Chapter 30
As I approached the main house I heard a commotion coming from the front room.
When I got there to see what was going on, I found Sarah had her purse in one hand, clearly on her way out the door, and her other hand around Talitha’s arm. Talitha was dressed in boyish shorts and a T-shirt, her mouth twisted in a stubborn line.
“You’ll do as I tell you to. I’m your mother!” Sarah said.
“I don’t want to,” Talitha said in return.
“Well, sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to.” Sarah punctuated this by tugging Talitha’s arm hard, jerking her toward the door.
Talitha caught the edge of the door frame. “I don’t want to. I want to stay here.”
Sarah let go of Talitha’s arm and yanked on her hands clamped to the door frame. Talitha, in turn, used her feet to jam herself further.
It was a ridiculous protest. I remembered my sons doing similar things when I’d tried to discipline them without Kurt—they never treated Kurt that way for some reason. He spoke in that low, masculine voice and they jumped to pay attention.
But in this case, my sympathies were entirely with Talitha.
“Let me go!” Talitha cried loudly.
“Sarah,” I said, coming up behind them, “you should really—”
I don’t think Sarah had registered that I was nearby. Tired of pulling on Talitha, she reared back and slapped the girl hard across the face.
“You will do as I say!” she said in a tone so vicious that I was shocked to stillness. All this time, I’d seen Sarah’s anger and her moodiness, but it hadn’t clicked in my head that she was the one who had been abusing Talitha all along.
“You’ve always been disobedient and willful, a wicked spirit!” Sarah shouted, and slapped her daughter again.
Blood spurted down Talitha’s bone-white face and I stared at it like it was one of Sarah’s paintings.
I should have done something to stop that second blow. If Kurt were here, he’d have simply stood between them, and his bulk would have intimidated Sarah into stepping back. But it took me until Sarah raised her arm to strike a third blow before I managed to put myself between Sarah and Talitha, feeling a drop of warm blood fall on my arm from the gash I could see opening on Talitha right cheekbone.
“Sarah, she’s a child. You’re hurting her!” I said in horror.
Sarah looked up at me and her eyes seemed wild. “Of course I’m hurting her,” she said. “And I’ll hurt her some more if she doesn’t obey me.”
“Let her go right now!” I demanded, and pulled at the hand that Sarah had latched onto Talitha’s shoulder.
“She’s mine.” Sarah’s face was beet-red and she was shaking with emotion. “She’s my daughter. She’s the only one who is mine, and I’m taking her with me.”
Talitha had bared her teeth like a dog—or a cat, I suppose.
“Look, why don’t you stay a few more days?” I asked, grasping at anything that would get Sarah to stop. “Until we have a chance to sit down and talk things out with you and Talitha and Rebecca?”
As soon as I said the name “Rebecca,” Sarah’s whole body spasmed. “I’m not giving her Talitha. I’m not!” Sarah said hysterically. At least she had stopped hitting Talitha. She had let go of the little girl, who had collapsed on the floor.
I heard footsteps coming from the stairs, and in a moment, Naomi was cradling Talitha in her lap. Kenneth was behind her, a wall of masculine strength protecting both of them.
“There is no other choice,” Sarah said, but she sounded defeated. She sagged against the wall, the angry energy drained out of her.
Naomi was examining Talitha’s face gingerly. The skin on her lower left cheek was broken from the sharp stone on Sarah’s wedding ring and there was blood dribbling down to the girl’s chin and staining the pink T-shirt below.
“Is she all right?” Sarah asked faintly. It seemed ironic, when she had done this to her daughter herself. But I saw no regret or apology in her, only exhaustion.
I tried to recall Talitha’s behavior around her mother before this. Had it been fearful? I hadn’t noticed. After all my excuses to Kurt about staying here for Talitha’s sake, I’d been too caught up in the drama surrounding Stephen to protect the little girl I’d vowed to Naomi to help. I couldn’t help but think that Georgia must be watching me from heaven and thinking she was lucky to have been spared living with me as a mother. If I couldn’t protect Talitha when I had been warned she was being abused, how could I have protected my own daughter, if she had lived?
Naomi sent Kenneth to the kitchen to get a bag of ice for the wound, cocooning Talitha with her own body.