Here it was again.
I looked at her, this woman I'd loved for seven years, the woman who had almost become my wife.
And she felt like a total stranger.
"Michelle." I spoke slowly. "He can't control himself, so that makes it fine for him to crack a bottle over my head?"
Her eyes flickered.
"That was unconscious, he didn't mean—"
"And insulting my mother, was that unconscious too?"
I held her gaze and wouldn't let her look away.
"He was raving!" Michelle's voice climbed. "What's the point of holding it against a sick man?"
"Why shouldn't I hold it against him?" My own voice dropped cold. "Just because he's ill, my dignity, my feelings, my dead mother's name dragged through the mud, all of it deserves to be trampled?"
"Michelle, the wrong you did back then, the guilt you carry, why should I be the one paying for it?"
She froze. She had never heard me speak so sharply, so plainly.
"That's not what I meant, Joseph. Can't we both just calm down first?"
"I'm sorry. Once Oswald is stable again, we'll sit down and talk it through—"
I cut her off.
"There's nothing to talk about. And you don't need to apologize."
I closed my eyes. The cut at my temple still throbbed faintly.
"We ended a long time ago. The day you left in your wedding dress and went to a bar with him."
Michelle's brows knotted tight, and her voice shot up. "I told you, that was to calm him down!"
"Joseph, can't you show me a little understanding?"
"I'm stuck in the middle, and it's hard for me too!"
I looked at her, my eyes calm and still.
"Don't put yourself through it. Go, Michelle."
"Go take care of that adopted brother who can't live without you."
"He matters more than I do."
Her mouth opened as if she still had something to say, but in the end she only pressed her lips shut, turned, and walked out of the room.
Over the next few days, she didn't come back.
After I was discharged, I went to the cemetery alone. I wanted to say goodbye to my mother, and then leave this city.
When I got there, the sight in front of me sent the blood rushing to my head and left my arms and legs cold.
It was Oswald!
He had a shovel in his hands, from where I had no idea, and he was digging up my mother's grave like a madman!
Dirt was flung everywhere, and the headstone lay tilted on the ground.
"Stop!"
My mind went blank, and I threw myself forward without a second thought.
But before I could reach Oswald, two huge bodyguards in black rushed out from the side and pinned me hard, one on each arm.
No matter how I struggled, I couldn't break free.
"Let go of me! Oswald! I'll kill you!"
My eyes were splitting wide, my voice torn to a rasp.
Just then Michelle came hurrying over and put herself between me and Oswald.
"Joseph! Don't lose it! Calm down!"
"Calm down? You're making me watch this lunatic dig up my mother's grave, and you want me to calm down?!"
I glared at her, my eyes so bloodshot they felt ready to burst.
Michelle looked away from me, that same tired note in her voice. "That punch of yours made Oswald's condition worse. He can't take any kind of shock right now! Show some understanding!"
And Oswald, hearing what Michelle said, only grew smugger.
He stopped, leaned on the shovel, and grinned at me, a grin full of malice and madness.
Then he brought the shovel down hard on the ash urn he'd uncovered.
"No!"
Everything in me shattered.
There was a dull clang, and the hard urn split open.
Like a child who'd found a fun new toy, he struck again, and again, until the urn was smashed to pieces.
The white ash spilled out across the ground.
Oswald flung the shovel aside, lifted his foot, and stamped down on the ashes, grinding them into the dirt.
"Mom!"
In that moment, I heard my own heart break.
Rage, despair, and a grief without end tangled together, and blood and tears slid down my face before I could stop them.
From start to finish, Michelle never once looked at me. Every ounce of her attention was on Oswald.
When she saw him stop, she stepped up carefully and asked in a soft voice, "Oswald, is that enough? Do you feel a little better now?"
Oswald brushed the ash off his hands and nodded, grinning.
"Yeah, sis, I feel a lot better now!"
Then he turned to my mother's ashes on the ground and spat on them, deliberate and vile.
"Let's go. Your sister will take you home."
Michelle said it gently, and signaled the bodyguards to let me go.
Then she shielded Oswald and left without a backward glance.
I crawled forward on my knees and reached out with shaking hands to gather the ashes, mixed now with dirt and spit.
The fragments cut into my palms, blood dripping into the soil, but I felt no pain at all.
Just then, the phone in my pocket buzzed.
Numbly, I pulled it out. The screen showed a message from Michelle:
"Joseph, I promise this is the last time."
"I've already booked the specialist. Tomorrow I'm taking Oswald overseas for treatment."
"Once he's well, all of this will be behind us."
"Don't worry."
"Everything you suffered today, I'll make it up to you twice over someday."
I looked at the message, no expression on my face.
I peeled off my jacket, soaked through long ago, and wrapped the ashes in it, careful and slow.
I buried the phone in the dirt and staggered to my feet.
One step at a time, I walked away and did not look back.
