His scream tore through the house. “MOM! HE’S HERE! THE MAN FROM YESTERDAY!”
Evelyn’s footsteps thundered up the stairs. She appeared, eyes blazing, instantly positioning herself between Nathan and Lucas.
“How did you get in here?” she demanded.
“I have a key,” Nathan said. “I’m sorry. I just needed to understand.”
“You broke into my home,” she said, voice shaking. “Get out. Now, or I’m calling the police.”
“Please,” Nathan begged. “Five minutes. Let me explain. Then I’ll leave if you want.”
Evelyn laughed, but it wasn’t humor. It was pain wearing teeth.
“You want five minutes?” she said. “Fine. Not in front of Lucas.”
She knelt to Lucas. “Baby, put on your headphones. Listen to your music. Okay?”
Lucas looked at Nathan with frightened suspicion. “Is that man going to hurt you?”
“No,” Evelyn whispered, smoothing his cheek. “No one is hurting anyone. We’re just talking.”
Lucas ran to his room. The door shut.
Evelyn led Nathan down to the kitchen like someone walking into a storm they’d been avoiding for years.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Evelyn exhaled. “Your mother hated me from the moment she met me.”
Nathan’s gut sank.
Evelyn continued, voice controlled but trembling at the edges. “It started small. Little comments. Little humiliations. Then it grew teeth. She called me when you were at work. Every day. Twice a day sometimes. Told me I cooked wrong, cleaned wrong, existed wrong.”
Nathan stared, sick.
“I didn’t tell you,” Evelyn said, and her voice cracked. “I thought I could handle it. I thought if I tried hard enough, she’d accept me. I thought I could earn my way into her approval.”
She swallowed. “Then I found out I was pregnant.”
Nathan’s breath caught.
“I wanted to tell you that night,” Evelyn whispered. “I planned your favorite dinner. But your mother came in the afternoon. No warning. No hello. She sat across from me like a judge.”
Evelyn’s hands clenched around the chair. “She put an envelope on the table. Fifty thousand dollars. She said, ‘Disappear tonight. Don’t tell Nathan where you’re going.’”
Nathan’s mouth opened, horrified.
“I refused,” Evelyn said. “So she threatened me. Told me she’d make everyone think I was unstable. Dangerous. That she’d get doctors to say I wasn’t fit. That she’d take my baby.”
Evelyn’s eyes filled. “And then, three days after the pregnancy test, she showed up furious. She said I was trying to trap you. She said, ‘Now we do this the hard way.’”
Nathan’s hands shook. “Evelyn… why didn’t you come to me?”
“She said she’d kill me,” Evelyn snapped, tears falling. “She said she’d kill the baby. And I believed her, Nathan. Because she had money and connections and I had nothing.”
Evelyn turned toward the window, staring at the street but seeing rain.
“The night I left, it was pouring. I walked to the bus station. I was going to buy a ticket to anywhere. Then a black car pulled up. Your mother stepped out. Two men grabbed me, put a hand over my mouth. They took me to a warehouse.”
Nathan’s stomach dropped. “A warehouse?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said, voice shaking. “She had an old beat-up car there. She forced me to drive it to the bridge on Highway 40. She made me leave my ID, my wallet, my phone. Everything.”
Nathan felt cold spread through his veins.
“They poured gasoline on the car,” Evelyn whispered. “Burned it on the bridge. With my identification inside. Then she threw an envelope at my feet. Five thousand dollars. She told me, ‘You’re dead now. If you come back, I’ll make it real. And I’ll make sure the baby dies too.’”
Nathan’s vision blurred.
Leave a Comment