Are you there God? It’s me, Mary
Despite her family’s wealth and notoriety (in certain circles if not with the general public), Mary was sent to public school. She’d been at the same school since year one, but still didn’t fit in. Her smile too sharp, her words too cutting, her games to violent. Soft things were not what Mary was meant for. Mary wasn’t a girl to befriend, she was a freak with a knife collection.
By the time she was in high school, Mary had begun to get angry. She came home stomping her feet and raising her voice and she slammed doors whenever she got the chance. She liked the noise. She’d gotten smacked by her parents more than once for it, but she wore the bruises like a fashion statement. Sometimes she’d even dig her fingers into them to make them stay purple for longer. Life just didn’t feel like it was what she was meant for. She lay in bed and flipped one her knives between practiced fingers and played at being dead.
At a gathering (her parents refused to call them parties) where they were hosting some American crime families, all eager to make links with someone powerful and away from the moriyamas, whoever the hell they were. Mary snuck away and sat in the garden instead of listening to their double speak. She practiced the new knife trick her elder brother Stuart had taught her. She hissed through her teeth as she slipped and cut her hand. She wiped the blood onto her skirt and tried again. This time she got it right, if awkwardly.
“Impressive,” a red headed man said with a smile that was all teeth. He had one of those smooth southern drawls that Mary had only ever heard on tv. “I bet I can do better” He’d snatched her knife from her before she could blink. He preformed an impressive trick, effortless and fluid. His blue eyes gleamed and Mary grinned. He liked knives too.
That was how she met Nathan Wesninski.
He was 24 years old.
She was 13.
He stayed in the country for months afterwards. Mary saw him every chance she got, ditching school almost every day and getting the bus to his hotel. When the time came for him to go back to Baltimore, he asked her to come with him. Told her he’d miss her terribly. She begged and pleaded with her parents to let her go with Nathan. They refused. Stuart wanted to kill him. Mary loved him. Her parents scoffed. She was 13. What did she know of love?
For anyone else, that would have been the end of it. But Mary wasn’t just anyone. She was a girl that had grown up in one of the most powerful crime families in Europe. She stole money and paid for forged documents and boarded a plane to Baltimore a week later.
Nathan’s house was large and fancy. One of those houses that were rightly called manors. He had once told her that it had previously been his childhood home. One of the first things she’d asked upon arrival was the whereabouts of his parents. He grinned and knocked the heal of one of his leather shoes against the polished wooden floor. “Six feet under, honey.” The smile didn’t scare her. Not yet, at least. Mary’s grandad had killed his entire family to keep the syndicate going, so the statement didn’t faze her. Instead, she only wondered if he had meant his words generally or if his parents really were buried under the house like she suspected.
Mary was on the tail end of 14 when she had Nathaniel. He had red hair and blue eyes like his dad, but he had her nose and mouth. She called him Abram. Mary’s parents had been right, she had known nothing of love. But now she did. Abram was perfect.
It was few and far between the she wasn’t covered in bruises. These weren’t the sort that you wore with pride, these were the kind that hurt when you moved, lasted for weeks and felt like they were stained onto your bones for longer still. Nathan didn’t stop there. His blade had met her skin whenever his mood had shifted too fast for her to track. Mary spent nights staring down at Abram’s perfect little face, his red hair beginning to curl like hers. The next time Nathan came at her with a knife, Mary bared her teeth and cut him back.
Mary was 16 and their bedsheets smelt like Lola. Mary thundered like she was 13 and fearless again. Let Nathan bruise and bleed for once.
They got married when Mary turned 18. Abram was 4. Nathan dismembered the vicar afterwards. He lifted Nathaniel up and span him around. Nathaniel laughed. Nathan’s hands stained his little suit red. Mary felt sick. She learnt then what she should have known all along. Nathan didn’t kill to further the mob, or at least not just because of that, he killed because he enjoyed it. Innocent, no nothing people, dead and tortured. For all that Mary had grown up around death and violence, it had not been like this. Never like this.
She called Stuart. Sobs wrenching themselves from her chest. He said he’d kill him, begged her to come home. She couldn’t. She couldn’t. He’d kill them.
It began to feel like she was walking with bare feet in a room of smashed glass. Scared in her own home. She jumped at shadows and flinched at sudden noises. She had never felt a fear like this before. She didn’t care for it.
Abram, her precious little boy, became quiet and timid. He’d learnt that his daddy was a monster. He had scars and bruises on his too young body and often had blood under his nails. Mary loved him. She couldn’t protect him.
She kept trying.
She took him to the little league exy games to get him out of the house. Watching him play, hearing him laugh, it was the happiest Mary can ever remember being. She smiled when ever he looked over at her. ‘Look mum, look what I did.’
Of course Nathan found a way to ruin that too.
Mary took the money and her son and she ran.
The first time she hit him, it was because he wouldn’t stop talking. She needed quiet to plan their next move. She was immediately so so sorry. He’d had his back cut open by Lola and just sat there, but one slap from Mary and he’d cried. She held him close to her chest, buried her face into his now brown hair (he looked more like her now that him) and rocked him until he stopped. Her precious boy. Her poor precious boy.
Unfortunately, it got easier to hurt him after that. But he just wouldn’t listen! She needed him to listen. To be quiet, unseen, to stop playing exy. She needed him to be safe.
She kept them in France for too long. She’d met a woman called Suzette. She was sweet and funny and invited them around for tea. Mary was lonely. She’d never had a friend before. Nathan caught up with them, Suzette was dead and Abram was bleeding. Her son was hurt, and that was on her. Anything inside her that had still been soft, Mary bricked up and filled in with cement.
Mary stitched Abram up, crying at the sound of his pain. She was glad his back was to her so that he wouldn’t see her weak. Abram looked at her and saw the strongest person in the world, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t.
She considered going back to England. Instead she took them to Germany. How could she ever face her family now? How could she pull them into this mess with the Moriyamas, who had no qualms against killing and manipulating family members to make a point.
It become a habit to always sleep back to back with Abram, or wrapped around him as tight as she could get. She was constantly reassuring herself that he was still there. He was still alive.
She catches him kissing a girl in Canada. She beats him black, blue and bloody. That girl would ruin him. She and everyone else would take his soft heart and crush it. He would become reckless and dumb and dead. He can’t make her mistakes. He can’t.
Her poor, precious boy. That heart of his will get him killed.
They’re in Seattle and she’s in so much pain that she’s in no pain at all. She drives until she can’t anymore. Abram is crying. “Promise me” he needs to be safe. “Promise me. Keep running, never look back, never be anyone for too long.” He’s crying harder.
She’s 13 and playing with knives in the garden. She’s 31 and choking on her own blood. Life was never what Mary was meant for.
She kept her eyes on his face.
Dear god, just let him be better than her. Just let him be better.
