Remy smiled wistfully as she looked down at the wine glass in her hand. In that moment, all was nearly perfect. Dinner was perfect, the wine was amazing and the quiet, private setting was all she’d ever hoped it could’ve been. At the same time, all of it barely registered, its significance paling in comparison to the beauty and wonder of the woman peacefully resting against her shoulder. The delicate fragrance of pears and jasmine found its way to Remy’s nose and, as always, flooded her senses to the point of momentarily drowning out all else. It was one of many subtle reminders of what was right in front of her, entirely unnecessary but always welcomed with gratitude. Every moment shared with Allison felt like a precious gift, the dawning of a beautiful day that was never promised. The dark clouds gathering on the horizon did nothing to change that.

Allison shifted in her seat, lifting her head and turning to look up at Remy. Her eyes were cautious as she stared up, and she gently squeezed

Remy’s hand as if bracing herself. “So…I was wondering…”

Remy took a deep breath before turning her eyes toward Allison, resigning herself to the fact that the moment couldn’t be delayed any longer. “No, I don’t want to talk about something else. I’m fine, really.”

Looking somewhat relieved, Allison smiled even as her stare hardened. “I’ll have you know that I was just going to ask you to continue with your story.”

Suppressing a laugh, Remy returned Allison’s stare with one of suspicion. “Is that a fact?”

Allison playfully huffed and turned her head, tossing her hair in mock indignation. “In the sense that you can’t prove otherwise.”

No longer able to hold back her laughter, Remy chuckled as she pulled Allison close and pressed her lips to the cheek turned toward her. “Fine, fine…case dismissed due to lack of evidence.”

The momentary distraction was pleasant but, now that the moment had passed, the weight of the unavoidable began pressing down on her with renewed strength. No longer sure if she was more interested in keeping her promise or simply finally putting the task behind her, Remy hugged Allison a little more tightly and slowly inhaled the delicate fragrance one more time. Whether it came from courage or comfort, it gave her the strength to move forward.

“So…where were we?”

Allison pulled Remy’s wine glass toward her and took a sip, her expression momentarily intense and focused. She looked as if she was choosing her words carefully. “You were going to tell me about when you left Metairie. It sounds like you…didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.”

Much to her surprise, Remy felt a sense of pride as she unearthed the memory of her last day before leaving. “Actually, in the end, it was entirely my choice. It wasn’t necessarily the best one, but I wouldn’t change it.”

It was almost exactly two years earlier when Remy found herself sitting on the edge of her bed, fighting back tears and feeling as if she was instead sitting on the edge of a cliff and staring into an abyss. She’d spent most of her life running from a looming threat that hid in the shadows, always managing to stay a step ahead and just out of its reach. Now, however, as she sat at the edge of the cliff and staring at nothing but darkness ahead of her, she’d finally stopped running. She’d always hoped that when that moment came, it would be because she’d found the courage to turn and face the monster that hunted her from the shadows. Having finally reached that moment, she could only feel shame. She would face the monster, but not because of any intent or desire. She’d simply run out of road.

Remy’s ears were still ringing from her most recent argument with her mother, the better part of an hour spent shouting at each other until it felt as if the walls were shaking. As always, it was entirely pointless. Much of Remy’s frustration and sadness came from the knowledge that, no matter what words were said, the outcome of the argument wouldn’t change any more than the intent behind it. Remy only wanted to be heard and understood, but the demand always fell on deaf ears. Her mother only wanted to be blindly obeyed, and anything that stood between her and what she wanted was noise to be ignored. Neither would abandon their stances, leaving both Remy’s needs and her mother’s demands unmet and making another attempt to decide the matter through conflict inevitable.

Remy was the immovable object to her mother’s unstoppable force, and the strain of refusing to yield was taking a toll on her heart. What hurt most was that, in all likelihood, that was her mother’s intent. Remy made no secret of the fact that she was growing weary of the endless fighting, at it was just as well known that the hardened exterior that she’d built around herself over the years was a callus protecting a soft and fragile heart. Since her parents’ divorce when she was ten, Remy’s life had been a gauntlet of pains that, over time, taught her through hard knocks to armor her heart. At the same, those same lessons slowly chipped away at that armor. Maintaining it was exhausting, and her shield was growing heavy. She’d learned too many times to count the consequences of even a moment’s inattention, but she was weary of conflict and questioning the worth of continuing this way.

