Her tooth.

The tears kept coming, and she feared they might never stop. She cried so hard she nearly vomited, mouth open, retching with the force, eyes swelling and tight, face wet in the morning sun.

She’d been right. He wore her tooth on a thin wire necklace around his neck. It swung back and forth, and she gazed at it, aghast, remembering the day she’d taken a hammer to herself. The tears kept coming, and then something else made its presence known. A pressurised feeling, as if a great bubble of air were rising up from somewhere deep inside.

‘Thank you for this,’ X croaked, enjoying her anguish, his voice suffused with a horrible intensity.

And the bubble shot into her mouth and burst out of her, only it wasn’t a bubble, it wasn’t air, it was a scream, a scream that had been brewing for thirty odd years, and it propelled her forward as it ricocheted around the clearing, and the gun might not have been loaded, but it was heavy, and solid, and she brought it down on X’s face, as hard as she could, and kept bringing it down, until he was no longer smiling, until his own rotten teeth had smashed and splintered, until she felt his nose crunch under the butt of the gun, and all she could think was quid pro quo, over and over, until she was spent.

28.

Afterwards, she sat on the forest floor, and gathered herself, as best she could. The gun she kept a tight hold of, slick as it was with blood and gore. She looked at X, and looked at the damage she’d wrought. She could see the light flutter of his chest, labouring for air. X was alive, but unconscious, and for that, she was intensely, unspeakably grateful. If he was alive, then she wasn’t a murderer. If he was alive, then she had a chance at a future, and her son would still have a Mother.

She realised the wetness on her face was no longer from her own tears, and ran the back of her hand down one cheek. It came away red, and slippery, and a little swell of cold, irrational victory bloomed.

She should leave, now, she knew, leave X here in the woods to live his life in filth, to drink cold tinned soup through a broken mouth and snore through a broken nose. She had taught him a lesson, given back some of the pain he’d gifted her. She wasn’t proud of it…or was she? Either way, it was done. So, she should leave.

But she didn’t. Something held her back.

One, final hesitancy.

Bobby.

And then, as if nature itself had decided to make a friend of her rather than an enemy, she heard something fall from a tree behind her, and land on the ground with a hard and distinct thump.

Her head whipped around, and the gun came up, but there was nothing there except for a squirrel, who had dropped a nut from his place high up in the canopy and was now scooting back down the thick oak trunk to retrieve it.