Chapter 22 Martin
MARTIN
I stand there outside my ex’s apartment, with no idea what the hell I’m going to say.
No idea where the fuck I’m going to begin.
But as I lift my hand and knock on the door, I know that Martha and I need to take responsibility for everything that has led our son to this point—and do whatever is in our power to put it right, whatever that looks like.
It has been nearly a week since Thom turned up at Lila’s apartment, since the confrontation that ended with him fleeing down the stairs like a wounded dog.
He’s been keeping himself to himself ever since, it seems. Martha hasn’t heard from him, as far as I can tell, and he hasn’t tried to close in on Lila again since I scared him off, which has to count for something.
I told her when I sent her the money that she should contact me if he dared show his face around her apartment again, but I don’t know if she would even pay attention to that now, given how I walked out on her.
I wanted it to be easy. Because, on paper, it should be. I can’t be involved with my son’s ex, no matter what has happened between us in the past, no matter what familial bonds might now tie us together.
When Lila looks at me now, I know she’ll only be able to see the man who raised the monster who abused her for years, and I can’t live with myself knowing that’s how she sees me.
And yet…
And yet, my body craves her. I wake up in the morning reaching for her, wishing I could pull her into my arms and wake her with kisses, make breakfast for her and the twins, whatever she wants.
It doesn’t matter to me that I’m twice her age and that the ground between us is so twisted up with doubt and chaos. I feel a connection with her, a draw to be part of her and the twins’ lives, and the thought of staying away any longer is making it hard to function.
I’ve been working my ass off all week to try and stay distracted, but it’s done little to make me feel better.
I really just want to get this all out in the open and do what I can to put it right, but I have no idea where I would even start with that.
I’ve been rolling it over and over in my mind, trying to work out where I can begin to dismantle it all, and it keeps coming back to one person over and over again.
Martha.
She’s the only other person out there who can begin to understand the kind of crap that our son has put people through, because she’s been there on the ground floor since day one.
She might not want to acknowledge it, but she’s as responsible as I am for everything he’s done over the years.
Her status and wealth has kept people from pressing charges when they would have been able to, and the longer it’s gone on, the more emboldened he has become.
When I think of the terror on Lila’s face, the panic attack she was stuck in when I arrived at her apartment, the guilt feels as though it might rip me apart at the seams. I can’t believe I let Thomas get away with so much for so long.
It’s not fair for me to just take my hands off the wheel and pretend like I’m not part of this.
If I had put my foot down and tried to make him pay for his misdeeds years ago, I might have been able to spare Lila the abuse that she suffered at his hands.
He turned up at her apartment with a fucking knife—I don’t even want to think what he might have done to her or the twins had I not been there to step in.
Even if it has blown up my entire life, I would never be able to live with myself if something had happened to her, especially knowing I might have been able to stop it.
After a few moments, I hear rustling on the other side of the door, and Martha answers it. She stands there for a moment in the doorway to her townhouse, staring at me, clearly baffled as to what I’m doing there.
“Martin…?”
“Can we talk?”
“Is this about Thomas?”
Her voice drops as soon as she realizes what I’m here for.
I nod. “Yeah, it’s about Thomas. Can I come in?”
She hesitates for a moment, but then thinks better of it, stepping aside to gesture for me to come in.
I step over the threshold, thrown back into the memories of when I used to live in a place like this with her.
The click of the polished floor beneath my feet, the tasteful art lining the walls.
All that time I could have done more to work with Thomas, and didn’t.
“You want a coffee?” she offers me, as she heads to the kitchen to make herself up a pot.
“Maybe something stronger,” I remark, and she pauses for a moment with her back to me, clearly wondering just how bad things are that I’m asking for alcohol this early in the day.
But she opens her drinks cabinet and pours us both a vodka on the rocks, handing it over to me as she leans up against the counter.
“What is it? What has he done?” she asks, exhaustion already heavy in her tone.
I know she’s already been through so much with Thomas, and that I have checked out of so much of it, trying to keep my distance and pretend like I don’t have a part in turning him into the man he became.
But now it’s time to face what we’ve done, and all the ways we’ve protected him. Once and for all.
I toss back the vodka in one. “Did you know he was with a girl for a few years?” I ask her, and she frowns.
“I—I knew he mentioned someone a few times,” she remarks, glancing up as she casts her mind back. “But he never said anything about something serious, at least, not to me. Why? Did he say something to you?”
“Not exactly,” I admit. I’m not ready to lay out the truth of the twins and my involvement with Lila quite yet, but I can fill her in on what he’s done, at the very least.
“You remember the night he smashed up his apartment? And you couldn’t figure out why?” I remind her.
She nods slowly. “Yeah…”
“It was because the woman he was with ran away,” I tell her.
“How do you know this—”
“I can’t get into how,” I admit. “But I can tell you that I know it for sure. I’ve met her. She told me what he did to her, Martha, and I—”
I catch myself. It hurts to think of what she went through, but worse, that I could have done something about it. Martha’s face is drawn, eyes darkening as she waits for me to go on.
“He cut her off from everything,” I explain.
“Got her to drop out of college, cut off all of her friends, everything. Made it so she had no choice but to rely entirely on him. She doesn’t have family, doesn’t have much money, and he made that place her prison because he knew that she didn’t have any other way out. ”
She bites her lip, and I can tell she’s holding back a surge of emotion at being faced with it like this. I can’t blame her.
“Did he…did he hurt her?”
“Physically, on top of everything else,” I confirm. “Grabbed her hard enough to leave bruises. And even after she left, he’s tried to intimidate her. Stalked her, and her children—”
“Her children?” she gasps, hand flying to her mouth. “Tell me they’re not his—”
“They’re not,” I assure her, not wanting to get into exactly how I’m so sure on that matter. “But they’re just babies, Martha. And he’s been following them. Turned up at her apartment with a knife, God only know what he planned to do to her given the chance…”
I trail off, and she swallows hard, shaky hand lifting the vodka to her lips as she takes in everything I’m saying to her.
