Chapter 23 #2
Eric bent his knees, resting his forearms on them and bracing himself. That image of a young Nikolett was back, flickering in his imagination, but now her face was bruised.
“He believed that obedience to God was the most important thing, and for me that also meant obedience to him.”
“How often did he hit you?” Eric asked softly.
“He would slap my face twice, hard, every Sunday before service, ever since I can remember. He said it reminded me to be humble and obedient. He only started beating me when I was older—eight, nine.”
Eric clenched his fists, then forced himself to relax. “There is no age when it’s okay to hit a child.”
“I know that now, but when I was young…” She shrugged, then rattled off something he didn’t understand.
“I need to start doing my Hungarian lessons again, because I didn’t recognize a single word of that.”
“That’s because I wasn’t speaking Hungarian—that was Romanian. My father’s father was from Romania. My father was born in Hungary, but he was Romanian, and we were members of a small Romanian Orthodox Church. It’s the Bible verse about how if you don’t discipline your child, you spoil them.”
“Fucking religion,” Eric muttered.
“Well,” she said with a note of forced cheer, as if this conversation were over. “Now you know what—”
“Nikki,” he chided.
“What?” She wouldn’t look at him.
“If that’s all you’re ready to tell me that’s fine, but I can feel you trying to hold it in.” Eric reached over and undid the wrist restraints with two quick tugs. “I’m not going to keep you here if you don’t want to be, and I’m not going to force you to talk to me if you don’t want to.”
She was tight with tension, almost vibrating, and still didn’t look at him. Then she slowly tipped her head to the side, resting it on his arm. She seemed to deflate, like a soldier setting down their heavy shield.
“He wanted to be important. For him that meant being on the parish council. But we weren’t wealthy, weren’t important, even in our little town. Every Sunday, we’d come home and he’d be so angry. He had a…” Her voice broke a little. “A cane. I think that’s how you would technically define it.”
He couldn’t just sit here anymore, not when he could hear the waver in her voice as she tried to keep her words clinical.
Eric hauled her into his arms, wrapping her in a tight hug and pressing his face into her hair. “I’m so sorry he hurt you. He should have protected you.”
She took a breath, and when she exhaled, it was a sob. “It was just a stick, a thick stick. It was an old broom handle—”
“A broom handle? Fuck, Nikki…”
“I’d curl up in a ball. Try to be small.
Be quiet.” As she spoke, she drew her knees up, shoulders hunched.
He doubted she was consciously mimicking the way she’d had to protect herself when she was young, but she was trying to curl up.
He curved around her, protecting her as she protected herself.
“I’d cover my mouth with my hands so I didn’t make any noise.
” When her hands moved toward her mouth, he gently caught her wrists.
Bringing her hands to his mouth instead, Eric kissed her palms, then the tip of each finger.
She was looking at him with big eyes, luminous with tears.
“I was so scared,” she whispered.
He would have done anything to go back in time and protect the girl she’d been. “I’m so sorry,” was all he could say.
“Every time he picked the stick up, it got hard to breathe and I’d start shaking. But I wasn’t just scared,” she whispered as if confessing a dark secret. “I was angry. So, so angry.”
Nikolett balled her hands into fists and he released her wrists. “There were times I wanted to hit him. Hurt him for hurting me. I had to fight to stay still. I didn’t tell anyone about those thoughts because I knew it meant I had the devil in my mind telling me to disobey my father.
“So I was quiet and obedient and if I got angry, I forced myself to hide it. I learned not to cry when he slapped me, because if I didn’t cry, he’d praise me after he hit me. I always cried when he beat me because it hurt, but I learned how to hide the sounds and endure.”
Eric held her tighter, wishing he could somehow absorb her past pain, take it into himself.
“And then I read a book where the girl did fight back. I read another one where a child went to an adult and told them they were being hurt and the other adults were horrified.”
“You’d never told anyone?”
“Why would I? It was normal, wasn’t it?” She leaned in, resting her forehead on his. For a moment, they just breathed together.
“My grandmother saved me,” she said finally.
“My mother’s mother. She came to live with us after my grandfather died.
