Things seemed to be going well for Steven until he discovered that his mother was beating and bullying Jenny. She hadn’t said anything to him at first and so, for a long time, he didn’t know that it had been going on. He only figured it out by chance when, one night, while he was bathing her, he happened to see a bruise just under her left breast. “What is this?” he asked her gently.
"I hit myself," she replied. “You know me. I’m clumsy. It’s nothing, really.”
Steven frowned. He looked her in the eyes and said, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks…”
Jenny frowned as she looked down on her baby bump to where a fist-sized bruised stood out like a sore thumb. Tears welled in her eyes and when Steven lifted her chin so that he could face her eye to eye, she didn’t fight him. “You did n
