Cold Woods by Karen Katchur

Author:Karen Katchur [Katchur, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542093033
Published: 2019-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

Sid’s driver dropped Trisha off in front of her mother’s semiattached house. The street was dark. The Christmas lights that had lit up the porches and windows had been turned off, most likely when the neighbors had gone to sleep hours ago. A light snow was falling. The driver waited as he was instructed to do, the engine idling, until she went into the house and closed the door behind her. The kitchen light was turned on in the back room. She found her mother sitting at the table smoking a cigarette. A pink lighter sat next to the ashtray. Her mother had a thing for cheap pink lighters.

“How’d it go?” her mother asked. “You don’t look any worse for the wear.”

Trisha paused at the bottom of the stairs, her head down. “Why do you care? Why now?” she asked. “When I was a kid and I needed you, where were you? Where were you when I relied on you to protect me?”

“I’ve always cared. Always. You have to believe me. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know until after he was already gone.”

“How could you not have known? It was happening right under your nose.” But even as she said it, she understood sometimes a person couldn’t see beyond their own circumstances, even if it involved their own daughter. And what she finally realized was that her mother hadn’t been able to see past the bills, the bruises, her own pain.

“I swear I didn’t know,” her mother cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was a kid. I was scared and ashamed. I thought it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t.” Tears rolled down her mother’s cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” she said and headed up the stairs, whispering, “that makes two of us.”

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