Chapter 1 - The Concrete Bench at Noon
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The small crescent-shaped birthmark behind Felix’s right ear was the anchor that kept me breathing through five years of isolation.
I dropped my heavy leather duffel bag onto the cracked asphalt of the bus depot. My knees struck the pavement beside the bench.
“Felix... baby, look at me. It’s Mom.”
Felix flinched, pulling his head further into my mother’s lap. He was seven years old, but his collarbones protruded sharply beneath an old fleece sweater that had grown two sizes too small. His wrists were chapped from the cold wind, his fingers trembling as he clutched a plastic bottle of tap water.
My mother, Judith, let out a ragged, trembling sob that seemed to tear from the very bottom of her soul. She raised a shaking hand, her calloused fingers hovering over my cheek as if afraid I were a mirage manufactured by exhaustion.
“Maren... oh, dear God, Maren... you’re alive,” she wept.
“Of course I’m alive, Mom!” Tears spilled hot and fast down my face, stinging in the November wind. “Why are you out here? Where is our house? Where is Russell?”
My father, Raymond, sat with his back pressed against the metal shelter. He was wearing the faded blue work jacket I had sent him four Christmases ago. His hands gripped an unvarnished wooden cane, his knuckles bruised, his ankles swollen over unlaced shoes.
He stared straight ahead, unable to look into my eyes.
“Your father asked him for twenty dollars yesterday to buy Felix cough medicine,” Judith whispered, her voice cracking. “Russell told him that old dogs who can’t hunt don't get fed. He changed the deadbolts on Monday morning, Maren. He threw our things onto the lawn in black contractor bags while the garbage trucks were passing.”
I turned back to Felix. The little boy’s eyelashes fluttered open. His dark eyes, so much like mine, widened with a terrifying mixture of longing and fear.
“Daddy said you hated me,” Felix whispered, his lips dry and peeling. “He said you went to Florida to get a new husband and that you told him to throw my coloring books in the trash.”
The sound that left my throat wasn't a cry; it was the broken gasp of a mother whose child had been poisoned with lies.
I wrapped both arms around him, pulling his small, shivering frame against my winter coat, burying my face into his tangled curls.
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“Never, Felix,” I vowed, rocking him against my chest. “I worked every single day, every single night, so nobody could ever take our home away. Mommy is back. And nobody will ever touch you again.”
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