Page 4 of His Son's Wife
“Mrs Kersey?”
I opened my good eye.
A woman. Kind face, careful eyes, the stillness of someone used to walking into difficult rooms.
“Her name is Sayla.”
I closed my good eye.
It was him.
That low deep voice was still as cold as the harshest winter in the highlands. No warmth in it. No softness. Just the flat certainty of a man who corrected things as a matter of habit rather than kindness.
He was here though.
That was something.
“Sayla, I’m Dr Montgomery. Mr Kersey asked me to document your injuries.”
Both eyes flew open and I instantly winced.
Document.
Not treat. Not assess.
Document.
I heard his footsteps. The door closed behind him.
The doctor patted my hand.
I allowed myself the luxury of tears. Her arm curled around my shoulder and in that moment I wished that I could speak to my mum. Her voice alone would have undone me completely. But the utter shame of being this—this thing—was more bearable to divulge to my abuser’s father than to my own family. The people who had loved me my entire life. The people who had watched me walk down an aisle and smile like I knew what I was doing.
This couldn’t be my life.
This couldn’t be what I became.
A statistic. A woman with a black eye and cracked ribs sitting on someone else’s couch because she had nowhere else to go.
“It’s okay,” the doctor whispered.“You’re safe now.”
Lies.
Everything about the Kerseys was lies.
I let the doctor poke and prod me. She took pictures, scribbled notes, wrote a prescription in that careful unhurried way that suggested she’d done this before. That this wasn’t the first time Asher Kersey had called her to document something he didn’t want on record anywhere else.
Before she left she gave me a sedative.
And I slept.
Longer and deeper than I had in such a long time that it almost didn’t feel real.
This time with someone placing a warm blanket over me.
Someone touching my cheek.
Someone rubbing my forehead.