She doesn’t make any move to argue with me or accuse me of lying, which tells me everything I need to know.
No doubt she’s heard worse from Thomas himself when it comes to his anger issues, but knowing that there’s someone out there who has been at the other end of them, a woman with children, at that…
“That fight he got in,” she remarks at last. “When you had to go patch him up at the hospital. Was that about the same woman?”
I nod. It’s not something I’d given much thought to, but I suppose he must have been looking for me, whether he knew it or not.
He would never have suspected a man my age to be the one taking her out, clearly, and I thank whatever God is looking over me that he didn’t find me there that night.
I can only imagine what kind of hell would have rained down on me if he had exposed me in public, what little grip I had on my reputation entirely lost.
“So he’s been doing this for…”
“For months,” I reply. “And years before that, before she got away.”
She pours herself another vodka and takes a long sip before she speaks again.
“Martin, why are you coming to me with this now?” she asks me softly. “You know that I hate the way he is. What he’s become. I’ve done everything I can to try and stop him, but nothing is ever enough—it’s a miracle we’ve managed to keep him out of prison for as long as we have, but…”
“I know,” I agree gently. I don’t want her to feel like I’m blaming her for all of this, because I’m not.
I’m just as much responsible for everything that has happened as she is, and I’m not going to try and duck and dive to avoid that fact.
“But I think it’s time we stopped protecting him.
And started letting him face the consequences of his actions. ”
Her gaze returns to her drink, like she wants to dive right into it.
It hurts me to see her like this, no matter how much time has passed since we were involved.
We might not be married anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t value her friendship or how welcome she made me feel in this country when it was new to me.
She doesn’t deserve to have to live with the guilt of having a son like the one we share, but that doesn’t mean she can continue to turn her back on the people he’s hurt to avoid a blow to her social status.
“There are so many people out there who have suffered because of him,” I go on.
“You know it as well as I do. Back when he was in high school, I thought we would be able to take him in hand. I thought therapy would do the job, I thought if we were just open enough and willing enough to listen, it might change things. But—”
“But it never did,” she fills in for me before I can say a word.
“I know, Martin. I thought it would change too. I thought he would get better. God knows, we’ve all had those moments, being a teenager isn’t easy for anyone, and especially with what you told me about your youth, I thought he might grow out of it. ”
“I know,” I agree. “I thought that too. I’ve been telling myself that for a long time, longer than I should have.
And I’m sorry I put it all on you to manage when I should have been there, even after the divorce.
It was just that, whenever I looked at him, all I could see was how much he was hurting people, and I felt like if I turned my back on it, I could just pretend that it wasn’t happening. ”
“I wish I could have done the same,” she admits.
“Sometimes I thought about it, just how easy it would have been to disown him and leave him to clean up his own messes, but I knew what people would have thought about me. And I believed, God, I believed for so long that underneath it all there might be that little boy I loved so much when he was young. Who was kind, and decent, and capable of doing the right thing.”
She catches her breath, clearly surprised at her own candor. “But I suppose I’ve been deluding myself to trust that it’s even possible after all this time,” she adds. “That girl, her children…”
Tears spring to her eyes, and she dashes them away quickly.
She’s never been good at showing her emotions, raised in that old-style New York way of tamping everything down until there’s no choice but to let it out.
But this isn’t one of those things she can ignore, not any longer.
We’ve put this on the back burner long enough, and it’s time to be honest about everything that we have allowed to go on around us.
“He’s a grown man now,” I reply. “And he’s out in the world, and he’s hurting people. People who never deserved to be hurt, people who won’t see any justice for it unless we stop protecting him.”
A tear rolls down her cheek, and she sets her glass down, taking a deep breath.
“So—so what exactly are you saying?” she asks. She needs to hear it from me, and I get it—we have both been dodging the obvious for so long, it will take one of us saying it out loud to finally clear the air.
“I’m saying we need to do everything we can to support this woman in getting justice,” I reply firmly. “Even if that means letting the cops know his history. He has to be stopped. And the way he’s been going, there’s no reason to think he’ll do it of his own accord anytime soon.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” she murmurs. “I—he’s my son. You can’t expect me to turn against him just like that…”
“I’m not asking you to do anything like that,” I assure her. “I’m just asking you to tell the truth about everything you’ve seen him do these last few years, since he became an adult. And I know it goes against every instinct that you have as a mother, trust me, but…”
She locks eyes with me, and I can tell that, at last, something has gotten through to her.
“She’s a mother too,” she finishes up. “The girl he went after. I owe it to her. Her children deserve a chance, and they’re not going to get one if we just stand by and let it happen.”
I breathe a sigh of relief, though I don’t let her see it.
I wasn’t sure if she was going to take me at my word here, or if this would be too much for her to handle.
I can only imagine how painful it is, to even consider the possibility that she might have a part in everything he’s done, but at her heart, she is a good woman.
A woman who wants to do the right thing, and a woman who, when she sees that the ship has sailed on her hopes for her son, will stand up and do what needs to be done.
I reach across the table and pat her hand. “You’re really brave for this, Martha,” I tell her. “And I won’t forget it. I promise.”
She smiles slightly, though it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I’m not sure I believe it yet,” she murmurs. “But…but thank you.”
She sits there for a moment in silence, pondering on what she has just agreed to—then stands up suddenly and takes both of our glasses, topping them up with vodka before she pushes mine back across the table to me. Lifting her chin, she slips back into her usual confident mode.
“So,” she asks me, clasping her hands around the glass. “What happens now?”