I slashed it. I destroyed all her fancy pillows, silk and satin bedding. When I was finished, I laid the knife in the middle of that bed and left.
I retraced my steps with difficulty, got back into my room and waited. A while later my door was flung open, and there she was, Diana was standing in my doorway.
I didn’t pretend to be asleep. I just stared at her, and she at me. She looked around my room; I could see her mind racing, attempting to figure out if I had done it. The only thing I said to her was, ‘where is my brother?’ She didn’t answer. She left without saying one word to me.
I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I was scared that if I closed my eyes, someone would come into my room and hurt me, or take me away the way they had done with Jake.
The next morning, I was still sitting in a chair, my eyes on the door when it opened. Jake was pushed into my room.
That incident happened when, we’d been with Diana for around two years. Josh stopped speaking and again a look passed between the brothers. With a nod, Jake again took up the narrative.
“By the time I got out of that box I was a stinking mess...” Jake found and held Josh’s gaze before he continued speaking. “My little brother didn’t care. He hugged me... we hugged each other and cried.”
The retelling had been harder than he had expected, and Jake found that he was over his walk down memory lane.
“I’m not going to detail everything we went through during our stay with that woman. Suffice it to say, we were beaten, never by Diana though. The punishment was always meted out by the beautiful people. We were starved and separated, sometimes for months on end. For us, that was the cruelest thing she could do, and she knew it. You see, we were just two little boys who only had each other.
No matter what they did to us we always found a way to get even. It didn’t matter if we were beaten; it didn’t matter if they didn’t give us food and it didn’t matter what one or the other of us did.” Jake chose that moment to look at MacKenzie. “That’s why we never judge the people we love.”
Jake saw the moisture in MacKenzie’s eyes, and his gaze followed a single tear that refused to be contained as it spilled down her cheek. He didn’t care who was watching; he extended a hand and caught the tear on the tip of his finger.
Leaning close to her, he spoke for her ears only. “You don’t need to cry for us, Lovely, we made it just fine. If you let me, I want to make sure that the little girl upstairs knows only the kind of happiness our father showed us.”
By the time he finished speaking, MacKenzie was sobbing. That hadn’t been Jake’s intention. He hadn’t meant for her to cry. He had just wanted for the newest members of their family to know that no matter what adversity was put before them, they would find a way to resolve it. That the resolution frequently suggested that if necessary, they would take matters into their own hands, wasn’t something she needed to know.
Although he and Josh had said nothing, he knew that like himself, his younger brother agreed with Jason. It was time Diana was permanently removed from their lives.
**********
“Promise me you won’t do anything foolish.”
Jason pulled his wife back until she was nestled more firmly between his legs, surrounded by bubbles as they took part in their nightly ritual of bathing together. He loved these moments of relaxation. He didn’t even mind that when he emerged he would smell of some type of flower.
“I promise not to do anything foolish.” Jason capitulated, his mind having already moved on to how he was going to make love to his wife.
“Do you even know what you’re making a promise about?” Aviva asked as she looked at him over her shoulder.
“Yes, ma’am. I agree not to rip out Diana’s heart.”
“Jason, stop being so flippant. I’m serious, you will not do anything I can’t live with, do you hear me?!”
“I hear you, Angel. I don’t know if I ever told you this, but you have a very powerful voice.”
Suddenly, Aviva was on her feet with one foot hanging over the side of the bathtub. The look she threw in Jason’s direction told him that she expected him to stop her. When she registered that he wasn’t about to tell her to stay, she retracted her leg and sank back down in the scented water.
“What do you have in mind,” Aviva asked.
“Only you, my angel. That’s what I have in my mind.” Although she didn’t know it, Jason was consumed by the intensity of his feelings. Until tonight the opportunity had never arisen for him to ask about what his brothers had been through at the hands of their mother.