“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“We’re going to get your life back.”
“How?”
“Tomorrow we’re going to that house together, and we’re going to tell them the truth—that they have nothing left, that everything is mine now, and that they have to leave.”
“They’re going to be furious.”
“Let them be. They can’t hurt you anymore. You don’t have to fear them anymore.”
“And after?”
“After, you decide if you want to keep the house. The house is yours. If you want to sell it and start over somewhere else, we’ll do that. If you want to go back to school for design, you can pay for it with the sale of the company. Whatever you want, honey. For the first time in eight years, you decide.”
I watched as something transformed on her face, as if after years of being asleep, she was finally waking up.
“I want them to suffer,” she said in a low voice. “I want them to feel what I felt.”
“They will feel it. Life takes care of that. But we are not going to get our hands dirty with revenge. We are going to enact justice. And justice is simply telling the truth and letting the consequences fall where they may.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow at ten in the morning. We go together.”
“What if Robert asks me not to do it? What if he tells me he loves me?”
“Do you believe him?”
She thought about it for a long time.
“No,” she finally said. “Not anymore.”
“Then it doesn’t matter what he says.”
That night, Brenda stayed at my hotel. I didn’t want her to go back to that house. Not yet. We slept in the same bed like when she was a little girl and was afraid of the dark.
But this time, I was the one who was afraid. Afraid that she would change her mind. Afraid that love, or what was left of it, would make her go back. Afraid of losing her again.
But when I woke up the next morning, she was already up. She was standing in front of the mirror, looking at herself.
“Do you know what the saddest thing is?” she said without turning around. “That I stopped recognizing myself. I haven’t known who I am for years.”
“Then it’s time for you to find out.”
She turned toward me.
“I’m ready, Mommy. Let’s end this.”
And in that moment, I saw a flash of the Brenda she had been. The girl who dreamed of having a big house so her mother would never have to work again. The young woman who studied design and had light in her eyes. The woman she could have been if she hadn’t met Robert.
She was still there, buried—but there. And I was going to help her get out.
We arrived at the house at exactly ten in the morning. Brenda was wearing a dress we had bought the night before at a store downtown. It was navy blue, simple but elegant. She had worn her hair down for the first time in years. She looked different. She looked like herself.
I was wearing my best suit, the one I used for important meetings in New York, and I carried the folder with all the documents under my arm.
Brenda pulled out her keys, but before opening, she looked at me.
“Are you sure about this, Mommy?”
“Completely. And you?”
