Chapter 43
Shared Scars
Maliyah
The morning after Reed left, I woke to find a text from him telling me to "check the front door." When I opened it, I found a thermos—somehow I just knew it would be fixed exactly how I like it. Alongside it sat a cup of blended Greek yogurt and a side of honey.
He must have dropped it all off before dawn.
My lips had twitched, then curved upward, the muscles in my cheeks pulling tight enough that my jaw ached slightly from disuse.
I couldn't wait to have my words back, to hear my own voice, to speak to my kids and tell them I love them.
I thought to myself four more days. The countdown was running through my head constantly.
The next morning, there were grocery bags by the door when I opened it following another text from Reed. So far, he texted me throughout each day, letting me know he was thinking of me. Messaging short little notes about what was going on, or something funny he'd noticed.
I'd respond, but I couldn't seem to make myself say much.
Maybe because I was tired of messaging. Tired of still not being able to speak.
Tired of how every message I typed made Bryce's face flash in my mind—he'd stolen even this simple act from me, turned it into another reminder of what he'd done.
In this delivery, he'd included a ton of soft foods—yogurt, soup, the expensive smoothies from Whole Foods that actually didn't suck too bad. There was some weird gel-pad for the face, and a sudoku book. My fingers itched to grab a pen and dive into those little numbered squares.
This morning—day three—Felicity had shown up with her arms full.
She barged in before I could stop her, hip-checking me aside as she made a beeline for the kitchen counter.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She rolled her eyes as she unloaded her bags.
"Betting it’s Reed again. Seven-thousandth text today.
'Is she eating? Are the kids overwhelming you?
Have the kids gone home yet?'" Tomorrow, I thought, and not a day too soon.
She pulled out her phone, thumbs flying across the screen.
"Your one or two-word answers aren't cutting it for him, May-May.
Look." She thrust the screen in my face—showing me how often he was checking on me with her.
Nothing crazy, just asking if she needed help, if she could just check on me, do the kids need anything. Good Lord.
I busied myself with putting things away, avoiding her gaze as she sighed.
"I'm here now. I'll report back. Maybe then I can actually use my phone for something other than Reed's hourly welfare checks.
" She snorted, rolling her eyes dramatically, but the corners of her mouth twitched upward and her dimples appeared as she glanced down at her phone again, thumbs hovering over the screen.
She'd brought some foods for me and—bless her heart—a stack of tawdry romance novels…discreet covers be damned! Give me a bodice ripper to break the tedium!
"Figured you'd be going stir-crazy with nothing to do, you should get out of the house. It's not like you're an invalid," she'd said, setting them on the coffee table before I quickly swept them up and hustled them over to my room.
I went to Stop & Shop yesterday.
"Good! Great! I'm so proud of you!"
I snorted and shook my head. I got gasps from people I walked by, and one lady asked me if I needed help running from someone. I guess. I thought my face was better than it is. Guess I’m just a fucking train wreck.
At this, I paused. My throat tightened, vision blurring as I stared at the kitchen counter. Without thinking, my fingertips found the raised ridges that ran down the side of my face, the permanent signature Bryce had left on my skin.
While my stitches had been removed weeks ago, it was only after Reed was gone that I found my fingertips constantly tracing the raised scars. I kept wondering what my face would look like long after the healing—would the scars remain forever?
She stared at me, assessing my face. I knew what she saw—the pockets of blood in my eyes had almost completely resolved. The droop in my eye had finally improved where it was almost invisible. The bruising had finally disappeared. To her, I was sure I looked almost normal.
My sister would say I had made great strides.
The rest of the world would still say I looked like I got the shit kicked out of me.
The scars that ran the length of my face.
The blood in one of my eyes still there.
The eye socket he’d busted still looked.
.. off. My clenched jaw made my face look shorter. I was a living picture of fucked up.
I turned my head slightly, letting my hair fall forward to hide the raised textures on my face. Providing the perfect opportunity to avoid her stare, I moved around the kitchen. She dropped it without speaking. My sister knew me. She knew I wasn’t ready to talk.
So, she did what I needed her to do—chattered incessantly. And I listened without hearing. It was perfect. It was comfortable. Half an hour later, with promises to respond to Reed when he asks how I'm feeling, she left.
