I was nineteen when I followed him.
Married at twenty. By twenty-one, I was up before dawn and collapsing after midnight, caring for his paralyzed parents.
Ten years.
The Lionel from ten years ago slowly merged with the accomplished Director Dickerson standing before me now.
I pulled myself back to the present, stone-faced, and shoved away the hand Lionel extended to help me. I pressed my palms flat against the floor and forced myself upright, then walked out one slow, agonizing step at a time.
I stopped at the office door and looked back, saying goodbye to the Lionel from ten years ago.
I dragged my battered body home.
The moment I stepped through the door, my father-in-law's voice hit me like a wall:
"I knew a worthless thing like you was nothing but trouble! How dare you stay out all night? Where the hell did you crawl off to?!"
"Your mother-in-law soiled herself! It reeks in here. Get in there and clean her up!"
"You can't help Lionel with his career, fine. But you can't even handle the house? Are you trying to drain him dry?"
I pushed open the door to my in-laws' room. The stench hit me full in the face.
I covered my nose and mouth and stood in silence, staring at the two of them on the bed.
Not even a full minute passed.
The composure my mother-in-law had been forcing crumbled.
She cried and begged me to bathe her.
No one noticed the wounds covering my body. Ten years of devotion hadn't earned me a single shred of genuine concern.
"Don't worry. I won't be draining your precious Lionel."
I didn't rush around tending to the two of them the way I always had. I shut their door and walked to the master bedroom.
I opened the door.
Fay Simmons was lying in my bed, wearing my pajamas.
She rolled over to face me when she heard the door.
Hickeys covered every inch of exposed skin. Proof of just how deeply Lionel loved her.
Fay squinted at me, smiling.
"Oh, Moira, I'm so sorry. Dr. Dickerson was all over me last night. I just couldn't..."
My gaze followed hers across the vanity, the floor-to-ceiling window, the full-length mirror.
Stains everywhere.
I hadn't eaten in too long. My stomach felt like it had been fed through a blender, crushed beyond recognition.
Nausea surged up in a wave. I clamped my hand over my mouth and bright red blood seeped through my fingers.
Fay called out to me, her voice syrup-sweet.
"Moira, you look like you're about to die."
I swallowed the taste of iron and lunged at her.
I ripped the covers back and dragged her off the bed. "Get out! Get out of my house!"
Fay picked herself up off the floor, folded her arms, and looked at me with a mocking curl at the corner of her lips.
"Your house?"
"You sure this is your house? That your man is your man?"
"Moira, you have no idea. Lionel only married you because of me!"
I stared at her, frozen.
The rotting mess inside my abdomen seized again at her words, the pain so blinding I nearly blacked out.
"Want to know why you got expelled? Lionel was my witness. He told the university board he saw you and your professor together in that classroom with his own eyes!"
"He was afraid you'd come after me, so he married you to keep you under surveillance. Every move you made, controlled!"
"That love you were so proud of? It was just his entry ticket to stay in my good graces!"
"He also said someone like you doesn't deserve to be a doctor. That you were born to serve. So he had you wait on his parents hand and foot, cleaning up their filth..."
Rage swallowed every last scrap of reason. I grabbed a fistful of her hair and swung at her face.
But my body had nothing left.
Even with everything I had, my hand barely grazed her cheek.
She kept talking.
She told me about the baby I'd lost. How Lionel had slipped something into my soup.
She told me that in Lionel's mind, only Fay Simmons was fit to be the mother of his children.
I went still. My hand drifted down to the scar on my stomach.
She had been a girl. Five months along.
Lionel had been just as excited as I was. We'd set up the nursery together.
He'd even hand-washed the baby's clothes himself, one piece at a time.
The night I was rushed to the hospital, he held me and shook with sobs.
He was clearly devastated, but he forced himself to stay strong for me. "We'll have another baby. We will."
We clung to each other in that hospital room and wept.
Late into the night, in that dim ward, we suffered together.
Fay watched me break down, and the look on her face was pure, undisguised triumph.
She pulled my hand onto the swell of her belly and laughed, open and shameless.
"Everything you begged for and couldn't have, I got without even trying."
I crumpled to the floor, too weak to stand. I couldn't tell if the pain was my heart or my stomach.
Fay pressed the toe of her shoe into my kneecap and sneered.
"Moira, you're even more pathetic than I imagined."
I glared up at her. Slowly, the smugness in her eyes gave way to fear.
I lunged to my feet, locked my hand around her throat, and drove her backward until she was bent over the windowsill, half her body dangling outside.
"No! Please, don't hurt me and Dr. Dickerson's baby!"
I shoved her head lower and screamed.
"You were so cocky a second ago! What happened? Afraid to die now? A piece of trash like you doesn't deserve to be a mother! Go to hell!"
Fay shook her head, wailing.
Rage had blinded me. I missed the cunning hiding beneath her terror.
By the time I came back to myself, I was already over the windowsill, falling.
The impact.
My body slammed into the ground. Warmth seeped out of me, bit by bit.
Lionel shoved Fay out of his arms and threw himself toward the window.
His voice tore out of him. "No!"
