Despite the Pain

Chapter 8

As soon as I got to the bakery after school my mother sent me back out with a shopping list and money. I didn't even have a chance to take my coat off before she ushered me out the door, quietly saying she needed a bit more time with Albion. She couldn't, of course, just tell me when to be back and send me on my way. Gisselle was home, a visit to her would have been a hell of a lot better than traipsing all over town to cross out that damn list.

They were all things we needed and I felt guilty for not noticing we'd been running low. Though the supplies for her practice were certainly not something I'd have ever noticed. I worked my way from shop to shop, saving where the bulk of what I needed would come from --the general store -- for last. As I headed down one of the aisles I looked over my list, trying to figure out where everything was, and work out how to get in and out as quickly as possible. As I moved down the aisle I finally glanced up and realized I was nearly face to face with Albion's mother. I sucked in a breath, ducking through a break in the aisles to avoid her.

"Ava!" A woman's voice called from the front of the store.

"Hello, Daisy," Mrs. Bryson replied. She was directly on the other side of the shelves; I'd have been facing her if they weren't in the way. I stood rooted to the spot, listening as the other woman approached. "Good to see you."

"Oh, it's so good to see you out. I know things have been hard," she said, her tone entirely too melodramatic for my liking. I pretended to be torn between two different soaps on the shelf in front of me -- something not even on the list -- just to stick around and hear a little more of this bullshit. Daisy lowered her voice. "He has that woman over there right now, you know."

"To treat our son," Mrs. Bryson replied, and I could tell just by the tone of her voice how seriously she took that. It made my skin crawl. "Honestly. I thought Ethan had a little more class than that."

"We all did, honey." The sympathy in that statement had my hair on end. Ava Bryson deserved a lot of things, but sympathy was not one of them.

"There's nothing even wrong with him, you know," Mrs. Bryson huffed. "He was perfectly fine when I left. That boy is lazy, and he always has been. This is nothing more than an excuse to skip out on work and school and desperately try to milk sympathy out of anyone he can. His father is no better."

"I'm sure Ethan is getting plenty of sympathy right now."

That was enough. I slammed the bars of soap in my hands back down onto the shelves and moved back to the gap in the aisles in two strides, swinging around into the aisle where the two women stood. Mrs. Bryson's eyes narrowed as soon as she saw me. Daisy -- I immediately recognized her as Amanda Johnson's mother, they looked exactly the same-turned toward me, looking me over with one eyebrow raised. Mrs. Bryson drew in a breath to speak.

"No." I pointed in her face, cutting her off before turning to Mrs. Johnson. "You want to know what's really going on over there? She almost killed him. Her own son. He has a severe brain injury that she inflicted and is still struggling to get the hang of stairs. My mother is over there because he needs more treatment than Dr. Wilson has the time to give. Make another insinuation about her and see how that goes for you." I turned toward Mrs. Bryson, leaving Mrs. Johnson gaping like a fish on a riverbank. "And you. Stop. Lying. I don't know who you think you're kidding. There isn't a person in this town who doesn't know what you did to your sons and idiots like this-" I hooked my thumb over my shoulder toward Mrs. Johnson- "may buy into whatever bullshit you're feeding them, but you're not doing yourself any favors with the rest of us."

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Mrs. Bryson snapped, her voice creeping up entirely too high, and her skin flushing an inhumanly dark shade.

"This isn't a conversation," I said, glancing behind her and catching sight of the oil my mother listed. I stepped between them, reaching past her and snatching a bottle from the shelf before turning away and leaving the two of them standing there in shock. My triumph barely lasted until I finished the shopping and headed back to the bakery. The more I thought about what she had to say, the angrier I was about it. Nothing wrong with him my ass. And lazy? Albion or Ethan? I stomped straight through the front door, knowing full well the fact that they all went around to the back porch was a holdover from that witch's reign over this house.