Chapter 3

The next beating was bad. It started because I was late coming home from my part-time job at the library. My old car had stalled.

When I finally walked in, an hour past my curfew, Mom was waiting. She didn't yell this time. The quiet was worse.

She grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the wall. Again and again.

I tasted blood.

My boyfriend, Mark, was supposed to pick me up later. He must have heard the commotion when he arrived, because he burst through the door.

"Karen, stop it! What are you doing?" he yelled, pulling her off me.

I was on the floor, dizzy, my vision swimming.

Mark knelt beside me, his face a mask of horror and rage. "Sarah, are you okay? I'm calling the police."

He fumbled for his phone, his hands shaking.

Mom stood back, breathing heavily, her expression unreadable.

A few minutes later, a police car pulled up. Detective Rodriguez, a woman with tired but sharp eyes, came to the door.

Mark started talking immediately, his voice trembling with anger, explaining what he' d seen, what Mom had done.

Detective Rodriguez listened patiently, her gaze shifting between Mark, Mom, and me.

Then Mom did it again. She took out her phone.

"Detective," she said, her voice calm, almost serene. "Before you listen to a hysterical boy, perhaps you should see this. It will explain a lot about our... family misunderstandings."

She showed the phone to Detective Rodriguez, then to Mark.

I watched Mark' s face. The anger drained away, replaced by shock, then a dawning horror that mirrored what I' d seen on my grandparents' faces. His skin went pale.

He looked from the phone to me, then back to Mom, his mouth slightly open.

When Detective Rodriguez finally spoke, her voice was carefully neutral. "Mr. Johnson, are you sure you want to press charges? This seems like a very... complex family matter."

Mark swallowed hard. He wouldn't meet my eyes.

"No," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "No, I... I think I misunderstood. It was just a... a family argument. A misunderstanding."

My heart plummeted. Betrayal, cold and sharp, twisted in my gut.

Detective Rodriguez nodded slowly. "Alright. Well, if anything changes, here's my card." She gave one to Mom, then one to me.

After the detective left, Mark turned to Mom, his face still pale, his eyes wide with something I couldn't decipher.

He looked at me, and there was no warmth there anymore, only a kind of horrified pity.

"She needs to go, Karen," Mark said, his voice flat, distant. He was speaking to my mother, but his words were like knives in my back. "You need to do what's necessary."

He was echoing my grandparents. "She needs to go." "Do what's necessary."

What did they all see on that phone? What was so horrible that it turned everyone I trusted against me?

Mark backed away, then turned and practically fled the house. He didn't look back.

I was left alone with Mom, the silence heavy with unspoken things.

She looked down at me, still on the floor, and for the first time, I saw something that wasn't anger in her eyes. It looked like... despair.

But then it was gone.

"Get up, Sarah," she said, her voice weary. "Clean yourself up."

I pulled myself up, my body aching, my spirit shattered.

I was utterly, completely alone.