The more time went on, the less it seemed a life worth living, even with a promise of a semblance of protection. Remy had made the mistake of admitting this once before, desperately pleading for an end to the incessant clashes that were as reliable as markers of the passing days as the calendar. She’d hoped for mercy, but it seemed that her mother merely sensed an opportunity to move in for the kill. Since that day, there was an unmistakable effort to wear down the last of Remy’s resolve, the demands increasing in frequency and the severity of the consequences of failing to meet them growing in kind. Worse, there was no escape from the fighting, no safe haven in which Remy could take shelter and recover. Her mother took comfort in the many connections she’d forged with anyone she felt was either intellectually inferior or intimidated enough to not question her, but she’d also poisoned every well along the way to keep Remy from being afforded the same reprieve. Any contact they shared was too suspicious or too fearful to risk giving her aid, and there was always an excuse for the wedge that was inevitably driven between her and any she attempted to forge alone. It had become a war of attrition, and it was one that Remy was slowly losing.

In that moment, sitting on her bed, the most recent argument over the most recent demands flooded her mind as they always did, often for hours afterward. She formed list after list of counterarguments she could’ve made, insults she wished that she’d hurled and no end of explanation of her feelings and reasons she never explained. Ultimately, all she’d done was fall into the same trap as always, responding to shouted demands with screaming refusals until her throat was raw. It hurt her to think that she’d wasted time that could’ve gone to reason and negotiation with unfiltered and unfocused anger, but it hurt her more to know that there was no more sense to be found in attempting to negotiate. Another lesson hard learned over the years was that there was no reasoning with the unreasonable, and nothing would end the fighting other than unconditional surrender or exhaustion.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The only silver lining to that dark cloud was that it had been some time since the demands or the tactics had changed. Waking up nearly every morning to pounding on her bedroom door hard enough for the hinges to begin to yield and a torrent of insults was made at least somewhat easier by knowing ahead of time what would be said. The demands were all familiar; go to the church she’d come to hate, move forward in a job she couldn’t stand, have children she didn’t want and, before that, find a husband she wanted even less. There would often be others, typically trifle matters such as complaining that she never did any cleaning around the house and, when it was pointed out that she was the only one that did, complaining about not liking how she did it. These matters were typically just diversions, desperate attempts to draw attention away from the fact that any other arguments made concerning the right to make any demands of Remy’s life at all lacked substance and merit. Ever since threats of eternal damnation as a punishment for disobedience ceased to have any effect, the failure to replace it with anything effective became the one flaw in her armor. The closest Remy came to a glimmer of hope was that small confirmation that she was right in believing that her mother wasn’t without fault and that she wasn’t stupid, crazy or just desperate to be right as was so often suggested.

Sitting on the bed, Remy felt her hands twitching. Suddenly feeling the need to do something with them, she began burning nervous energy by folding the laundry that had been piled in a nearby basket for the better part of a week. She didn’t particularly care about it, but it was better than sitting there in silence and dwelling on her inability to get her mother’s voice out of her head while trying to ignore the clock. She’d come to hate anything that told the time, always feeling as if she was watching the timer on a bomb count down to zero. Years of experience had taught her to be mindful of the time, her pulse racing harder and her breath harder to catch as she drew nearer to the time she could expect her mother to return home from work. Every item on the ever growing list of tasks that was laid out for her needed to be completed before then, the entire house the picture of perfection just to give her mother something to ignore as she complained that it hadn’t been done. She’d always thought that crossing the threshold into adulthood would do something to lessen or otherwise improve that, but it only made the incessant admonishment more humiliating.

As she folded clothes, she came close to wishing that she had her own job to keep her thoughts occupied. She loathed it with a passion, her entire chest feeling as if it was caught in a vise every time she pulled into the parking lot. Her college graduation several weeks earlier was another disappointment as she’d hoped it would bring opportunities for employment beyond working for just above minimum wage, hopefully doing something that at least interested her in some way and finally bringing in enough money for her to start turning her thoughts toward a life beyond that house. As graduation came and went, however, a struggling economy and a lack of local demand made working in retail and selling prebuilt computers the closest she could come to a career in information technology. Rumor had it that the jobs existed, but nowhere that was doing her any good. It was like a cruel joke; the solution to her problems was so far away, they could only be found in the places she needed that solution to reach in the first place. Once again, she was trapped.

