Headlights on the Ceiling
"I love her, not you".
A door slam. Silence.
It had been a week since her father had shown up in the middle of the night. She was sleeping upstairs when he came, but the commotion below woke her, and so she woke her sisters.
They huddled together around a pipe that ran down into the parlor. They often used this pipe to play telephone. Someone would be upstairs, someone downstairs. Sounds traveled very well through that bit of metal. How could he know? Coming as he did, after the children were in bed, he probably thought, "No one will hear."
He hadn't come alone. A woman was with him. That woman. The children listened to every word.
He spoke, mostly. Not a surprise. He always spoke, always demanded attention, obedience.
“I want a divorce. I love her, not you”.
Those words returned over and over again to Felicia since that night.
What did her mother say? What could she say?
Felicia's father knew, everyone knew, except that woman, what the answer would be. No divorce because his wife's religion would not allow it. This was his safety net.
Had her mother tried to leave, he would have stopped her. More than once he'd warned, "If you try to go, I'll find you. I'll find anyone who helps you."
That night, as Felicia pressed her ear to the pipe, she knew, they all knew the scene was a ruse. It was a gambit designed to hold his mistress close. Why not? What did he have to lose? His wife wasn't going anywhere. His children weren't going anywhere.
“Will you give me a divorce?”
There it was. He was going to make her answer.
How many times had Felicia seen this humbling of her mother, in public and in private.
The answer was so quiet. It was as though her mother choked on the word, spoken there, in front of the mistress.
“No.”
The soft ”No” was a spur to action. Felicia sprang from her place by the pipe. Her sisters followed close behind, as though the act had been rehearsed. It hadn't been, but collective defense of their mother was automatic. They were always a united front against him.
The children rushed downstairs and through the open door to the three adults. Her father's face darkened.
The sisters ran to their mother and held onto her.
He clenched his fists. She recognized that furrowed forehead, those taut knuckles. Always these triggered fear. Not tonight. The children were following a most basic instinct. They were defending their mother, their home.
The mistress seemed to shrivel where she stood. Her face was crimson. She put out her hand and held onto their father's arm.
“Evan. Let's go.”
He hesitated.
“Now, Evan!”
He scowled as he walked away. And then he turned to his wife and children.
“This isn't over,” he promised, with a familiar menace.
He was right about that. The headlights of their car shone on the ceiling as they pulled out of the driveway.
Those headlights brought it all back. Every night, throughout the night, headlights would wake her and she would hear, again,
“I love her, not you.”
The prompt was irresistible and the challenge of coming up with a 'hook', an effective first line, was also intriguing. I hope I met that challenge. This was fun. I'm looking forward to reading other stories that respond to this challenge.
The image at the top of the page is an original drawing that could not have been completed without help from my colleagues in the LMAC community. Two items in that drawing were borrowed from #LIL, the LMAC Image Library. The moon I owe to @lingkar-photo and the cloudy overlay to @justclickindiva.
