Chapter 85 #2
“Arnold asked me into his study. I thought he wanted to continue discussing it with me, that he wanted to give me some decent reasons. Instead, he slid a small mahogany box across his desk toward me.”
Confusion washed over me.
What the…
“I remember staring at that thing until he told me it held his mother’s engagement ring.” Monica’s voice grew more fragile. “I just had to open the box, and he’d give me enough reasons to become a housewife. For him.”
When Monica came to a stop, I did the same, trying to process her words.
Arnold had wanted to marry Monica. When she had been fifteen.
Monica’s chest, rising more frantically than usual, made me look up at her glassy eyes.
“I stood there staring for a long time while he sat down in his desk chair, lit a cigar, and looked me over with a gaze I’ll never forget. A gaze that branded me for the rest of my life.”
Something inside me wanted her to stop speaking, wanted to hold her in my arms.
“I said No. A single word. I’d been too paralyzed to say anything else.”
She hesitated.
“We stared at each other. Then he stood up, put the box away in his drawer, and walked around the desk toward me.”
Her voice trailed off, and a tear rolled down her cheek as she stared blankly into the distance.
“It took him two minutes to show me how much a woman’s no meant to him.”
Something inside me froze so violently that I was no longer able to process her words.
Monica kept her eyes fixed somewhere in the distance, as if she were empty. As if only the shell of that strong woman I looked up to every day in this town were standing there.
“I’d driven home with my father in silence, ignoring the pain between my legs, until my father slapped me in our living room and asked if I still wanted to study law.
I lied to him, unable to look him in the eyes.
That night, I felt so empty and detached from my own body.
As if I were still in Arnold’s office. And all that blood… ”
Her voice wasn’t the same anymore. Broken. Full of pain. Pain that now spread further and further through my stomach, stirring up a feeling of nausea inside me.
Suddenly, and far too hastily, Monica wiped away her tears with a handkerchief that matched her cream-colored coat, and for a moment my gaze lingered on the golden angel wing pendant that Lara had once given her.
My head was empty.
And I felt sicker and sicker.
“I tried to forget that evening. Until my period didn’t come. Then another one. And another. I repressed even that. Until eventually every glance in the mirror reminded me that my no was meaningless in this society.”
The urge to sit down and process all those words, as well as their deeper meaning – even though my stomach probably wouldn’t be able to handle it – grew far too quickly.
“I didn’t have many options back then. When a girl got pregnant, she usually told her parents who the father was, and the girl’s father held the man accountable, making sure he took the girl as his wife.”
She shook her head. More tears made their way down her cheek.
“I didn’t want to marry Arnold. I wanted to forget him. Just forget… Everything that had to do with him. Everything…”
She closed her eyes and let the tears flow.
Fuck…
“I knew that had been his goal, but I had never allowed myself to read too much into his repulsive glances. And if my father had found out that I was carrying his child, he would have seized the chance and forgiven his friend to force me into this marriage. And I couldn’t have imagined anything worse. ”
If Arnold had forced Monica into this marriage, Troy would never have…
Troy… Davian…
Davian.
No.
Too many realizations were hitting me all at once.
This had to be nothing but a cruel nightmare.
“So I lied. I told him I’d fallen in love with a soldier who was now stationed overseas and wouldn’t reply to my letters.
Father slapped me, yelled at me, wanted to throw me out.
But he couldn’t, which meant I had to listen every day to how much of a disgrace I was to the family and that he would make sure this child never became part of the family.
It broke my heart that Mother never spoke to me again after that day. My siblings neither.”
Her voice died again.
I wanted to hug her, wanted to tell her she didn’t have to keep talking if all of this was too much for her, because it was too much.
None of this should ever have happened to her.
The tears returned, but she hastily wiped them away.
“At some point, Father wanted me to finish school despite everything, give this child away, and marry the son of a family friend – a lawyer – as soon as I turned eighteen. And now that I was pregnant…”
She shook her head frantically, grimaced, and more and more tears streamed down her cheeks.
“I had felt so trapped by what had happened to me. So weak…”
“Monica, you don’t have to…”
She raised her hand as I turned toward her.