At the time, I thought she didn’t know, even though there were nights I’d crawl into bed—she and I shared a room—because my back and legs hurt too much to stand up.
She’d ask me if I was okay, try to give me medicine, but I wouldn’t talk to her, only shake my head and close my eyes.
“The more I read, the more defiant thoughts I had. I didn’t stop reading even though I was sure I was damning myself. One night, I couldn’t hold it in and I told my grandmother—not what my father did to me but about a book with a character who ran away from home because her family was hurting her.”
“What did she say?”
“She said if she could, she’d beat my father every time he beat me.”
Eric grunted in approval.
“I was shocked to realize she knew, and only then did I also realize she’d been trying to protect me. When he took me into the room, she’d interrupt—knock on the door, break a plate, make a phone call and stand by the bedroom door talking.”
“So it was you and your grandmother who killed him?”
Nikolett let out a watery laugh. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed to know that I didn’t kill him.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Are you offering to kill him?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t actually know.” Nikolett wiggled, settling herself on his lap and propping one elbow on his shoulder, head resting on her hand. “By the time he tried to marry me off, I’d changed. I started planning.”
“There she is.”
“There who is?”
“The Nikolett I know. Always planning.” He made an exaggerated considering expression. “The violent streak must have come later.”
Again she laughed.
“How and when did you leave?”
“I was already planning to go to university—I was smart and good at languages—when my father took me with him to the eastern Carpathians to see the progress on the censer he’d commissioned in hopes that would finally get him on the parish council.
When he told me I would marry the man, I objected.
Not right then, I wasn’t that brave yet, but when we got home. ”
Her gaze dropped, shoulders curling forward once more.
“He beat me. Not just with the stick but with his fists. He wasn’t just hitting my legs, but my face, my head.
I told myself to fight back, but the pain was more than I was used to, and he was so angry.
” She licked her lips nervously. “I would have taken it back, agreed to marry, to do whatever he told me to do if he would just stop hurting me.”
She wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. “That’s my secret shame. That I would have abandoned my own future, given up my freedom, to stop that one beating. I know I called you a coward, but I’m a cow–”
“No.” He pinched her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You were a child, and your first instinct was to survive. A little girl against a grown man. You were right to do whatever it took to survive.”
She smiled, but her chin was trembling. “That’s why I can’t let everything that’s happened to me, all those attacks…I can’t let them stop me. If I give up because it hurts and I’m scared, then everything I’ve done, everything I’ve become, means nothing.”
“No, Nikki, no.” He pulled her against his chest, feeling oddly frantic with the need to reverse her words. “That’s not what it means. Baby, you need…a lot of therapy.”
Nikolett snort-laughed in surprise. “I need therapy?”
“No, you need a lot of therapy.”
“Now that you’ve gone to therapy, you’re an expert?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.” Eric rubbed her arms.
Once more the smile faded. “He broke my ribs.”
Eric closed his eyes, making a mental note to have someone find Nikolett’s father, dead or alive. If he was dead and buried, Eric would beat the headstone into sand then salt the fucking earth.
“That’s why I didn’t give up and agree to get married.
I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t catch my breath and get the words out.
After… Later, I finally let myself be angry.
And then I made a plan. It turns out, I was too young to get married, and so I used the law to protect myself.
” She winced. “Mostly. He beat me again once I started involving the authorities. When the police came after I sent letters, they told my father I couldn’t marry anyone, then lectured me about obedience to my father while I sat there barely able to see them because my eyes were swollen shut.
” Another fragile smile touched her face.
“But I didn’t marry, and my grandmother and I moved away to live with her sister. We were poor, but we survived.”
“You did more than survive, Nikki. You thrived. You’re the smartest, strongest woman I know.”
He wanted to kiss her, but hesitated, not knowing what she needed. Her gaze slid from his eyes to his lips and back.
“Eric?”
“Yes, Nikki?”
“Are you thinking of ways to kill my father?”
“Right now? No. That was five minutes ago.”
“I think you need more therapy.”
Eric shifted her off his lap then rose, offering her a hand. Once she was on her feet, he swept her into his arms. They were only going to the bed, which was literally beside them, but he felt better holding her, like she was safer here in his arms than anywhere else.