13. Chapter 13
Kwemby
With Harriet at her appointment, I know she’ll be busy for at least an hour.
I wait outside, impatiently waiting for Coris and Maren.
To their credit, they texted back and said they’ll be here.
They’d left Gary’s house yesterday and were already back at their apartment, so getting here didn’t take long.
That’s not the only text I received. Gary got my number from Coris, tracking me down because of my involvement in last night’s driveway blowout.
Buck posted bail this morning. His lawyer has been open about what’s going on. I’m sure Harriet’s lawyer will tell her about it, but I wanted to let you and the girls know.
Says his own flesh and blood. Obviously, I’m going to take his bias and raise him with caution.
Ten minutes later, a compact sedan pulls into the gravel lot behind Maple Street. The tires crunch to a halt two spaces down from me. Coris and Maren step out of the car. They still look disheveled, their faces pale in the morning sun.
I walk straight to them.
“Kwemby,” Coris says, her voice tight, vibrating with fury. “Why did you text us to come here? Dad spent the weekend in a holding cell because of you two, and now he won’t even answer his phone.”
Maren steps up beside her sister, her jaw set with that familiar, stubborn tilt she learned straight from her father.
“Mom completely destroyed our family over a private argument, and you helped her do it. You had no right to involve the police and put our father in handcuffs. You need to tell us what is really going on.”
I have zero intention of holding back. I step directly into their space, my voice cutting cleanly through their misplaced outrage. “You two done talking out of your asses?”
Coris’s mouth hangs open. I’ve never spoken to them this way before.
I continue. “Now, you know I love you two. I’ve been to every birthday party and graduation, but your attitudes and complete dismissal should have been corrected long ago.
Your father has abused your mother and I will not tolerate you defending him a second longer. ”
Keeping my voice low and steady, I say, “What’s going on is that your father surreptitiously slipped a controlled sedative into your mother’s water bottle because he didn’t want to listen to her speak.”
The girls freeze. Maren opens her mouth to interrupt, but I hold up my bruised right hand, cutting her off instantly.
“I am going to speak, and you two are going to listen, because you already knew that, didn’t you?
And yet your father has twisted the story to still paint your mother like it’s all her fault.
Every time your father dismissed her, every time he made a cruel joke at her expense, she swallowed it.
And you two rolled your eyes and sided with him. ”
Coris flushes, looking away. “It wasn’t like that. They just had a normal marriage.”
“Drugging your wife to force her into silence is not a normal marriage,” I say, stepping an inch closer so they have to look me in the eye.
“Last night, your father grabbed her arm in the driveway to prevent her from leaving. That is wrong. I punched him because he was hurting her. I didn’t attack him.
I protected her. Something you two should have done a long time ago. ”
Maren’s defensive posture begins to crack, her eyes shimmering with sudden anxiety. “Dad said she was just being dramatic about the fish dinner.”
Not that nonsense again. “You wouldn’t be upset if your mother tried to feed you both kiwi?” They’re allergic to the fruit.
“She wouldn’t,” Coris says.
“Yet it’s okay for someone else to feed your mother something she’s allergic to? Your mother has spent her entire adult life putting you ahead of her own needs. Not being expected to eat something that physically hurts her is the bare fucking minimum.”
I pause, letting the cold reality of my words sink into the silence of the parking lot.
“You are grown women,” I continue, my tone softening just enough to empower them.
“You are graduate students. I get that you were raised in that toxic environment and grew up thinking it was normal, but it’s not.
If you keep making excuses for a man who abuses your mother, you are telling the world that it is okay for a man to treat you the exact same way.
You need to break that cycle. Stand up for yourselves, and your mother. ”
Coris covers her mouth with a trembling hand, a quiet sob escaping her throat.
Maren looks down at her shoes, the anger entirely drained from her face, replaced by a raw, crushing realization.
The timeline of their childhood shifts in their minds, the casual slights from their father suddenly exposing themselves as the emotional abuse it always was.
“We didn’t know,” Maren whispers, her voice thick with tears. “We always just did what Dad did.”
“Now you know,” I say gently. “And now you can do better. It’s not too late to apologize to your mother and start standing up for her when she deserves it. She needs to know her daughters are actual women who can hold their own.”
The heavy glass doors of the law office suddenly push open.
Harriet steps out into the sunshine. Her shoulders are slightly hunched, her face clear but deeply exhausted from the meeting. She stops at the top of the concrete steps, her eyes widening in surprise as she spots the three of us standing together.
Coris and Maren look at me, a newfound resolve tightening their expressions.
Then together, they turn and rush to the steps to meet their mother.
Turns out, Harriet needed one person to back her up and make her children see the sacrifices she’s made.
Buck had spent their entire lives subtly undermining Harriet, always stepping back to let her look like the irrational parent while he played the calm, patient one.
He had never once had her back, but the illusion is completely broken now.