Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Sophia
“You can do this, Sophia, you just need to breathe.”
The walls feel like they’re closing in around me.
I knew I was going to have to face Josh in the court room, but I wasn’t anticipating him wanting to talk to me before that happened.
I should have known I wasn’t going to get out of it without facing him. We haven’t spoken since the day I left.
I’ve been filled in on everything that happened, the fact that he was arrested at the shop, along with his uncle and cousin and a bunch of others, and I know that they found enough evidence there to put them all away. I haven’t laid eyes on him even once.
I’ve been handed letters from him that I’ve left unopened, but the two of us haven’t spoken directly in a long time. He would have been served with the restraining order paperwork, I assume, so I can’t imagine he’ll be too shocked that I haven’t been in touch.
He hasn’t seen Aria either. Hasn’t had an update, or seen a photo. He doesn’t know she started crawling, then taking steps, or eating new foods. He doesn’t know anything about her anymore.
I still don’t feel bad for him, but I do feel sad he’s missed it all. I feel sad for her that her father is missing everything important in her life.
“You know you don’t have to go in there.”
“I know,” I reply, my voice shaky.
“Maybe you shouldn’t. I don’t want him to rattle you. We might have to rely on you giving a testimony at some point.”
“My testimony isn’t going to change. There’s nothing he can say to me that will change what he’s done.”
My fancy, Decker-family-funded lawyer, Jenny, eyes me sceptically, but nods at me to go ahead. I hate that even after I left Bryson’s, and we stopped speaking, he still came through with the lawyer he promised me. It makes it so much harder to be upset with him.
But I can’t think about Bryson and that disappointment right now, I’ve got enough to face today.
I take a deep breath and push the door open. There’s a police officer standing with his back against the wall, watching me, and Josh is sitting down behind a table. That’s all there is in the room. One table, two chairs.
I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t a jumpsuit and cuffs.
He looks like shit. Three months behind bars hasn’t been kind to him.
He looks tired. He looks like the life has been sucked clean out of him.
I’m frozen. I’ve barely made it inside the door.
“I won’t bite, Sophia,” he says gruffly. “He’d probably shoot me if I did.” He tips his head towards the officer.
Hearing my name snaps me out of my trance and I nod. “Right. Okay.”
“Sit.” He nods at the chair opposite him. “Sorry about the cuffs. I thought it’d be a good idea to punch one of the guards this morning.”
I can’t say I’m too sad about them. I don’t know how safe I’d feel without something restraining him.
“Okay,” I repeat as I slide into the chair, so we’re looking directly at one another.
His arms are all scratched up like he’s been itching them, his skin is pale, and his eyes are sunken into his skull.
It’s a far cry from the handsome, charming highschooler he was only a couple of years ago.
“You look good,” he tells me, and it almost makes me gag. He makes my skin crawl. I don’t want him looking at me. I don’t even want to make eye contact with this monster. I know he can’t hurt me now. He’s literally chained up, but I still fear him.
I hate that I do, but it’s the truth.
Maybe when he’s permanently behind bars I’ll feel differently.
“What do you want from me, Josh?”
“You haven’t answered my letters. You don’t pick up when I call. I miss you. I want to see my family.”
The noise of disbelief that I make comes out before I can even begin to think about filtering it.
He cannot be fucking serious.
His family .
We are not, and never will be, his family ever again.
We’re his victims.
I see that now. We were essentially prisoners in our own home. It’s taken endless conversations with my parents, and my new therapist for me to truly begin to grasp that.
I might have technically been free to walk out the door at any minute, but the power he had over me kept me there.
Had . He had power over me, I remind myself.
It feels so good to be able to use past tense instead of present, even if I’m not entirely convinced. ‘Fake it until you make it’ has become my new motto.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” I tell him, finally meeting his dark, empty stare. “We’re not your family, Josh. You’ve lost the right to call us that.”
“You haven’t even asked me if I’m guilty. What kind of girlfriend are you?”
I can’t believe he’s saying this. He can’t seriously think we’re still in a relationship.
“I’m the kind of girlfriend who’s an ex, Josh. Be for real.”
“Don’t say that, Soph. I love you, you know I love you. I need you to write a letter to the judge. Ask her to be lenient, tell her you and Aria need me.”
He’s got to be joking. I guess this is the real reason he wanted to talk to me privately.
I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and into another universe, one where the delusion is strong.
“ What ?” I breathe.
He nods furiously, like he’s deranged – I think he really is. “My lawyer said if you put in a good word for me, maybe I could get less time, or community service or something.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing, and more than that, I can’t believe he seriously thinks that I might do that for him – to better his chances of walking free – the absolute last thing I’d ever want to happen. He really has no idea the pain he’s caused. Either that, or he simply doesn’t care what he’s put me through.
But fuck that. You can’t smack someone across the face and call it love.
I know that now.
“You can’t be serious.”
His eyes darken. “Are you saying you don’t want me home with you?”
I feel like I can’t get enough air. I’m breathing in, but it’s coming in gasps. “I don’t want you anywhere near me, or Aria. You hit me, Josh, you hurt me.”
He pulls against his restraints and it makes me jump.
“Why the fuck do you have to hold onto all that shit, Sophia? Stop holding onto the past.”
The old me would have broken down now. Would have cracked like a thin sheet of glass being hit with a hammer.