Between low pay and the constant insisting every month that one bill or another was somehow more her responsibility than anyone else’s in the house, Remy barely made enough to feed herself before and during college. Had it not been for finding a way to hide the exact amounts she’d received from student loan disbursements and her current job that paid an extra three dollars an hour that her mother had no way of knowing about, she wouldn’t even have the small savings that she’d managed to collect. Even then, that had been a close call.

I want to see those check stubs, and I want to see them right now or you can find somewhere else to live!

You need access to my bank account as much as I need access to yours. You can get what you’re getting and be happy with it or you can keep pushing it and end up with nothing. I’m good either way. Just remember that you’re the only one right now with something to lose.

Remy almost smiled when she thought about that argument, the first that ever took place between the two of them that ended with her mother in silence. She’d wanted to think that her mother was finally beginning to see reason, but the following days and weeks proved that it wasn’t reason that she was seeing nearly as much as fear. As Remy had thought about it more later, she realized that the outcome of the argument wasn’t the only thing that was different. She would normally scream as loudly as she could, desperate to match what she was receiving with the hope that she would eventually be heard over the chaos. In that moment, however, she wasn’t angry or even sad. She was simply done. For the time it took her to utter those words, she was emotionally drained to the point at which she couldn’t even feel the need to be recognized or fear of the consequences of trying. Remy didn’t shout, stomp on the floor, flail her arms or any of the other things she normally did as she unconsciously mimicked her mother’s antics. Her voice was low and even, and her stare was hard and steady. As much as it terrified her to think of all of the ways that encounter could’ve ended as a result, she knew with absolute certainty that she’d meant every word. She didn’t care anymore and, as far as she was concerned, she really didn’t have anything to lose.

Remy’s mother noticed the change long before Remy noticed it herself and, while she attempted to remain in control of the situation as always, she couldn’t hide her fear of whatever it was that she’d seen as she looked into Remy’s eyes that day. The next several days were the quietest that Remy could remember in years, with her mother’s going out of her way to avoid her at all costs. When contact could no longer be avoided, she began pretending that nothing had happened at all, speaking to her as normally as she would speak to Remy’s sister. It took nearly two weeks of Remy’s silence for her mother to regain the confidence to test the waters and begin prodding at her again, and nearly as long for the usual arguing to fully resume. After that day, however, things never fully went back to the way they were. There was always a point at which Remy would tire of the fighting and grow silent, and her mother would sense the change and find an excuse to storm off, claiming victory and the moral high ground before becoming conspicuously quiet for several days and warily watching Remy before resuming her incessant demands.

Sitting on the couch and still holding Allison for comfort, Remy finally stopped speaking as she heard her voice crack. Having spoken more at one time than she had in years, she was growing hoarse and feeling a rawness in her throat that was vaguely reminiscent of her time spent arguing from morning until night. She took a sip of her wine to soothe her throat and noticed a trembling sensation that briefly made her wonder if remembering those last days in Metairie had affected her more than she’d realized. Feeling embarrassment at the thought after having assumed for so long that she’d finally put it all behind her, it took a moment for her to realize that it was Allison’s trembling she was feeling. Embarrassment quickly gave way to remorse as she thought about how many details she could’ve omitted in retelling the story.

“Hey…listen, maybe we should put this on hold. I…I didn’t meant to say as much as I did.”

There was a long and tense pause before Allison pulled away from Remy’s shoulder far enough to look up at her. Tears spilling from her eyes, she shook her head as her quivering lips pressed together and a stern expression of determination firmly set in place. “No…no, you didn't do anything wrong at all. Let’s continue.”

“Are you sure? I mean, we can always—”

“Boop.”

Allison tried to force a smile, but she couldn’t hide the unsteadiness in her hand as she pressed Remy’s nose harder than usual in an obvious attempt to keep it still. Remy wondered what she could possibly be thinking, looking as if she was suffering more for hearing the story than Remy herself was for remembering it. Still, Remy could see the same look of determination in her eyes that made it clear that she wouldn’t be dissuaded. With a sigh, she nodded as she began choosing her words more carefully.

“Fine, fine…a short break, then we’ll continue. I promise.” Thinking quickly, she added, “If it helps at all, this is actually where things start to take a turn for the better…in a roundabout kind of way.”