Niamh

Sometimes it isn’t possible not to hurt people. But life is full of impossible choices—between right and wrong, what to tell and what must forever remain a secret.

Hollie knew that. There was a weight resting on her. It came from knowing what other people had done. Even when she wanted to put things right, she couldn’t. Too much had happened. The damage ran too deep. It was too late for anything to change.

My dilemma is my parents. The light shining in my mother’s eyes when she told me she’d found a cottage for us to move to. The happy life she imagines for the two of us, in which everything will change. Light that’s shattered by my father’s cruelty, his darkness. My father will find a way to stop her. He won’t let us leave. He’ll do anything, including hurt her, if that’s what it takes to make us stay.

There is no escape from my father—not for me. I have an impossible choice. Do I go with my mother, knowing my father will destroy her, or do I let him destroy me if I stay?

All I can do is somehow stop her. I have no choice, because otherwise he will destroy her, just as he killed Dylan, with the blunt words, rejection, hatred, cruelty, that leave no trace. Pushing him too far. Blaming the pills my mother left out the morning Dylan took an overdose. But she wasn’t the one who left them out. It was my father. He doesn’t care who he hurts to get what he wants. My father is capable of anything.