But I’m not the old me anymore, and maybe I have him to thank for that in the end.
I’m silent for a moment, until the right words find me, and when they do find me, they find me with an angry vengeance that I’ve never been able to unleash in his presence.
“Where am I supposed to put it down?” I snap as I get to my feet.
“ What? ” he sneers.
“You say I’m holding onto the past, onto this trauma – this hurt, and maybe it’s because I don’t have anywhere to put it down. You took me away from my friends, my family. You isolated me from my support and left us with nothing but you to rely on. And then, then you abused that position. So are you going to take it all from me? Because I’d fucking love to stop holding the weight of it.”
He's emotionless, expressionless. He doesn’t give me anything.
This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have let him see me.
“Don’t contact me again, or I’ll report the violation of the restraining order.”
I turn to leave the room, and I’m almost at the door when he breaks and starts screaming at my back.
The words are filled with pure hatred, rage and anger. I don’t let him see how the horrible things he’s saying affect me. He calls me every nasty, derogatory name in the book, but I don’t stop, I don’t even pause. I manage to get to the door of the tiny room, shaking, but without letting a tear fall. The police officer ushers me out and shuts the door behind me.
I vow to myself that I’ll never let that man see me upset again. He’s seen all the weakness from me that I’m prepared to give.
I can hear him making threats through the closed door, he’s yelling so loud I doubt anyone in this building is safe from it.
He’s a mess. A drug addicted, lying, deceitful piece of shit excuse for a man, and unless he’s going to work on himself and figure his life out, I’m never going to let him see our daughter again.
No judge in their right mind would let him have custody, I doubt even visitation, not like this, and that might be the only thing getting me through at the moment.
Part of me wishes I didn’t have to be here, but when the judge starts reading out the guilty plea and the sentence for the man who has terrorised my life, I start to feel a bit of relief, and even some satisfaction.
He’s going to get what he deserves, they all are, and for a little bit at least, I’ll be free of him. I’m not stupid or hopeful enough to believe that I’ll be free of him forever, but for a while at least, I’ll be able to breathe easy.
Four years.
He’ll probably only serve half of that, if he’s lucky, because the justice system in this country is beyond laughable, but I’ll take those years. Years I don’t have to worry about running into him down town, or him turning up at my door. Years I don’t have to feel threatened or risk bruises.
Mum squeezes my hand.
She’s been my rock through this whole ordeal.
I had to sit on the stand and tell the judge and jury what I found at the home Josh and I shared, and how I took it all to the police and reported it.
Josh didn’t know about that part it would seem, given that he lost his composure and screamed at me, calling me a bitch, and was warned by the judge to be quiet, or he’d be removed.
I went home and threw up after that.
But hearing the word ‘guilty’ made it all worth it.
I can only hope that however long he spends in jail is enough to straighten him out. He’ll have nothing but time to think in there, and I pray he comes to the right conclusions and comes out a new man. One who isn’t going to try and make my life hell.
They take Josh away, still in cuffs. I guess he’ll go back to jail, back to his cell now, where he’s already served three months of his sentence.
It doesn’t seem long enough for what he’s been involved in, but his uncle and cousin shouldered the majority of the blame. They got Josh for possession and manufacturing, but he managed to avoid distribution charges, so while he only got sentenced to four years, his uncle got twelve, and his cousin ten. I didn’t follow the others involved, maybe one day when my head doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode, I’ll find out more of the details.
“It’s over, honey. We can go now.” Dad rubs my shoulder.
It’s over.
I just want to get home to Aria. Toby agreed to stay back and watch her. There was no way I wanted to bring her here to the court house. Not because I think she’d be loud or disruptive, but because I didn’t want Josh to see her, and I have no idea what she’d do if she saw him. I’m not sure if she’d recognise him or not. She looks at the family photo I took from the house sometimes, but she doesn’t get upset or understand that he’s missing from a life he was once a part of.
Truthfully, I don’t know how to handle any of that. I don’t know if I should wait until she asks one day, or if I should be reminding her of him. I assume he’ll want to be part of her life again at some point, so maybe it’s best if I do talk about him to her, but then if it turns out he doesn’t want to know her – if he just gets out one day and takes off, then it’ll only hurt her more, knowing about him.
I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I think for now, all I can do is worry about finding my new normal, and doing what I know is right for my daughter. The rest I’ll have to figure out as I go .
Josh disappears from sight and I feel like I can take a deep breath again.
“It’s really done,” I say quietly.
Mum meets my eyes and I can see she’s holding back tears. I know it kills her to see me go through all of this, and stupidly, she feels responsible – my dad and brother do too. Dad went on a forty-minute rant, the first night I went back home, about how he knew Josh was bad news, and how he never should have let me go.
I had to remind him that I was legally an adult, and that I probably would have gone whether he’d made a scene about it or not.
I know what he’s saying, I know what they’re all saying, and why they feel terrible for not seeing what I was going through, but I don’t blame them at all. I made my choices, and I hid the information from them.
“Let’s go home,” Mum says, putting her arm around me and encouraging me to stand up.
Cat is standing against the wall behind me and she gives me a big smile when we meet eyes.
God, I owe that woman. I’ll have to find some way to repay her.
I mouth the words ‘thank you’, to her but she just waves them away.
It’s not until I turn around to leave that I see Bryson sitting quietly, alone, in the far corner of the viewing gallery.