CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE PAST
The house had never been so still.
The stillness seeped into my skin and made my bones feel empty. Nothing moved unless I moved it.
I sat on the edge of Rowe’s bed, the same way I had every morning when I used to wake him gently for school.
The bed was still unmade from the last morning I woke him up to get ready.
He hadn’t yet learned to make his own bed.
I didn’t want to let that responsibility go because it meant confronting his ever-growing independence.
I knew I would have budged. Just like when I’d taught him to tie his laces or stir the pancake batter, he would have learned eventually.
I held one of his little sweaters to my chest, the blue one with the faded yellow stripe across the middle. He used to call it his “super sweater,” because he thought he ran faster when he wore it.
I buried my face into it, inhaling deeply, though his scent was fading, slowly stolen by time and grief.
He had been gone two weeks. Two weeks since the shuttle bus veered off-course, the driver too tired, too reckless—or so the reports said. Fourteen days since I’d collapsed to my knees in the hallway. It felt like an eternity.
I couldn’t understand how the world had kept turning while mine shattered.
I didn’t sleep anymore. I didn’t eat, not properly.
Everything tasted like ash. When I did manage to close my eyes, it was only to jolt awake minutes later, heart pounding, breath ragged, expecting—no, begging—to find it had all been a dream.
That he would be in the kitchen with cereal smeared around his mouth, asking for seconds.
But no matter how many times I screamed into his pillow or gripped the walls to keep from collapsing, the nightmare didn’t end. This was my life now, with the center of it missing.
I blamed Oliver.
Of course I did.
I hated him. I hated him.
I buried my son—held his embalmed body in my arms for so little time—and I couldn’t focus on my grief in that moment. I spent it hating Oliver.
He had pushed for the boarding school. Said Rowe needed discipline, routine, structure. Said it would make a man of him. I remembered my pleas, the late-night tension that filled our bedroom, the way he made me feel ridiculous for wanting to keep Rowe close.
How did I let him have a say to begin with?
Somewhere along the way, so gradually I could not name the moment, I had given this man every ounce of control. He had taken every soft part of me and taught me to distrust it.
He called me perfect because I was the perfect victim. The perfect being he could mold and frighten enough to control.
“Don’t coddle him, Daisy,” Oliver had said many times over the course of our marriage, like he knew better. Like he always knew better.
And now Rowe was dead.
Because of that bloody school. Because of that shuttle bus. Because of Oliver.
Because of me.
It was my fault more than anything.
I told Rowe that in every letter I wrote to him. Letters I tucked under his bed as I sobbed and begged for him to come back to me.
I rose to my feet slowly, legs trembling, and crossed the room to the small shelf that held his favorite books.
I ran my fingers along their spines, pausing at the one with the golden dragon on the cover.
He’d once made me read it three times in one night, his small hand always finding mine under the covers.
A sob clawed its way up my throat. I pressed the sweater tighter against my chest and sank to the floor, curling myself into a small ball, like I could somehow disappear into the fabric, into the past, into any moment that wasn’t now.
No amount of screaming could fill the emptiness.
No amount of blame could bring Rowe back.
I rocked gently, the floor cold beneath me, whispering his name like a mantra, like a prayer, like an apology.
“I’m so sorry. Rowe, come back to me.”
My voice broke as the words cracked through me.
The ache inside was no longer emotional—it had become physical, a gnawing in my ribs, a tightening in my chest. I was a mother without her child, a body with no pulse, a soul stranded in the ruins of a life that had been beautiful because he had been in it.
And now, there was only this.
Rowe’s room, frozen in time.
And me forever left behind.
I don’t remember what he said to start the fight.
It all blurs together now—his voice, smug and sure, carving into me like a dull blade. Something about Rowe wouldn’t want me like this. Something about how it wasn’t his fault.
I snapped.
It wasn’t expected. I didn’t plan to lose control, but my world had spiraled and I didn’t have a shred of willpower left.
I laughed. Loud and empty and sharp. Because how dare he say Rowe’s name. How dare he pretend he wasn’t the reason my broken son was zipped into a body bag.
“He was eight,” I screamed. “Eight! And you sent him away like he was some fucking inconvenience you could pay to disappear!”
Oliver’s face didn’t even twitch. He looked through me as though I were no longer a real person.
“He needed structure,” he said, calmly and controlled.
