“After the meal came time for cake, and before that, Theron would sign the papers. I had done it the previous year, almost to the day. Theron was the only one at that table who was truly excited that evening. Almost buoyant. Maybe my mother and I both suspected my grandfather’s plan. His strange glee at dinner gave him away.

“Once dinner was cleared, my grandfather laid out the papers and uncapped the pen. He signed his name to the forms and then stood back and watched my brother. Watched him as he read the pages and understood what was happening.”

“What was it?” she asks after too long a pause.

I look down at her eager, open face. “He isn’t a Montgomery. Not by blood.”

“What?”

“My parents’ match was not a love match, but so few are. She had an affair. And Theron was the product of that affair. My grandfather learned the truth when Theron was fifteen. Thankfully he was away at school when all hell broke loose within the walls of the Montgomery estate.”

“What did he do?”

How much do I want to tell her? I’ve come this far. We’ve come this far.

“He punished my mother.” A long silence draws out, and I have to force the next words. My confession. “And I stood witness.”

“What do you mean?” she asks with a tremor in her voice. I’m sure she is remembering the punishment room.

“He made her strip. Made my mother strip naked in front of me. And he whipped her raw.” Mercedes’s hand flies to her mouth. “The scars go from the tops of her shoulders to the backs of her ankles.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I stood and watched. I listened to her scream and sob and beg him to stop.”

“Jesus.”

“And I did nothing.”

“Judge, you were sixteen years old. A boy.”

I shake my head. “He made her believe if she paid the price, he would accept Theron. Someone had to be punished, after all. She sacrificed herself for her son.”

“Oh…”

“She was noble once. He broke her of that, though.”

She straddles me and cups my face with both hands. It takes my eyes time to focus on her because I think I was gone for a minute there. Back in that room. Back to the sight of my mother enduring my grandfather’s wrath.

“And when Theron learned the truth the night of his birthday, the night he should have celebrated a sort of coming of age, he changed. It happened before my eyes. He asked me if I’d known, and I couldn’t answer him. I didn’t need to, though he saw it on my face. I still remember how he hugged me. And how the knife felt sliding easily into my back. The pain of it. And then not much else.”

“Jesus Christ.”