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The Rope Snapped, But the Knot Remains
NovelShort
Completed
On college move-in day, I ran into the ex-husband I hadn't seen in over ten years. Richard rolled down his car window. The scar on his wrist was hidden beneath a familiar string of beads. He took off his sunglasses and stared at me, a little stunned. "Louise, why didn't you come find me after you got out?" I tugged my collar closed and turned my head to avoid his gaze. "Sir, where's the luggage you need me to carry?"
Chapters (4)
第1章
On college move-in day, I ran into the ex-husband I hadn't seen in over ten years.
Richard Stephens rolled down his car window. The scar on his wrist was half-hidden under a string of beads I knew too well.
He took off his sunglasses and stared at me, a little stunned.
"Louise Coleman, you got out of prison and didn't come find me?"
I pulled my collar tighter and turned my head away from his eyes.
"Sir, where's the luggage you need moved?"
He paused a few seconds, then popped the trunk. I walked to the back of the car and counted the pieces.
"Big ones are seventy, small ones forty-five, five pieces total, I'll make it three-twenty for you."
Richard blinked as I held out the payment code with practiced ease.
The chime for five hundred dollars had barely finished when a voice came from behind me.
"Dad, is the mover here yet? Mom and I have been waiting inside for you forever."
I heard the familiar young voice behind me and my head dropped on its own.
I hurried to the back of the car and lifted the cases down one by one.
But as I straightened up, a tearing pain shot through me below the waist.
"Why is there suddenly a stink of piss? What are you doing?"
A hand pressed down on my shoulder and forced me around.
…
The instant I met Hannah Stephens's eyes,
something flickered across them, blank for a moment.
Then her brow knit and she looked me up and down,
and finally she stared at me with disgust.
"Ma'am, at your age, coming out to work like this. Could you not make life miserable for everyone else?"
I stepped back several paces,
my fingers tightening on the long coat, washed pale from wear.
My daughter was the same as before,
still fond of pink dresses.
But when she looked at me,
the way she used to lean on me as a child was long gone. All that was left was strange, cold distaste.
A woman came up behind Richard and looked over.
The moment Jacqueline Holland saw my face, she froze where she stood.
She didn't come back to herself until my daughter looped an arm around hers.
Jacqueline glanced at me,
then smoothed the crease from my daughter's frowning brow as if it were nothing.
"Hannah, don't frown over people who don't matter. You'll ruin your face."
Then she looked at me, taunting.
Richard pressed his lips together, stepped forward, and opened his mouth.
I lowered my eyes, stepped back, and bowed deeply, several times.
Swallowing the bitterness in my throat, I said in a hoarse voice,
"I'm sorry. I'll take care of it and be right back."
As soon as the words were out, I fled toward the restroom like I was running from something.
I changed into one of the disposable diapers I always kept in my pocket, then came out.
Jacqueline strolled over from the doorway, her red lips parting.
"Long time no see. Being despised by the daughter you nearly died giving birth to, that doesn't feel good, does it?"
The corner of her brow lifted, just slightly.
That familiar expression brought back the cold operating table.
Jacqueline had only been an intern back then, but with Richard's consent, she'd walked into my delivery room and taken the knife to me herself.
After the surgery, because she'd handled it wrong, I was left with severe postpartum incontinence.
And because I refused, over and over, to sign the release,
Richard spent a fortune on a team of lawyers and, with a single filing, sent me to prison.
The charge, of all things, was deliberately harming my own daughter.
The day they took me away, I was still nursing my daughter in my arms.
I stood, straightened my clothes, and walked away.
"Louise, prison couldn't have been too boring, could it? Bet plenty of people came around to play with you."
The airy voice drifted up behind me, and I froze in place.
Slowly I turned to look at Jacqueline.
She was fussing with her false lashes in the mirror, and through the glass she gave me a smug smile.
So every bit of the abuse I'd taken those five years came from her. Without thinking, my fingers went to the raised scar across my throat.
Beaten by the others in there, I'd thought about ending it more times than I could count.
Knocked unconscious, I'd wake up every time in a hospital bed, then be sent back to that cold cage where there was never any peace.
I pulled my thoughts back and stopped looking at her.
I walked quickly to my spot and pulled up the handle of the suitcase.
The moment I lifted it, a hand slammed down on the back of mine.
The force came out of nowhere, leaving my hand numb.
"This suitcase was brought back from overseas by my mom, just for me. If you break it, can you even afford to pay for it?"
I looked up, and the impatience in my daughter's eyes swept over me like a rising tide.
Behind her, Richard's brow drew together slightly.
"Hannah, don't—"
Jacqueline slid up behind him, took his arm, and said with a faint smile,
"Hannah's grown up now. She knows her own limits. It's perfectly normal for her not to want a stranger breaking her things."
"As her parents, we should just let her be."
Richard listened, then turned to me at once, his tone impatient.
"What are you standing there for? Don't hold up my child's move-in."
My fingertips tightened, and inside I gave a bitter laugh.
Slowly I crouched down, carefully hoisted the suitcase onto my thin shoulder, and forced myself up.
The moment I stood, my back kept tipping backward, unstoppable.
