But if I saw the rest, I wouldn’t leave.
And there were a few matters I needed to take care of first.
She needed to know that she was safe, and there was only one way to do that.
But first…
“Do either one of you have a hair tie?” I asked the nurses on either side of me.
“I do,” the doctor, who had a nametag that read “Val” on her breast pocket, said. “Here.”
I took the hair tie, then gently gathered Silver’s copious amount of hair into a bun on the top of her head.
I was careful not to pull or put the ponytail too tight, in case it hurt.
“You can leave now,” Silver said, still not looking at me.
I trailed a finger over the shell of her ear and said, “For now.”
Seeing her broken, bruised, and utterly devastated literally ripped my world apart.
I walked out of her room after she asked me to leave, and I didn’t see where I was going.
I only knew that Barry had to pay.
He may not have been the one to completely put her in that kind of state, but he sure the hell was culpable in her beating.
He might not have done the beating, but he knew who did, and he didn’t stop it.
The drive to my ex-wife’s place was short.
No traffic stopped me from making perfect time.
I pulled my bike directly into their driveway, uncaring who the hell saw what I was about to do.
I knocked on my ex-wife’s door, thankful that Eedie was at her job this evening, and waited.
When Barry answered the door with his sickly sweet smile on his face, I saw red.
“You know, my daughter had some interesting things to say today.” Barry leaned against the posts of the porch that I’d once built and painted. “You want to hear what they were?”
I glanced to make sure that the neighbor next door had gotten into the house without staying back to linger and listen in. Once I was sure she was inside, I glanced back to Barry. “What’s that, Barry?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just that she had feelings for you, but you somehow messed it up.” He grinned. “Or was that something I heard on the camera that I had at her place? I don’t know…”
Before I could tell myself to control my temper and get more information out of him, my fist flew, landing right in his face.
He went down so hard that his head bounced off the concrete steps behind him.
The sickening thud of his body hitting the ground caused Elizabeth to shriek as she rounded the corner.
She gasped, making as if to come at us, but I pointed at her and said, “You will stay out of this, or I’ll take you out along with him.”
“That’s my…”
I spoke over her. “Your ex-husband who’s going to have nothing to do with you and Eedie ever again. When I get those divorce papers to you tomorrow, you will sign them, and you will look into selling this house. I want every last bit of the proceeds to go into a college fund for Eedie, and she’ll be moving in with me. You find an apartment somewhere so far away from me that I never see you again. I don’t want to see you at Eedie’s wedding. You just find somewhere else to be. When she asks why, you tell her that you married a man that beat the shit out of Silver. Those exact words. You tell her that you condoned his abuse all these years, and that you’re a horrible person. If you don’t, I’ll be taking you to The Boneyard right along with him.”
Elizabeth knew damn well and good what The Boneyard was.