I spat at his feet. “Fuck your structure!”
“You seem to have forgotten yours—”
“Go fuck yourself, Oliver!”
He followed me throughout the house. I practically ran from him. My hysteria merged with this desire to get as far away from this prick as I could. “You killed him!”
“Slow down—”
“You’ll kill me next—”
“Daisy, calm down.”
“I’m done listening to you! There is nothing else you can take from me!”
And it was the truth.
I thought beyond my fear his only power over me was my boy, but he was gone. He had nothing he could take from me anymore.
I didn’t plan to run at that moment. But the moment my hand brushed the doorknob of the front door, and I felt the cold metal under my skin, it felt like something in me snapped free.
He saw it. I know he did. That flicker of hope.
And he was on me before I could even turn the knob.
His hand struck the door beside my head with a violent thud, making me flinch. His other hand gripped my wrist hard enough to bruise.
“You don’t get to leave,” he said, low and tight. “Not after everything I’ve done for you. You belong here.”
“I have nothing left,” I choked. “There’s nothing here for me anymore. Just you. And I’d rather be dead than trapped in this house with you!”
His eyes narrowed—just for a second—but I saw the part of him that hated when I told the truth.
“You want to run?” he said, his voice lowering. “Then maybe you need a reminder of what happens when you forget your place.”
My stomach dropped.
The cabin.
I kicked and thrashed as he dragged me back into the house. I screamed for him to let go. He didn’t listen. He overpowered me like I weighed nothing.
“You need structure,” he grunted through my thrashes. “You need order. That is the only way you will get through this, Daisy. Life is about suffering. Who said that?”
“Fuck you!” I sobbed, exhaustion slowing me down in his grip. “Fuck you, Oliver.”
“Nietzsche strongly believed in this, sweetheart. It’s time for you to get acquainted with him.”
When I didn’t stop fighting, he effortlessly threw me down on the kitchen floor. My hip crashed against the hard tiles. I let out a cry of pain as he then grabbed my hair and tugged sharply, pulling me by the hair to the other side of the kitchen.
“Hold still,” he demanded.
When I didn’t, he dropped down over me and wrapped a hand around my throat. I screamed, but it died short when he squeezed harder. His face darkened as he gnashed his teeth and leaned closer, growling, “I’ll do it, you know. Don’t make me do it, Daisy. It’ll be your fault. Stop.”
When I couldn’t breathe, I froze, paralyzed with fear. With him being the last face in my vision before I passed out or died.
He let go of my throat and gave me a gentle slap on the cheek. “Good girl.”
He stood up as I continued to lie there, barely breathing. He removed a set of keys and opened up the locked cupboard in the cabinet. I trembled, my eyes spotting as I wondered how the hell I got here. How did any of this happen?
Tears slid down my cheeks as a pill bottle shook from above me. He turned the faucet on and moments later he was crouched before me, holding a cup of water in one hand and two pills in the other.
“Drink it,” he said.
“Oliver, please,” I whispered, shaking. “Pleeeeease.”
“Drink it, or I’ll force it down your throat.”
I shook my head. “You can’t do this to me, Oliver.”
“Why not?”
“I will stop loving you.”
“I’m still the same professor you met,” he returned, softly.
“The same man who is trying to enlighten you. You’re in a dark place.
I’m trying to free you from it. Help you see the light.
It’s my calling, Daisy, to be the best mentor, to have the best student.
You are it, Daisy. And right now you are failing. Let me pull you out of this grief.”
I shook my head, feeling like my heart was tearing apart all over again. “No. I don’t want to. I don’t want this, Oliver.”
His jaw tightened as he narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t want what, Daisy?”
“You,” I whispered, numbly. “I don’t want you, Oliver.”
The words had barely left my mouth when his face turned a shade of red.
Anger seeped out of him. He smashed the glass of water on the floor beside me before lunging at me once more.
His hands were everywhere. Gripping my hair, squeezing at my cheeks.
I felt pain everywhere, but I was powerless against him.
I tried to move, but he climbed over me, straddling my body, his rage exploding out of him.
He forced his fingers into my mouth, stretching it wide.
I let out a garbled scream as he forced the pills into my mouth.
I gagged and tried to twist my head and spit them out, but he closed my mouth tightly, until my teeth ached.
I couldn’t move.