Obsession (Endurance) Read Free Page B

falling before my lids fully lifted.  “The
casts come off in three weeks.  I found a positively evil physical
therapist to come and work with you five days a week to get you back to full
mobility.  Theresa and her team promise that’s possible and will continue
monitoring you from home.”
    “Thank
you.”
    Dad
stroked my cheek.  “Why are you alone so much, Ellie?”
    I
gave a small shrug, “I hate the not knowing.”  Dad’s face told me he
understood what I meant.  “If I were the heiress to millions that would be
one thing.  To be an heiress to billions, even if money isn’t important to
me, I just never know.”
    Both
of my parents opened their mouths to dispute this simple fact but I
smiled.  “No matter how you vet them, you can’t know the inner workings of
someone’s mind.  If that was possible, all seven of those men would have
disappeared at the bottom of a rock quarry covered in lime…and I would have
been holding one of the scoops to sprinkle the bodies.”
    “Ellie…”
    “No,
Mom.  I know I was the one who pled for mercy.  I asked you to give
them a chance.  I asked you to spare them because they were young and I
thought they could change.  I was painfully naïve, I realize that
now.  I…I punished Hyde as horribly as I punished myself.”
    Mom
stood and began to pace, suddenly crying out, “Ellie, he was not raped!  
No one should ever experience what you went through!  What you’re going to
go through!”  She slapped her hand over her mouth. 
    “I…I’m
so sorry, baby.  Men rarely know what it means to be raped.  Physical
torture is bad enough.  Rape goes deeper than the physical.  It is a
rape of the mind, of the emotions.  Women…we go through our entire lives
protecting our bodies but it is our minds that suffer most.” 
    She
closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  “I am horrified by what Hyde
endured.  Absolutely horrified.  But no one was more
brutalized than you, Elliana.”
    “Don’t,
Mom.  Don’t think about it.” 
    “Hyde
would give his life for yours.  You cannot torture yourself over what
happened.”
    “Is
it so difficult to understand that I don’t want someone to give their
life for mine, Mom?  My protection detail, the employees I’ve grown up
with, and the two of you and your friends…that is the extent of the people I
have to talk to.  The only friends and family I have.”  I hated the
lump in my throat. 
    Dad
petted my hair, “No, Ellie.  Don’t cry, please don’t cry.”
    I
hated being lonely but even more, I hated that I could lose my only friends to
violence.  “I…I want something of my own.  I’m keeping this
child.  Others might consider this child an abomination.  I consider
it an unexpected bright side.”
    Mom
nodded and came back to perch on my bed, stroking the hair on the other side of
my head.  “Then keep it you shall.  Your baby, our grandchild, will never know a life without love.” 
    “Thank
you, thank you for understanding.  I doubt there could be a stupider
mother-to-be but I’ll learn.”
    Her
fingertips on my cheek, Mom whispered, “You were always amazing with Preston,
Ellie.  He adored you; you could do no wrong with that little boy.”
    Fresh
tears started as I thought of the little boy I’d met at a charity function for
the Boys & Girls Club in the summer of my sophomore year of college. 
A little boy caught in the system who was half-black, half-white and HIV
positive.  He was also crack-addicted and had been beaten by his crack-head
mother until permanent brain damage had rendered him mentally disabled. 
He was only six and everything that could have gone wrong in his life certainly
had. 
    Something
made him gravitate to me, made him walk up and slip his small hand into mine,
and I’d fallen instantly in love with him.  I found every reason possible
to visit him and see how he was doing.  I organized huge outings with
every child at the center where he lived to spend