I Died The Day My Husband’s Girlfriend Did A Magic Trick. Chapter 22
At night, he hid in the drafty attic and took a yellowed photograph from a pocket close to his chest.
It was a picture of him and me.
It was his fifth birthday.
I had made him a very ugly cake.
He had smeared frosting all over my face, and the two of us had laughed until we cried.
Leo traced my face in the photo with his dirty fingers.
“Mom… Leo hurts.”
“Grandma hit me again today.”
“She hit my legs with a broom.”
“It hurt more than when Dad used to hit me.”
He sniffed.
“Mom only ever hit me once.”
“That time I threw rocks at the neighbor’s car.”
“You hit me twice, and then you cried harder than I did.”
His mouth crumpled. Tears fell, one by one, onto the photo.
In the picture, I was still smiling.
“Mom, I know I was wrong.”
“Come back and hit me, okay?”
“You can hit me as many times as you want.”
“Just… come back.”
Wind whistled through a crack in the window.
I floated outside the attic, watching the child who had grown so thin curl up around the photograph.
I couldn’t tell what I felt.
He was right.
In my entire life, I had only hit him that one time.
Afterward, I had held him and cried for a long time.
But now, I no longer had hands to hold him.