Reign of the Rejected Rosary (Ryden/Peterick)

Chapter Eleven

Patrick sat with me while I called my mom from the holding room. I refused to leave the cell without him, and he seemed happy with the slight freedom allowed to him.

It goes without saying that my mother was angry. I could hear the tears in her voice, making her screams whimper and shake. I had to hold the phone tight to my ear to make out the words leaving her mouth. It killed my eardrum, and I knew that Patrick could hear her, based on the concerned look on his face. The officer across the room looked up every time my mother wailed. And I wondered just how awful it sounded from the other side.

My mother was generally a soft-spoken person, who left all the discipline to my father. She was never so angry at me before, and never would be again.

My father was so upset he couldn't even get on the phone to yell at me. My mom was bad enough at that moment. She barley let me have a word. She said she heard everything she needed on the news a few hours beforehand. She claimed disgust over "what I did to that poor girl." She was "disappointed in my life." I was "a waste of space in her house" and "had no right to ever come back." She said that her and my father decided not to bail me out. They said I deserved to live the rest of my life in the penitentiary.

Patrick had only just gotten me to calm down before I got on the phone, and I had already broken again. His blue eyes widened in alarm as the tears rolled down my cheeks.

"Brendon," he whispered. "Brendon?"

My mom yelled ineligible curses into my ear, forced to the speaker by the grip of my right hand. But I couldn't hear her words over her cries. Or maybe they were my own.

"Brendon just hang up," Patrick pleaded. "It's not worth it. She won't believe you."

I pulled the phone away from my ear. My lips trembled as I whispered, "Goodbye Mom."