wiped a tear I couldn’t control. I took my glass back and downed it.