I’d hidden the pills in a sewn-in pocket of a purse I never used.
Dennis found them anyway.
I’d been off them for nearly a month. I was finally starting to feel like myself again.
A week or two earlier, and he would have killed me for sure. But not that Tuesday morning. I was thinking more clearly than I had in years. I felt like me, not some zombie toy of his.
And I knew I had to save you.
Save my little girl at all costs.
Your father had never hurt you before, Justine. I want you to know that. In spite of how wicked and evil he was, he never caused you any type of physical injury. Even when he threatened to, it was only to keep me compliant.
Dennis shoved me against the wall. He threatened to force-feed me all the pills at once, spelled out how long and painful my death would be if he did. He tried to shove them down my throat, so I bit his hand.
I knew it was dangerous, Justine. I really did, but he’d never hurt you before. I thought he was just bluffing when he pulled out that knife.
He wanted me to overdose. He’d already called two of my doctors and told them I’d threatened self-harm. A week earlier, he dictated a suicide letter and made me transcribe it. That wasn’t the first time. And still, I wasn’t nearly as scared as I should have been.
Then he began to tell me all the other steps he’d taken to make sure my death looked deliberate. The phone calls he made from our home line to the suicide prevention number. The type-written diary pages he’d forged to make it look as though I’d been planning my own death for months.
There was a time when I would have welcomed death. But then on that fateful Tuesday morning, you woke up and came plodding down the stairs. You were wearing blue fuzzy pajamas, the kind that cover your feet and zip up the front.
You were so beautiful, Justine, and I knew that I had to live. What kind of life would you have if I let your father kill me? How long would it take before his lust to inflict pain destroyed you as well?
I couldn’t let him do that.
He had the knife in his hand. Said he’d kill you if I didn’t take the pills. Told me that he’d filled out paperwork in my name, taken out life insurance on our little baby.
“Take those pills, Alice,” he said to me, “or I’ll kill our little girl and tell the police it was you.”
I knew he had the resources to make that happen. I hadn’t heard about the life insurance policies until then, but I remember him forcing me to sign some papers a few weeks earlier, when I was still detoxing from the drugs and couldn’t think straight.
He had the knife up to your neck. You looked at him and smiled. You thought he was trying to tickle you.
He underestimated how much stronger I was now that the drugs were out of my system. Now that not only my own life but my daughter’s was on the line.
You should never underestimate a mother’s fury. Her innate instinct to protect.
I did what I thought I had to do, Justine. I’m so sorry you got hurt in the process.
Your father is dead. I killed him that morning. I’m not sorry I did it.
It was the only way to keep us safe.
It was the only way to keep you alive.