“You shouldn’t see yourself yet.”
I laughed nervously.
“The doctor told me I’d be swollen. I already know.”
“It’s not about the swelling.”
His voice trembled.
I stepped closer.
“Then what is it? What aren’t you telling me?”
Michael closed his eyes.
“During the surgery, the doctor discovered something…”
He was about to continue when someone suddenly pounded on the front door.
Three times.
Slow, heavy knocks.
Michael opened his eyes.
From the expression on his face, I knew he already knew who was standing outside.
“Don’t open it,” he whispered.
But I was already walking toward the door.
The continuation is in the comments👇‼️
The moment I opened the door, I froze.
My mother was standing outside.
Linda was holding an old, yellowed envelope. Her eyes were red, and her lips were trembling so badly that she could barely speak.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
She looked over my shoulder at Michael.
“He called me,” she said. “He said we couldn’t stay silent anymore.”
“Silent about what?”
My mother stepped inside, but she didn’t hug me. She sat down on the couch and placed the envelope on the table.
Michael closed the door.
“Emily,” he said, “please listen to everything before you say anything.”
“No. Both of you are going to tell me what’s happening right now.”
My mother pulled an old hospital record from the envelope. My name and a date were printed at the top.
I had been thirteen years old.
“This is from the day you supposedly fell down the stairs at school,” my mother whispered.
I stared at her in confusion.
I barely remembered the incident. I had hit my head, my nose had been bleeding, and my mother had always told me that I had slipped.
“What do you mean, ‘supposedly’?”
My mother clasped her hands together.
“You didn’t fall.”
Silence filled the room.
“Your nose wasn’t naturally shaped that way,” she continued. “It had been broken. The doctors wanted to operate, but I refused.”
“Why?”
My mother didn’t answer.
I picked up the medical document. Near the bottom, it read:
“Facial trauma was most likely caused by a forceful impact.”
“Who hit me?”
Michael suddenly sat down as though his legs could no longer support him.
My mother pulled an old school photograph from the envelope.
A group of teenagers stood in the picture. In the center was a girl named Jessica. I remembered her. She had been the first person to call me a witch.
