Chapter 2
I heard only one word: again.
The responder stopped beside the ambulance door. My stepmother stared at my father as though he had betrayed her, while he kept his eyes fixed on the ground.
“What do you mean, again?” I asked.
He muttered that it had been years ago and that nobody had been seriously hurt. When I pressed him, he admitted my stepmother had used cold showers as punishment when I was a child. He claimed he had confronted her and believed it was over.
I remembered pieces, not a complete memory—the bathroom light, a towel pushed beneath the door, my father telling me to stop making trouble. I had spent years believing those fragments were nightmares.
My stepmother stepped forward. “You were impossible back then too. Crying, screaming, demanding attention. Someone had to teach you control.”
The responder moved between us before I could answer. I climbed into the ambulance and held the baby’s dry blanket while they secured him safely. My father followed to the open doors, begging me not to repeat what he had said.
“You knew,” I told him. “You knew what she did to me, and you still left her alone with a baby.”
He insisted this situation was different. He said he had been asleep and had no idea she would take things that far.
My stepmother laughed from the porch. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know. You told me to handle the crying.”
My father denied it so quickly that even the responder looked at him.
May you like
Then my stepmother pulled his phone from the pocket of the jacket she had been holding. She unlocked the screen and turned it toward me.
At 2:14 that afternoon, my father had texted her: “Do whatever you have to do. Just keep him quiet while I’m asleep.”