An instant before I hit the ground, a pair of hands, hard enough to bruise my back, caught me solidly.
"Mom."
第2章
When it hit me, I shoved the suitcase off my body and to the side.
A sharp scream rang out beside me.
"Ah!"
I paid no attention to the scream.
I scrambled up and reached to help Sophie, who had just broken my fall.
A hand clamped hard around my wrist, the grip tightening until I couldn't twist free at all.
I followed the hand up.
Richard's face was cold and set, his eyes fixed on me.
"When did you have a child? I want an explanation."
Blood was welling from the corner of Sophie's mouth.
I yanked the string of pearls off his wrist, and the beads scattered across the ground.
The grip on my wrist went slack at once.
I dropped to my knees beside Sophie, hands shaking as I dialed for an ambulance.
A weak hand came to rest lightly over the back of mine.
She gave a small shake of her head, her breath thin.
"I'm okay."
A lively girl's voice cut in from beside me.
"My suitcase isn't!"
I gathered Sophie against me and turned my head to look.
There was a scratch on the bottom of the suitcase, no bigger than a fingernail.
My daughter's face said she wasn't going to let it go.
"Pay up!"
My throat clenched, and I forced three words out of it.
"How much do I owe you?"
A tall figure stepped in front of me, and I closed my eyes for a moment, drained.
"How much are you going to make me pay this time?"
Richard clenched his back teeth, the line of his jaw hardening.
"Louise, that was our engagement token!"
My fingers stilled.
"Five hundred. I'll transfer it to you."
My tone was as level as if I were asking what was for dinner.
Richard went still for a moment.
He gripped the beads he'd just picked up, as if he wanted to say something.
But the instant Jacqueline brushed his fingertip, he came back to himself.
His eyes went to our daughter, and in the end he only pressed his lips together.
I went to look up his contact on instinct.
My fingers stopped. I remembered that I'd already deleted and blocked him.
I helped Sophie slowly over into the shade of a tree.
Only then did I go back to them and transfer the money.
My daughter looked back and forth between me and Richard, suspicious.
"You two know each other?"
The moment she said it, the air froze.
My eyelids trembled, and I pushed down the sting rising behind my eyes.
Jacqueline jumped in at once, her tone light.
"Why would you think that? How could your father possibly know some woman who can't even control her own bladder?"
My daughter let out a long breath.
My eyelid twitched.
The next second, her voice went off right beside my ear.
"Good. And here I thought a woman this far beneath us actually knew my dad."
Richard's lips moved, but the explanation on the tip of his tongue got swallowed back down.
The heart that was already riddled with holes still took another vicious cut.
I pressed down the taste of blood in my mouth and turned to take Sophie away from there.
Jacqueline's voice came from behind me.
"Wait. As sorry as we feel for you and your daughter,"
"haven't you forgotten something?"
I stopped where I stood.
A hand thinned to skin and bone patted me.
"Mom, go on. I'm fine."
Looking at that sweet, understanding smile, my nose stung.
Sophie's mother had looked out for me again and again in prison.
On her deathbed she handed me all her savings and asked me to take care of her daughter.
After my release I went straight to the orphanage and adopted Sophie.
More than ten years of every day together, and I had long thought of her as my own.
I held back the tears in my eyes and gently touched her face.
"Once Mom earns this last bit of money, I can take you abroad to get treated."
第3章
I had just hoisted the suitcase onto my shoulder when my daughter's voice came from up ahead.
She glanced back at me, her tone offhand.
"Get the case up to the dorm in one piece. Don't bang it up."
"We'll wait for you there, so hurry."
Then she walked off, Richard on one side and Jacqueline on the other, each holding one of her hands, the three of them like a family.
The easy harmony of it settled like a weight in my chest.
Halfway across the lot, Richard turned slightly, his eyes drifting toward me.
The next instant, my daughter tightened her grip on his arm and pulled his gaze back.
Two hours later, I finally wrestled the suitcase into the dorm.
"You're finally here. I've been waiting forever."
I lifted my arm and wiped the heavy sweat from my temple with my sleeve.
"What happened to your neck?"
My chest jumped, and I opened my mouth to explain.
"You don't have something contagious, do you? Don't you dare pass it to me."
She frowned, covering her nose and mouth, her body shrinking back on instinct.
The hand at my side went stiff. I stepped away first, putting distance between us.
"It's not contagious."
"If there's nothing else, I'll go."
At the door, my steps stopped.
"You probably threw out the carrots in your bag. You're allergic to them."
The words fell, and I walked straight out of the dorm.
Inside, my daughter picked up the carrots and stood there alone, sinking into thought.
I had barely stepped out through the front doors of the dorm building when a warm, strong hand suddenly closed around my wrist.
It dragged me off without a word, farther and farther.
We stopped at last outside a coffee shop.
Richard pulled me inside and pressed me down into a seat.
He finally released the hand he had gripped the whole way. I frowned and shook out my wrist.
"All those years you were in prison, I thought about you every single night. I applied to visit you so many times."
"But you always refused me. Even when I brought up Blake, you refused me all the same."
