Page 53 of Eat Your Heart Out

She cried and gazed at the sheets. “In her last moments, she threw herself on top of me so I’d get down.”

I held my palms faceup in a placating gesture. “She loved you.”

She rocked.

I stayed beside her, unsure how to help.

Then she said, “And I… John said I’d go to jail if I didn’t leave with him.”

I rubbed the back of my head as I tried to understand. “So you ran?”

“From the hospital.” She nodded. Then her gaze became glassy. “And every single second of every single day, I realize that I can’t have nice things because, if I open up, then you or someone else who tries… they’ll end up dead, too, because I make horrible choices.”

Questions burned in my brain. “Why did you refuse to give her the keys?”

She rocked. “Because… because I thought I was fine. I’d only had a sip of that beer, and she was being hard on me, saying I was supposed to have some ideal life. I hated the taste of that thing. I still hate beer. The smell makes me remember everything about that day.”

What happened to her sounded almost surreal. They’d just left the driveway. “How old were you when this happened?”

“Fourteen.”

I winced. She was young. My brain rushed. We’d taken care of her passport with no one mentioning anything. I stilled. “Wait. How old are you now?”

“Twenty-two.”

The dam in my heart broke. She clearly hadn’t been able to process everything and had survived more than I could imagine. “I want to help,” I said quietly.

She let out a sigh. “There’s nothing you can do.”

She needed answers. Not everything might have been as she remembered. And she’d been with a man who I suspected had lied to her every single day.

I kept my thoughts to myself. “My brother Jeff is an attorney. Let’s start with letting him find out what happened.”

She tilted her head and sounded calmer as she asked, “Okay, but why does that matter?”

She had taken on too much blame already, and nothing had come up when we applied for a passport under her name, so the police likely weren’t after her. She needed answers if she was going to move on.

“Because then we’ll know where you stand legally, and maybe you’ll learn that your mom wouldn’t want you to live your life in fear.”

“You can’t know that.”

And I couldn’t just ignore her pain. She needed time, but I realized that I loved Ali. “She loved you, clearly.”

She winced. “How can you believe that?”

“Because I love you.”

Her story hadn’t changed how I felt about her. I understood why she was scared of a relationship, but she also gave me hope. I would have to prove to her she could be happy with me.