Losing Him (Mitchell Family #8)(5)

I walked over and picked up the covers, spreading them evenly over his body. He stirred and opened his eyes, seeing me standing there. “What time is it?”

“It’s five. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to cover you back up.”

He closed his eyes again. “Thanks, babe.”

I knew he was half asleep, but it still gave me butterflies. It was good to smile about something in the midst of being in so much emotional distress. My day was going to be long and awful. It wasn’t just about burying my mother. It wasn’t just about having to explain to my son that heaven isn’t a place that we can visit, or seeing my mother’s friends from church and work and having to hear their stories about her. It was all of that bunched together. I suppose that people get through it every day. My circumstance isn’t special, but she was all I had as far as support.



Now, when something went wrong, or I just wanted to hear her voice, she wouldn’t be there. For the first time since the third grade, I wished that I had a father.

All I could remember was that day he left for work and never came back. I remember crying because my mother was crying. I remember the police coming to our house and my mother crying some more.

After a while, my brother and I just stopped asking about him.



When I turned twenty-four and realized that I’d almost cost Tyler Mitchell and his wife their children, I had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized for anxiety attacks. Every single time I went out in public, I would freak out and think I couldn’t breathe and that I was dying.

Upon further examination of my mental stability, my doctor claimed that I was bi-polar and put me on medication to control my compulsive behavior. He didn’t want to hear that I’d loved the same man since I was a young girl. He didn’t want to hear that he’d promised me things and never followed through with them. He just wanted to fill me with drugs and show me the door. It was kind of a pattern for me.

Men just wanted to use me and then throw me away. I couldn’t get away from it.

Once again I felt alone, with nothing to look forward to.

My mother saw what was happening to me. One night, after a long shift from work, she sat me down and told me a story about a miserable man that beat his wife and tried to touch his eight year-old daughter. As sickening as it was for me to hear, I knew she was telling me the truth.

My father was the first of many.
He didn’t leave us like I’d believed. My mother filed a report and had him picked up at work. She testified, along with one of his coworkers that they’d seen him touching me inappropriately. He died in jail at the age of forty-six. By that time, my mother had given us a good life and long but forgotten about the torture that she’d endured herself.

I had to see a therapist more often after I found out. Even though I couldn’t remember it, I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being molested by my father. My mother assured me that it never went far. She claimed that my brother told on him right away and she confronted him. When he attempted it at work and got caught, that was the end of the road for him. It still made me feel dirty.

What kind of father touches his own children? What kind of sick bastard would do something like that? I didn’t have to hate him. For the life of me, I can’t even remember what he looked like and that doesn’t bother me. The less I can remember about that the better.

I thought about finding his extended family, but what good would that have done? They’d probably say we were liars and make me feel even worse about myself, not that I needed more reasons.

Something else pivotal happened in my life when all of that madness was going on. I remember being in the third grade and being sad. My dad was gone and my mother was always crying. I was having bad dreams and having accidents in my pants.

Third grade is too old for that to be happening. I remember that we went on a field trip to the circus. All the kids had their moms there, but mine had to work. I got upset and went into the corner and peed my pants.

When I came back to sit down, the children noticed and began to make fun of me. One kid, out of the whole class, came walking over and grabbed my hand. That one kid whispered in my ear that it was going to be okay.

That kid’s name was Tyler Mitchell and it was that day that I fell completely in love with him.

Sadly, he would never return the same feelings and after years of desperate attempts to win him over, I’d managed to f*ck up my life and reputation, so bad that nobody would ever forgive me.

I was a bitch, tearing through relationships like they meant nothing, because none of them could give me the one thing I really wanted. I suppose that’s why I went off the deep end and got involved with Rick. I stopped caring about my life. I just wanted to give up. I didn’t care about myself enough to realize that I was well on my way to putting myself six feet into the ground.

Jessie saved me from myself, even when I wasn’t expecting it. I think that’s what was so beautiful about my love for him. It was a surprise. He didn’t know about the things that I’d done, so for the first time, I wasn’t being judged. He loved me for the person I was trying so hard to be.

Of course, it was short lived. Once he got a glimpse of my past, he was out the door, getting as far away from me as he could. I couldn’t blame him or fight him over it. Nothing was ever going to change. If I wanted Jessie at all, I had to take the little bit that he was offering. I just wasn’t meant to walk down an aisle in a white dress and say beautiful vows to a man that I loved more than life itself. I was never the type of person to get a happily ever after. That fantasy was shattered the moment I tried to sabotage someone else’s life, for my own gain.