Too Far 05 - Simple Perfection

me for my brother’s death—I was a baby when it happened—but I let her yell and hit me. If I fought back she only got angrier. Once she had hit me at breakfast and I didn’t wake up until the middle of the night. I had been on the kitchen floor with a pillow under my head and a blanket over me. She had put two plates of food beside me.
    I didn’t fight back anymore. I was scared to.
    “Get on that bed!” she screamed as I scrambled to do as she commanded. “Don’t come out. I don’t want to look at you,” she said before walking away and slamming the door behind her. I heard the familiar click and I knew she’d locked me in. My door had always locked from the outside. She controlled it.
    “Good night, Momma,” I whispered as I pulled my knees up to my chin and rocked myself back and forth while I pretended that I had a better life. One where I could go outside and ride a bike.

    I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling fan. I was in the guest bedroom at Braden’s house. I hadn’t woken up screaming. I had never dreamed of my mother and not woken up screaming with imaginary blood on my hands. Something had changed. The memory was one I’d forgotten but her words that day made sense now. I sat up and swung my legs over and stood up. I had dreamed and not screamed. I was afraid to hope, but I had never been able to do this. I opened my door and stepped out into the dark hallway. Braden would be asleep and I didn’t want to wake her. But I needed to process this.
    I walked to the kitchen to get a drink of water.
    Braden was standing at the counter with a glass of milk, staring straight ahead in deep thought, when I walked into the room. Her eyes shifted to me. “Della? Are you okay? I didn’t hear you.”
    I stood there as it really sank in. I had dreamed of her. Yet I hadn’t had a night terror. “I dreamed about her. About my life then. And . . . and . . . I just woke up. No blood. I never saw the blood. I just woke up.”
    Braden stared at me as she processed what I had told her. Then she set her milk down on the bar and ran over to me. Her arms wrapped around me. “You’re getting better. Already, you’re getting better,” she said in a teary voice.
    I wanted to cry, too. I wanted to cry because I realized I might just have a chance at happiness. What if I was strong after all? What if, underneath all that fear, I had buried someone deep inside who was brave and could take on life without someone to lean on?
    “I think I’m going to be okay,” I said out loud, because I needed to hear myself say it.
    Braden squeezed me tighter. “I know you’re going to be okay. I know it.”
    We stood there holding each other in the kitchen for several moments before I pulled back. “I’m not going to go crazy. I won’t snap one day and become her.”
    Braden wiped at the tears streaming down her face. “I know. I’ve always known that.”
    “But I didn’t. I had seen her. I knew what she could be. I didn’t want to be that too.”
    “She was the woman who raised you but she wasn’t your mother.”
    I nodded. I knew that now. I was going to be okay. “I want to meet my . . . I want to meet my birth father. I need to see him. I need to see his family, too.”
    Braden nodded. “Good. I think you should.”
    I stepped back and turned to go back to the bedroom.
    “Della,” Braden said.
    I glanced back at her. “Yes?”
    “Call him. He needs to hear from you.”
    She wasn’t talking about my birth father. She was talking about Woods. I would have given anything to hear his voice. But I couldn’t. He had moved on. He hadn’t looked for me or tried to contact me. I had let him go and he’d walked away. I couldn’t bother him now. “I can’t.”
    “He misses you,” she said.
    “You don’t know that. You assume it because you think what we had was a forever thing. But Woods has plans and I’m not in them. I gave him what he wanted. I’m not going to bother him again.”
    Braden let out a frustrated growl. “Della, a call from you wouldn’t be a bother to him.”
    She loved me and didn’t understand what I was trying to tell her. I knew better. “No, Braden. I’m letting him live. I’ll find my way soon. First, I have to figure out my past.”
    She didn’t say more as I walked back to the bedroom. I closed the door and waited a minute to make sure she wasn’t following me before I let the tears fall. I didn’t want her to see me cry. She would call him. She would try to