Chapter 10 - Mason Had Kept One More Thing From Me
Mason's assault case moved quickly enough that I didn't need to chase it.
Witnesses had seen the first punch.
Video existed.
He accepted an interim suspension from campus activities while the university decided the rest.
He did not disappear.
Consequences are usually less cinematic than anger wants.
A week after the library meeting, he sent one final permitted message through the mediator.
Emma had included one line about you in the email. I omitted it. You should know.
I wanted to ignore him.
I didn't.
We met with the mediator again.
Mason looked worse.
Not physically.
Quieter.
“What line?”
He slid his phone across the table.
Not the whole email.
A screenshot of the old exchange.
Emma:
Is Rachel still looking for me?
Mason:
No. Your mom mostly.
Emma:
Good. Rachel deserves a life that isn't chasing me.
Then later:
If she ever asks you directly, tell her I was angry when I left, not gone.
I read it twice.
“You never told me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I wanted her to come back to me first.”
At least he no longer made me excavate every motive.
“Did you think she would?”
“Yes.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
“Did you contact her again?”
“Several times.”
“Response?”
“None.”
I pushed the phone back.
“Why punch me?”
The mediator shifted.
Mason looked at me.
“I saw your mother's post about you transferring.”
“And?”
“I thought the whole thing was starting again.”
“Meaning?”
“Carters coming to campus. Asking people. Posters. Accusations.”
“So you hit me.”
“Yes.”
“Why say she begged harder?”
Mason closed his eyes.
“Because I knew the cruelest thing I could say in one sentence.”
That answer stopped me.
No deeper strategy.
He wanted to hurt me.
He chose the sharpest available fact.
“Did you want me to hit you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“If we both fought, I could tell myself you were exactly like the rest of this.”
“Meaning?”
“Everything becomes force if people don't give you the answer you want.”
I stared.
“And?”
He looked down.
“I proved it about myself first.”
No therapy speech required.
He knew.
I said:
“You don't get to use my family to make your punch interesting.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
I stood.
He stopped me.
“Rachel.”
I turned.
“Emma loved you.”
I almost laughed.
“Everybody keeps telling me that like it solves something.”
“It doesn't.”
He nodded.
“She also complained about you constantly.”
That sounded more useful.
“What did she say?”
“That you called her for things you could've handled.”
I looked away.
“She said you would ask what shirt to wear to an interview because deciding alone made you nervous.”
I almost smiled.
True.
“She said half the time she liked that you needed her.”
My throat tightened.
“And the other half?”
“She wanted to throw her phone in a lake.”
Also true.
Mason continued:
“She wasn't secretly miserable every second.”
Good.
I needed that too.
The past had started flattening Emma into either victim or liberated runaway.
She had been a person.
Sometimes helpful because she loved us.
Sometimes resentful because we asked too much.
Sometimes staying because being needed felt good.
Sometimes leaving because it didn't.
I nodded.
“That’s enough.”
Mason watched me go.
At the door he said:
“I hope she contacts you.”
I stopped.
He added:
“And I hope she doesn't if she doesn't want to.”
That was probably the first unselfish thing I had heard him say about Emma.
It did not make us friends.
May you like
It did not undo the punch.
It was simply better than the sentence he had chosen when I stepped off the bus.