I listened to his confession with lowered eyes, and nothing rose in me but a wave of cold, nauseated indifference.
But at the mention of Blake, something in me stopped short, and a doubt I couldn't help began to form.
The next second, Richard took my hand and went on.
"Louise, I don't care about that daughter of yours. Come back, and I'll treat it like none of it ever happened."
One weightless line to turn the page, and he thought he could erase five years of undeserved ruin.
All those nights and days of torment, and in his eyes they could be wiped out with a single stroke?
I let out a bitter laugh and lightly brushed his hand away.
"I'm not going back."
"If there's nothing else, I'll go now."
I stood straight up, my eyes no longer on him, and turned to leave.
Hurried footsteps chased after me from behind.
The next instant, he reached out and clamped both hands firmly on my shoulders.
"Give me a little more time. Let me get everything sorted out."
I turned my head, and my gaze happened to pass over the old scar on his wrist.
He had cut it there himself, the day I gave birth.
Back then he had knelt by the hospital bed, telling me sorry over and over.
Sorry that he had blocked the operating room door and wouldn't let me in.
When I stayed silent, he grabbed a syringe from beside him and stabbed it hard into his own wrist.
Blood ran steadily down his arm as he walked, step by step, up to me.
"Give me one chance. Just wait for me, all right?"
I waited.
But what came in the end was a lawsuit that put me behind bars.
I gave a small hum of assent.
His eyes lit up in an instant.
I smiled, the smile never reaching my eyes.
Just then I caught a faint glint of light in the corner.
I rubbed my eyes, and it was gone.
After a long standoff, I finally shook Richard off.
I checked the balance on my phone one more time and felt something loosen in my chest.
The phone rang.
"Sophie hasn't come to me all day. Is she at home?"
第4章
After the call ended.
My chest was pulled tight.
I staggered to my feet, ready to rush out the door.
But standing outside was a visitor I never expected.
It was my own daughter.
My fingers curled in.
My lips had barely moved when she closed in first.
She flung a stack of photos hard into my face.
The corners scattered past the side of my face, and a stinging heat climbed my cheek at once.
But when I saw what was on the photos,
my heart dropped.
They were the news images of Sophie being molested by her stepfather as a child.
"The mother wrecks other people's families, and the child seduces her own stepfather."
"Like mother, like daughter. A born whore."
My body froze where I stood, and every trace of color drained from my face.
I stared blankly at the daughter in front of me and for a moment forgot to breathe.
Hannah shoved me aside and walked into the house as if she owned it.
She patted the couch, undisguised disgust churning across her face.
She propped her phone in a stand on the table and waved at me impatiently.
Seeing me rooted in place, she finally spoke again.
"Still not going to cooperate? Your daughter's gone missing, hasn't she?"
Every drop of blood in me froze, and I opened my mouth.
She answered before I could.
"That's right. Your daughter's with me now."
"If you want to find her, you look into the camera, admit you broke up my parents' marriage, and apologize to my mother in public. Then I'll tell you where she is."
My pupils shrank, and my lips worked open and shut, again and again.
The next second, my eyes fell on the protective charm at her neck, and I said hoarsely,
"I can agree to that. But you have to agree to one thing too."
"Give me back that charm around your neck."
Hannah paused for a moment, as if puzzled by what I'd asked for.
But she didn't dwell on it. She took the protective charm off readily and threw it down in front of me.
"Ignorant old woman. Consider it a gift."
With a sharp crack, the charm hit the floor hard and shattered to pieces.
I looked at the broken jade scattered across the floor, and old wounds churned up inside me.
Back then Jacqueline botched the surgery and left me with a chronic condition.
My newborn daughter developed a scalp hematoma too.
The moment my confinement month ended, I dragged my weak body up a thousand stone steps,
and prayed for this protective jade charm for her.
I closed my eyes,
and pressed down every surge of grief.
When I lifted them again,
nothing was left on my face but a flat numbness.
Line by line, I followed Hannah's instructions.
Word by word, I gave my false confession, the one that belonged to me.
She checked the video over and over, and once she was sure it was fine, she finally nodded, satisfied.
I stood and looked at her calmly.
"Where is my daughter?"
Hannah looked into my unrippled eyes,
and for no reason a thread of unease she couldn't name crept up in her.
But she quickly pushed the odd feeling down,
and carelessly tossed the scrap of paper with the address at my feet.
She swung the door open and left. "Mom, when I get home I've got a surprise for you!" Her voice echoed through the old stairwell.
I bent silently and picked up the note, without so much as a flicker left inside me.
I went to the bed, lifted the boards, and took out a wooden box hidden inside.
I dialed the number left in the notebook.
"Is this a old friend of Greta Parsons? There's something I need to ask of you."
After I hung up, I followed the address and found Sophie.
She lay unconscious on the floor, her face streaked with tears.
My heart clenched over and over as I carefully lifted her into my arms.
We reached the place I'd arranged with the person on the phone, boarded a helicopter, and left without looking back.
On the other side, the recording of me bowing my head and confessing spread across the whole internet.
Richard's eyes were fixed on the screen, and the cold pressure around him dropped all at once.