First, it was because his father, Harrison, moved to Denver after our divorce, and then it was because he dropped out of college. Later, he couldn’t hold down a job and his girlfriend left him, until eventually, he didn’t even need a specific reason to believe the whole world owed him something.
I defended him way too much, making excuses for his screams when he spoke to me as if I were a clumsy maid in my own home. I justified his demands when he stopped asking for money and started claiming it as his right, ignoring the slammed doors and the constant smell of beer.
Mothers often confuse love with endurance, but that night I came home exhausted from my shift at the local library with aching legs and a bruised pride. Wyatt came into the kitchen and demanded money to go out, but for the first time, I looked him in the eye and told him no.
“No? And who exactly do you think you are talking to right now?” he repeated with a dry, humorless smile.
“I think I am the one who pays for this house, and I am not giving you another penny for your drinking or your lies,” I replied while my hands trembled.
His face changed in a heartbeat as his jaw hardened and his eyes went completely blank.
“Do not talk to me like that,” he growled.
“I am speaking to you the way I should have spoken to you a long time ago,” I said firmly.
He let out an ugly, poisonous laugh and stepped closer to me in the small space.
“Oh, really? Well, it is time you learn your place once and for all,” he said.
I didn’t even have time to breathe before his hand hit me in the face with a sharp, brutal force that left me stunned. He didn’t knock me down and there was no blood, but the worst part was the terrifying silence that followed the impact.
I stood with one hand on the counter, listening to the hum of the refrigerator while Wyatt glanced at me for a second and then simply shrugged his shoulders. He went up to his room and slammed the door, leaving me alone with a burning cheek and the realization that I was no longer safe.
At one in the morning, I picked up my phone and called the only man I didn’t want to call, but knew I absolutely had to.
“Leona?” Harrison answered with a sleepy voice from his home in Colorado.
“Wyatt hit me,” I said, and once those words were out, I knew there was no going back to the way things were.
There was a heavy silence on the other end of the line before he spoke with a firmness I hadn’t heard in many years.
“I am getting on a flight and I am going there right now,” he promised.
I didn’t sleep at all that night, and at four in the morning, I started cooking a massive breakfast of biscuits, gravy, bacon, and strong coffee. I took out the good holiday dishes and spread the embroidered lace tablecloth over the table because I had made a final decision.
Shortly before six, Harrison arrived at the house looking older and wearing a dark coat with a brown leather folder tucked under his arm. He didn’t ask any silly questions, but instead looked at my face and my trembling hands and understood everything immediately.
“Is he still upstairs?” he asked quietly.
“He is asleep,” I replied while I looked at the table I had prepared.
“You always cooked like this when you were about to change something big in our lives,” Harrison noted as he took a seat.
