I sped barefoot over broken glass and rough tarmac in my jeans and T-shirt, heedless of the biting December wind as I hauled Tom behind me. My mother was screaming like a banshee, but I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry.

I just ran, because I knew that was how I was going to live.

chapter 26

millie

Stacey Porter: (No Subject)

I stare at the email on my phone. I don’t click on it, because I already know what it contains. Once I open it there’ll be no going back.

I haven’t told Tom what Stacey has asked me to do. He’ll tell me she’s using me: that I’m the one who’ll be taking all the risk. Even if you’re right, he says, even if Felix is abusing her, what happens when she goes back to him? Because you know she’ll go back, Millie. Women like her always do.

After the terrible night when Tom rescued me from my father and we fled the house, after everything that happened afterwards, I thought that now, surely, my mother would find the courage to leave him. But in the end the gravitational pull back to him was just too intense. I wasn’t strong enough to drag her free.

She went back because she was addicted to him: to the cycle of abuse and remorse. When he beat her, he was in control, but when he was sorry and filled with apology and regret, she was the one in charge. She thought she could save him. She thought she could rescue him. The abuse actually made her feel special and wanted: she was convinced if she could just prove to him how much she loved him, she’d be able to fix him.

Gracie was your mother’s responsibility, Tom says. She’s the one who should’ve saved her. She’s the one who put her in jeopardy in the first place.

But I was her big sister: it was my job to look out for her.

I left her behind.

She was just four years old.

Stacey Porter: (No Subject).

My thumb hovers over the subject line. I understand now what Marilla meant when she said, I need to atone.

My secretary buzzes in my next patient, and I put my phone away, the email unread.