The quiet surrounded me as I poured myself some bone broth, allowing the rich liquid gold to warm me from the inside. I was settling in with my cup, and one of my new books, when the doorbell rang.
My whole body went rigid. Nobody rang the doorbell. Felicity had a key. I didn't think it would be Reed since he seemed to be better at the "drop and text" approach.
I still hadn't moved by the time it rang again. I crept to the door, trying to see through the peephole without making a sound. A woman stood in the hallway, but I couldn't make out her face. She was looking down at something in her hands.
My phone was on the coffee table. Too far to reach without leaving the door. But the baseball bat Reed had insisted I keep by the door was right there, leaning in the corner.
The woman knocked. "Maliyah? It's Diane. Do you remember me?"
Oh, shit.
Diane. Bryce’s wife. My God. I’d forgotten about her. And guilt pierced my gut. I’d been so wrapped up in my own healing that I’d completely forgotten to see what happened to her.
I peered through the peephole again. She was looking up now. The left side of her face had a tinge of yellow-green bruising, but otherwise she looked okay.
My hands shook as I undid the locks. I opened the door but kept the chain on.
"Hi," she said softly. Her voice was hoarse. "I'm sorry to just show up. I found your address in his phone."
She held up Bryce's phone.
"I know I shouldn't be here. But there is something in his phone I thought you would want to see and I realized—I needed to see you."
I closed the door to undo the chain, then opened it fully. We stood there looking at each other. Two women bearing the same signature—survivors despite the attempts to break us by the same man
I stepped back, gestured for her to come in.
It was then that I noticed the crutches. She wore a full skirt, so I couldn’t see much, but I could tell that she was moving only on one of her feet. Letting her in, I relocked everything, then, with as much voice and clarity I could muster through the wires, I said, "Can I get you anything?"
"Water would be good."
I got us both water. When I returned, she was staring at her phone.
She held it up for me to see. "Bryce’s."
At my nod, she continued. "I was in the hospital for two weeks," she said, her fingers absently tracing her throat as if remembering what he’d done.
"Almost choked me to death the night he went for you.
I remember the carpet burn on my back as he dragged me to the stairs.
" She rapped her knuckles against the plaster cast encasing her right leg—I couldn’t see all of it, but the outline looked like it ran from mid-thigh to toes.
"Three pins in my femur, shattered ankle.
Still have a couple weeks to go in this thing. "
I felt my pulse quicken, the memory of his voice slithering back when he'd spoken about her in past tense.
Her eyes went distant, reliving the memory.
"Thank God for smart-home devices. As I laid there, at the bottom of the steps, I couldn't move and didn't have my phone.
But I managed to tell Alexa to call 911.
" She sniffed, looking down at her leg and tracing the cast absentmindedly.
"It was a couple days later when they told me he was dead. I was in the ICU—drifting in and out of consciousness—I’d had multiple surgeries. They said he'd kidnapped someone—you."
I nodded, my jaw aching from clenching my teeth against the wires.
"When they told me he was dead, all I felt was relief."
"You’re human."
She showed me the phone. "He had everything about you. Photos, notes, your schedule. Pictures through your windows."
My hands shook as I took the phone from her hands and looked through it. Photos of me leaving for work. Lucas and Zoe at the playground. Reed's car outside. Notes about when Reed left me. Times when I was alone. The kids school schedules.
I couldn't read more. I handed the phone back as if it were on fire.
"The earliest photos are from months ago. Right after we ran into you."
The room tilted. He'd planned it for months. I’d known it—felt vindicated by it almost. After being told multiple times by the police that there was nothing they could do, I felt a righteous anger toward the system and all that it lacked for protecting those of us in these situations.
Her voice pulled me back to the moment. "I just—I wanted to say I was sorry. Sorry that I didn’t realize he was coming for you."
"Not your fault," I managed again, my voice barely audible through the wires. "Good at hiding."
"I should have seen it." Her eyes filled with tears. "All those years. I thought it was my fault. That if I just tried harder, if I was better—"
I reached for my phone, typing quickly—my face hurting too much to try to verbalize again.