“No, Quill. It’s okay. I need to talk about this. I finally have to tell someone.”
Paralyzed, I stared at her.
She had kept all of this to herself for forty-two years.
It’s Over
Atli ?rvarsson
“At first, I thought I would hate this baby, wanted to wash away all the traces Arnold had left on me. But something inside me began to feel compassion for this unborn child, who couldn’t help being born into such circumstances.
And somehow, over time, I formed a strong bond, and I grew increasingly afraid of the day when my little boy would be born, because then I would have to make a decision that would determine the rest of my life. ”
An overwhelming wave of pity washed over me.
What did I know about being a mother? I would never find out.
But Monica had never had the chance to make that decision.
She had been fifteen.
That disgusting piece of shit.
“Eduard Richter had been a very close friend of my father’s back then. That’s how I knew Joseph. I had often met him at family gatherings and galas.”
My father’s name snapped me out of my paralysis, stirring – alongside all the shock and growing disgust – a sense of inner unease.
Often, I had wondered what he had been like back then. Why he had protected Troy, even though he had never been able to stand him. Why he had laid the world at a criminal’s feet.
Only now did I realize that I had torn the skin on my thumbs to the point of bleeding.
Arnold had… He had…
The growing shock was the only thing preventing me from throwing up.
“One evening, when we were alone in his father’s fireplace room, he asked me if I still wanted to become a lawyer. He was the only man who had never laughed at that dream of mine.”
Her tears had stopped, and she forced a smile, though it looked more pained than anything else.
“I told him that dream was now history, but he said he knew a way I could still make it happen.”
I didn’t like how he seemed to have been involved in Davian’s life from the very beginning. It scratched at my inner facade.
“Did he know…”
God, I couldn’t even get the words out, so afraid was I of breaking something inside Monica.
She shook her head.
“He still doesn’t know.”
Would it have made any difference?
He got rid of bodies for Arnold, Quill. Nothing would have changed a thing.
“By then, I had reached a point where I was certain I wouldn’t give Davian away. But Joseph told me he’d make sure he had everything he needed, that if my little boy ever went down the wrong path, he’d step in, and that I had his word.”
My jaw tensed.
“He had just gotten married and was trying to have children with his wife. So far without success. However, I told him that he would soon have children too, and that I truly wished that for him. That he would have a son of his own and that he would regret having helped me.”
She laughed softly.
“But he was a Richter. He kept his word.”
Was that what people said about the Richters? That they kept their word? How much of a Richter was there in me? I didn’t want to find out. Would rather be a Schildhauer.
“I had a hard time giving Davian away. But I also couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to give him the life that Joseph had made possible for him with all that money.
Back then, I was afraid of my father’s influence.
He would have gotten custody of Davian. And I had feared that Arnold might find out something someday.
Besides, I hadn’t been ready to be a mother.
And it’s been tearing me apart for forty-two years. Every night, it keeps me awake.”
Her tears returned. And by now I understood her decision to let him go.
She hadn’t just given Davian away without a second thought. She’d had her reasons, had only been fifteen. The same age I had been when I had no choice but to have my first sexual experiences in order to survive.
“Anyway, I managed to graduate with excellent grades. Valedictorian with honors. That was the year my father died and I left my mother with no intention of ever seeing her again. I actually went on to college. Those were the best years of my youth. I was one of nine women at Harvard. One of the first women ever to study law. And it had filled me with pride.”
Her smile returned, and there was something melancholic about it. And at the same time, it was as if she hadn’t just told me that horror story.
But she had. And all that information, with everything hidden behind it, now hovered over my head, ready to seep into my overwhelmed mind.
“It had never been easy. But every step upward showed me that it had been the right decision. That as a woman, I can very well study law, and that no man will ever have power over me.”
How could she be so damn strong?
It would have broken me.
“I often thought about contacting Davian, but I was too afraid. I didn’t even let Joseph show me the photos the orphanage had sent him.”
Her snort sounded as if she couldn’t believe her own words.
“I just felt better when I found out he’d started medical school and was getting married soon. That he’d made it.”
Made it.
What would she say to me once she found out I was going to leave Maplecrest?