On the Sixth Thanksgiving, I Stopped Waiting for Him Chapter 10
Tears still clung to Julian’s face as his whole body went rigid.
“I wasn’t…”
“You were!”
“I won’t deny that you searched for me because you missed me. But when you saw me for the first time in six years—saw what was left of me–all you could see was Vivian!”
“You saw what I had become, but you refused to face why I had become that way!”
“Instead of trying to help me piece myself back together, you wanted to be with Vivian!”
“Because she looked whole. She smelled good. She was beautiful!”
“Because then you didn’t have to face everything in me that had been destroyed!”
Julian’s eyes went even emptier.
It was as if he’d never expected me to see the darkest part of him so clearly.
“I didn’t, Claire. I really didn’t…”
“The first day I came back, when you opened that car door and chased after her, did you ever think about me calling your name six years ago as they dragged me into that van?”
Julian looked as if he’d been stabbed in the back.
His knees hit the floor with a dull thud.
“Please stop.”
“You said you searched for me for six years, Julian!”
“In the first year you searched for me, the man who bought me assaulted me.”
“In the second year, I lost my first baby…”
“In the third year, I lost my second baby. It was Thanksgiving, and the moon was full. I looked through the wooden slats of that pigpen and wondered if you were out there searching for me.”
“In the fourth year, I lost my third baby. The doctor said my uterus couldn’t be saved.”
Julian knelt on the floor with his forehead pressed against the back of his hand. Tears rolled down
his face and onto the white hospital sheet.
claire, please don’t say any more. I’m begging you…”
When he finally looked up, he seemed hollowed out.
He turned and walked toward the door one slow step at a time.
At the doorway, he stopped.
“Claire.”
“Will you be okay from now on?”
“I will.”
The answer was for him, but it was for me too.
Ethan had stood by the window the entire time without saying a word.
He picked up the insulated container Julian had brought.
“I got rid of the chicken soup. I’ll make you some beef stew later.”
“That sounds good.”
Moonlight glowed softly outside the window.
“Claire, I’ll spend every Thanksgiving with you from now on.”
“That sounds good.”
Later, while I lay in my hospital bed talking to Ethan, the police laid out their entire case file in front of my mother.
Ethan told me she cried so hard at the station that she could barely stand.
The transfer records, witness statements, and medical reports landed on her one after another like hammer blows.
For six years, she had held the woman who destroyed my life close and treated her like a daughter. She had served Vivian chicken soup and taken family photos with her, then slapped me and told me I should have stayed gone when I finally came home.
I listened without feeling anything.
My mother called me later, crying as she said she had never known.
I believed that she hadn’t known.
But not knowing and hurting me were two different things.
I told her I wasn’t ready.
I wasn’t ready to forgive her, but I wasn’t ready to say I never would, either.
I was still carrying the weight of those six years. I had no strength left to carry her emotions too.
For now, she’d have to carry them herself.
After I hung up, Ethan took my hand in his.
He didn’t once ask me to forgive my mother.
He just told me he was on my side. I could do whatever I needed to do, and he wouldn’t pressure me
or stand in my way.
That night, I rested my head on his shoulder.
The ice that had filled my chest for six years finally cracked.
It didn’t need to melt all at once.
But it had begun to thaw.
And after six lost years, I’d finally found a place to rest.
