Chapter Five #2
She had aged ten years in two weeks. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollow, a deep, bitter line carved around her mouth.
“Alina,” she said, her voice trembling. “I need to talk to you.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Please. Five minutes.”
I wanted to refuse. I wanted to tell her to go home and let her son burn in hell.
But something in her eyes stopped me.
Desperation—not for her son, but for her grandchildren.
“Five minutes,” I said through my teeth.
We went into the kitchen. Mom tactfully left us alone. Mrs. Lansky sat across from me and placed both hands on the table. They were shaking.
“How are the children?” she asked quietly.
“Wonderful. Max is beating up classmates, and Annie is afraid I’m going to die. Everything is just wonderful.”
She flinched as if I had struck her.
“Alina... I know what you’re feeling.”
“You don’t know!” I shouted. “Nobody knows. Nobody else felt a child die inside her. Nobody else had to give birth to a body and bury someone she never got to know.”
The tears came, unstoppable. Two weeks of holding myself together, pretending, playing the role of the strong mother—all of it burst out of me.
“Your son killed my baby. Do you understand? He killed him with his affair, his betrayal, his filthy selfishness.”
“I know,” Mrs. Lansky whispered as tears ran down her face. “I know. And I’m not asking you to forgive him. I’m not asking you to go back. I’m asking only one thing. Please let him see the children.”
Everything inside me froze.
“No.”
“Alina, he’s their father.”
“He’s nobody. He’s dead to me. He’s dead to them.”
“Not to them.” Her voice hardened. “Max and Annie love him. They need him. Can’t you see what they’re becoming without him?”
“What they’re becoming?” A hysterical laugh escaped me. “He did this to them. He destroyed their world.”
“No. You are destroying it.” She looked at me without pity now.
“You, Alina. With your hatred. With your refusal even to speak his name. Max is fighting because he doesn’t know how else to protect you.
Annie is afraid to sleep because she can feel you standing at the edge of a cliff.
They’re falling apart because you’re falling apart, and you’ve taken away the only other parent who might hold them up. ”
Each word landed like a lash.
“I’m not asking you to forgive Russell,” she continued. “He doesn’t deserve your forgiveness. But the children deserve a father, even an imperfect one. Let them see him once a week. Supervised, if that’s what you need. Without him, they aren’t only losing their father. They’re losing themselves.”
I wanted to argue. To scream. To throw her out.
But something inside me gave way because she was right.
Max hadn’t become violent because he saw Russell. He had become violent because he didn’t. Annie hadn’t withdrawn only because she missed her father. She had withdrawn because she watched hatred consume me.
My pain was poisoning them slowly, methodically, and I was more terrified of losing them than I had ever been of losing myself.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t see him. I can’t breathe the same air. I can’t—”
“Then you won’t have to. I’ll take them to my house for the weekend. Russell can visit them there, under my supervision. You won’t even see him.”
I stared at this woman who had also lost a grandchild. Who had watched her son sink to the bottom. Who was being torn between her daughter-in-law and her child, between truth and blood.
“One condition,” I said firmly. “He must never—do you hear me? Never—bring that bitch near them. Olivia. If he does it even once, I take the children, and neither of you will see them again.”
Mrs. Lansky nodded.
“He isn’t seeing her. She... she left after he fired her.”
He had made sure Olivia was removed from his department after reporting what had happened.
So at least one part of his brain still worked.
“All right,” I breathed. “Once. I’ll see how the children react. If they’re worse afterward, that’s it. Never again.”
Mrs. Lansky rose, walked around the table, and embraced me. I didn’t return the hug, but I didn’t push her away either.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “You have no idea what this means.”
After she left, I stayed at the kitchen table, staring into an empty mug.
Had I done the right thing? Had I betrayed myself? Had I surrendered?
No.
I had finally accepted one simple truth: children cannot grow on hatred. It poisons them faster than anything else, turning them hard and broken and dead inside.
I couldn’t allow that.
Russell had taken one child from me. I would not let what he had done destroy the other two.
Even if that meant swallowing my pride.
Even if it meant letting him be part of their lives.
Even if every visit cut me open all over again.
For Max and Annie, I would survive anything.
A mother’s love was stronger than hatred. Sacrifice for my children might be the only thing that saved them from ruin.
We adults build walls around our pain and call it protecting our children. But children don’t need walls.
They need bridges.
Paths back to a normal life—even if that life is different now, even if it’s cracked beyond repair.
I would give them that chance.
Even if it finished killing me.