Page 64 of Captive Souls

This was not information I shared readily, definitely not first date kind of fodder. But the scant amount of people I had told always had varying expressions of shock, horror, pity, discomfort. It was not a nice thing to hear. You perhaps read about such things in the news or scrolled across the stories on social media, but it was rare you met someone central to the acts countless true crime documentaries covered.

But I supposed to Knox, acts of horror and depravity were commonplace, so he didn’t have an outward reaction to my news.

Yet his hands balled into fists. Not something I’d seen him do. His face remained impassive, though.

“He abused her since I can remember,” I continued, staring from him to the trees, unsure of why I was sharing this now, of all times. “And us. To a lesser extent, not that I think there really is a lesser extent of abuse.” I sighed. “My mom didn’t protect us, really. She was too broken down by then.”

The memories I had of my mother were mostly sullied with violence, her bruised, begging, being hit. I couldn’t even remember if she was pretty. Because all I saw was the ugliness wrought upon our life.

“The only escape we had was summers here.” I smiled at the trees, seeing much further than just the ones bordering the cabin. “Not right here, but somewhere in these mountains, therewas a two-story house with a wraparound porch, three rockers and a vibrant garden out front, vegetables in the back along with a chicken coop. The woods and mountains stretched as far as the eye could see.”

I closed my eyes, smelling the lavender my grandmother grew by the porch, the dirt, the dew, feeling the sunshine on my face.

Opening them I saw Knox staring at me with such intensity it was hard to breathe around.

“My grandmother was my mother’s mom,” I explained. “And to this day, I do not know how my mother let my father batter her so completely when my grandmother had given her support, endless love and was the picture of feminine strength.” I shook my head. “The eternal question of how a man can break a woman who seemingly has everything going for her.”

I didn’t miss the parallels there. My spine stiffened as the truth settled into my bones, and I forced myself to continue the story.

“My mother, even in the peak of her brokenness, knew how to hold on to a façade.” I still looked at the trees, unsure if Knox was really listening. That was a lie. I knew he was. I could practically taste his undivided attention. “My grandmother knew nothing of what was going on in New York, with the daughter who sent her two children to have summers with her, no explanation of why she didn’t come too. My grandmother worried over this, asking us subtle questions about our home life, about Mom. We expertly lied, still holding on to a loyalty to our mother, even though the truth might’ve saved us from a lot. Sadly, we didn’t realize it then.”

I’d spent many nights wondering what life might’ve looked like if we had told our grandmother the truth. She would’ve acted, swiftly and immediately. And though I knew that the laws were infinitely complicated around abuse, custody and removalof children, I knew in my gut that my grandmother would’ve been victorious in saving us from the situation.

Maybe even our mother too. But that was more of a hopeful feeling, that given the real opportunity to escape, to be with her girls, that she would’ve taken it.

The truth was, I knew she wouldn’t have. She was twisted up in my father. Embroiled in a toxic kind of love that sickly trumped the love she had for her daughters.

I didn’t know what went wrong with her, how she could’ve been so different from my grandmother. My mother was the truest example of how loving the wrong man could not only kill you but warp you into an unimaginable version of yourself.

I was there in front of Knox telling my story, and even that didn’t tamp down whatever feelings I had for him.

“As we got older, my father decided that the summers spent in Appalachia weren’t good for us girls.” I sucked in a deep breath. “He realized that we were getting ‘too smart for our own good’—his words—since there is no such thing as a young girl being too educated.” I sneered with anger, fresh and visceral after all these years, recalling the things my father had said that made it clear he hated women, his children and wife included, yet my mother stayed.

“My guess was he sensed that we were eventually going to tell our grandmother the truth.” I clicked my tongue. “She fought against his ruling. She even came out to New York once.”

I leaned over to grasp some leaves from a bush, needing to rub the pieces in my hands to ground me as I remembered the last time I saw my beloved grandmother.

The memory was foggy, but I remembered raised voices in our small apartment, my grandmother far too big for the space. Not because she was large in stature but because she existed in such a large place in my mind.

“She likely would’ve fought harder, until she got to the bottom of it, but she died later that summer.” My nails bit into my palms as I spoke, willing my voice not to break.

To that day, the pain I felt over losing my grandmother was still visceral and agonizing, nothing like the way I felt over the loss of my mother.

“A fall.” I shook my head. “She just tripped, broke her hip and then died because the night was cold, and Appalachia is unforgiving and brutal to even those who reside there. Even those who love it fiercely.”

I looked out upon the silhouettes of the trees, standing like ancient sentinels observing us. Though there were a lot of legends I didn’t believe about this place, I believed it to have a kind of sentience to it and that it decided on a whim whether it was benevolent or malevolent.

“It broke my mother, I think,” I whispered. “Or maybe that’s me being overly generous. Thinking she was still whole at that point. Because if there was even an inch of me still put together, I’d use it to give myself strength to take me and my children out of that situation.”

I shook my head, punishing myself for the ugly thought. The resentment I carried like cancer in my insides for my mother. Blaming her for my father’s sins.

“It wasn’t her fault—” I tried to reason.

“It was,” Knox interrupted coldly.

I glanced up at him. “My father, he—”

“Was a piece of shit,” Knox finished. “And so was your mother. For staying.”