Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Oh God. Josie’s throat tightened, her stomach quivering with sickness. Burned? With a cigarette?
“I’m so sorry, Josie.” Zach’s voice penetrated the thick fog that seemed to have taken hold of her brain.
She shook her head. “We…we weren’t close, you know that.” She looked up at him and saw Jimmy give him a look in her peripheral vision too. “But to know she suffered that way…” She shook her head again as though if she did it enough, she could deny that this had really happened.
“I know,” Zach said. He reached across the table. Her gaze moved to his large hands covering her smaller ones. They were warm and strong, his fingers slender, nails short and blunt. She wanted to lay her cheek on those hands, get lost in the solidity of him. The warmth. He squeezed her hands and then pulled his own away. “I need to talk to Jimmy for a few minutes. Can I make you some tea?”
The memory of him making her tea a few days before served to clear the fog slightly. He’d clearly never made tea in his life. It’d been weak, terrible, and she’d been grateful for every sip. “No, thank you. You two go talk. I’m okay. I need to keep my hands busy.”
They both stood and, as Jimmy walked toward the door, he put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Jimmy. And thank you again for your help today.”
A moment later, she heard their murmured voices on the porch. They were obviously trying to be quiet so she wouldn’t overhear what they were talking about. In a daze, Josie made herself a cup of tea, more for something warm to wrap her hands around than that she actually wanted to drink tea right then. She took it into the living room and sat staring out the window. He burnt her mother with cigarettes? Why? It’s your fault he left me, you worthless girl! This burn you feel? It’s nothing compared to what you did to my life. Should have thrown you out with the trash, because that’s what you are.
The memory of those words still scalded, far more than the burns ever had. The burns had scarred her flesh; the blame for simply living had scarred her heart.
A few minutes later, her front door opened and closed, she heard the lock turn, and Zach came into the room. “You okay?” he asked gently, coming to sit next to her.
“Yes. I will be. I’m just… I can’t believe this. I just saw her,” she said. “I mean, you know that. It’s just…surreal. And, Zach, I…I need to tell you something.” She felt cold, despite the warm mug held in her hands. Cold and sick and afraid.
“What is it?”
Josie set her mug down and then turned and lifted the back of her shirt so Zach could see her lower back. She felt his gaze on her ruined skin. His silence rang loudly behind her, and she refused to look back. “Who did that to you?” he asked after a moment, and his voice was strange, tight.
She lowered her shirt and turned around, still feeling exposed, though her skin was covered, as were the scars she’d only willingly shown one other person. “My mother.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he reached up and ran his index finger over his bottom lip as though taking a moment to either think of what to say or temper his reaction. “You said she was a mean drunk. Are those”—he lowered his eyes and nodded to her torso—“part of what you meant?”
Josie bobbed her head. “Usually after my father left. She’d drink, blame me for him not coming back…burn me.” Her voice faded away and heat rose in her face. It wasn’t her fault, she knew that, and yet it still shamed her to her core. “Usually, she didn’t even remember the next day.”
He regarded her for several heartbeats. She detected anger in his expression but no pity, and she was grateful for that. “Do you think there’s a connection between what your mother did to you and what was done to her by whoever murdered her?”
“There has to be. I just don’t understand how. I showed these scars to Marshall Landish in an attempt to…I don’t know, humanize myself in his eyes, maybe, show him that I’d suffered too. It was…complicated.” She frowned. “Or maybe it wasn’t. I was grasping at anything I could.” Zach had to have read her case file. He must have gone over the questions the detectives had asked her about her time spent in captivity, the things Marshall had said to her. Most of it if not all. “I got the idea that Marshall had suffered abuse of some kind at one point or another. I hoped that showing him my scars would help him see me as an ally instead of an enemy.” She looked off to the side, staring into space, his words coming back to her.