Chapter 16: The Quiet Before She Burned
687 Words
The wind whispered through the cracks in the windowpane, rustling the sheer curtain like a ghost brushing against the glass. Karen sat still on the edge of the guest bed, one leg tucked beneath her, her eyes staring blankly at the wall.
Outside the door, the house was alive. Diana's voice floated softly down the hall, humming a lullaby for Liam. A child's giggle answered her, tiny and carefree. The sound cut straight through Karen.
A lump formed in her throat, thick and unexpected.
She pressed her fingers into the edge of the mattress, grounding herself in the present. But her mind had already drifted—back to a place she rarely allowed herself to go.
She was thirteen the first time the world taught her to be silent.
Her mother had always been unpredictable. One minute laughing too loudly, the next throwing dishes across the kitchen in a fit of rage. Their small two-bedroom apartment smelled like cigarettes and despair. Most nights, Karen fell asleep to the clink of bottles and the murmur of late-night TV.
Eric was just another blur in the lineup of her mother’s bad decisions. He showed up one day with a six-pack and never left. He brought groceries sometimes, helped pay rent—at first. That made him golden in her mother's eyes.
But Karen saw through him immediately. The way his eyes followed her when she wore shorts. The way he “accidentally” brushed too close. The way he smiled like he knew a secret she hadn’t agreed to share.
One night, when the power went out and her mother was passed out cold on the couch, Karen lit a candle in the kitchen and turned to find Eric standing behind her.
She didn’t scream.
She didn’t fight.
She shut down, like a switch flicked off.
And afterward, when he left her in the dark, bruised and shaking, she wiped the blood from her thigh and never cried. Not once.
Because tears made you weak.
And Karen was done being weak.
She spent her teenage years learning the game. Watching men. Reading them. Manipulating them when she had to. Seducing them when she needed something. She used her trauma as armor, her body as a weapon, and her silence as a shield.
She never trusted love. Love had failed her.
But power? Power had never let her down
Back in the present, she reached under the bed and pulled out a shoebox. Inside was a torn photograph—faded and bent. Her mother’s arm wrapped loosely around her younger self. Karen was smiling in the picture, wide-eyed and naive. She hated that version of herself. That girl who believed birthdays meant something. That girl who thought monsters only lived in fairy tales.
She folded the picture back into the box and shoved it deep beneath the bed again.
She lay down, staring up at the ceiling, heart thudding in a slow, rhythmic beat.
She didn’t come to this house to ruin a marriage.
She came because Diana’s life was everything she never had. Warmth. Laughter. A husband. A child. A home that didn’t stink of old gin and broken promises.
Mike was just part of it.
A forbidden piece of it.
And now she had tasted him.
Owned a part of him.
But still... it wasn’t enough.
She wanted Diana’s entire life.
The love. The security. The belonging.
She wanted someone to wrap their arms around her and say, You’re safe now. You matter.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would feel like if Mike ever said that to her. But in her mind, the words came out hollow. Because deep down, Karen didn’t believe anyone would ever mean it.
And even deeper still... she didn’t believe she deserved it.
In the hallway, she heard Liam’s voice—light and sweet.
"Mommy, can you read the dinosaur book again?"
Karen bit her lip.
Her eyes burned, but no tears came.
She’d trained herself not to cry.
Because girls who cried were the ones who stayed broken.
And Karen? Karen had turned her pain into fire.
- Writer
