“And I’m glad she’s dead,” I mumbled out, despite the screeching alarms in my head that begged me to stop. “I’m glad she died before she saw you turn into this.”
He grabbed my hair and pulled back so hard, it felt like my scalp was ripping. He forced me to look at his ugly face. I hated his face. I wanted to shred it with my nails and stomp it from his body. But all I could do was return his raging hate with some of my own. If he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going to let him see me afraid to die.
“You’re pitiful,” I started to say, but his fist slammed into my stomach hard enough to steal my air and send me to my knees. He tossed me away to fall the rest of the way down, and I immediately curled into a ball, expecting his scuffed-up boots to finish me off. I gasped short breaths for longer than I expected—long enough for him to stomp off into the house. But I didn’t move until the music was righted. The warbled piano. The sound track for my escape. I crawled my way into a hunched stand and ran from the house, barely taking the time to grab my bag and keys on the way out. Only one thought screamed through my mind over and over.
Never again.
Chapter 13
I sat out on the front steps of Lock’s house for what must have been an hour. I didn’t know why I was there, but it was dark, and the slats of the metal banister felt cool against the puffy skin of my cheek. I wondered how long I could hide there without being discovered, how long before someone came home or walked out the front door. Perhaps a part of me wanted Lock to find me there, but not so much that I could convince myself to knock.
I shifted my cheek to another slat as my mind riffled through plans of escape for the morning. I could wait until I knew my dad would be gone, pack bags for me and the boys, and then charm the headmaster to get them out of school without Dad’s permission. We could be in another town in mere hours, starting over. I could get a job, present myself as their mum, put them in state school. But with no money for an apartment, we’d be living on the street. Too many of us to hide from the police. Too many ways things could go wrong.
Mycroft appeared at the bottom of the stairs like an apparition, interrupting my thoughts. “When I told you not to leave, I didn’t mean . . .”
Too late, I remembered the state of my face. Before he could say something, I tried to hide it again in the shadow of my hood. I’d already seen enough pity from Mycroft.
“Come inside.”
I wouldn’t have gone in. Had he touched me, blocked my path down the steps, or even brushed by me to hold open the door, I probably would have run off to find a new place to hide. Mycroft didn’t even reach to help me up. He waited. When I was ready, I stood, and clutching my arm to my stomach, led the way up the steps to the door.
I felt the heat of the room against the bruises on my face and yanked at my hood, willing it to better protect me from the light in the hall. “Is he home?” My voice was scratchy and monotone, filled with more disinterest than I felt.
“Tea?”
I stared at Mycroft for a few seconds before I nodded. I followed him into the kitchen and slumped into a chair in the nook. He prepared everything in silence, only speaking with his back to me.
He dropped an ice pack covered with a thin, clean dish towel on the table in front of me, and then walked away before asking, “Do I need to call the police?”
I didn’t reply at first, but the longer the silence drew out, the more it felt like my nonanswer was somehow affirming his secret guess at what happened. “I just came from the house of a DS.”
The kettle got louder as it heated, and Mycroft watched it calmly. “You have brothers?”
“Three.”
“All younger than you?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and said, “Very well,” then poured the water into two mugs, dropped bags into each, and walked out of the kitchen without a word. I held the ice to the back of my head while leaning forward to rest my forehead against the table, and before the tea could oversteep, I heard footsteps on the kitchen floor. Sherlock. He stopped and moved toward the tea before coming toward me.
“Tea?”
I didn’t move or speak. Still, he slid the mug in front of me. I heard the chair next to me slide out, but Lock never sat. Instead, he wandered back into the middle of the room and stood so silently, I was forced to peek out to see what he was doing. He was staring at me.
“Show me.”
I stared back down at the floral-patterned tile floor, knowing I couldn’t hide my face forever, wishing I’d never come inside. When I did finally look up, I turned my right cheek toward him and brought the ice pack to the other side of my face. I knew my dad had hit me there as well, but it didn’t feel as swollen. I kept my head tilted down, too, so that between the hood, the dish towel, and my hair, as little of my face would show as possible. My stomach ached, even when I didn’t move.
“I need to see if you require medical care.”
“I’m fine.”