You took my heart, could I please have it back?

[58] You took my heart, could I please have it back?

Chapter 58

The hospital was boring. I wasn’t even that badly damaged – I had been worse off when Dad had attacked me, for god’s sake – but they still kept me in for days. I was visited every day by pretty much everyone, and on the last day, Lily finally gave me some news.

“The trial will be held when you get out of hospital, then we can file charges against him and he can go to prison!” she beamed and I grinned, giving her a massive hug. Nothing really hurt anymore, there was just a dull ache in my ribs where he had kicked me repetitively.

“I would ask you on another shopping trip, but I think they’re cursed,” she grinned. “The last time I went, before I went with you, was with my friends at my old school and my friend got hit by a car. She only broke her leg but still. And the time before, I got locked in a changing room...”

I started laughing hysterically at the image of Lily locked in a changing room in a store, begging her friends to get help while they laughed on the other side. She pouted at me and hit me, while I shook my head, trying to recover.

When I was let out, they didn’t give me a chance to go home before I was whisked off to court to start the long, boring process of getting Adrian imprisoned. James and Alex were also there, since they saw him when he tried to strangle me the day dad got stabbed, so they, Lily, dad, Mrs Moore and I sat seated side by side. I noticed Nicola was suspiciously absent from the proceedings.

The process was rather grim. I stared at him with pure malice, across the other side of the court, until it was my turn to speak and tell him everything; where and when I’d seen him, what he’d said to me when we’d been kidnapped, what he’d done to me. Lily acted as witness for the kidnapping, what he’d said and what he’d done. His wife also stood up against him and I admired her for it.

She had more balls than the rest of her family.

Lily and I both said that Nicola had also been present, and when asked, I had to tell them all I could remember she’d done to me at school. To my delight, she was going to be sent to a detention centre for six months and if she ever so much as insulted me again, I could even get a restraining order. Lily had to stop herself laughing at the gleeful expression on my face.

Then dad told the judge about the day Adrian had stabbed him, describing what had happened, and I winced at his description, once again thoroughly glad I’d got home in time and hadn’t gone to Alex’s house after school that day.

James and Alex were last, recounting that night, when they’d been having a walk and seen ‘a tall man attacking a small teenage girl, who they hadn’t recognized at the time’. I was forever grateful for them for saving me that day, and also to Mrs Moore, for stopping her husband before he could finish me off.

And as it turned out, he confessed to also burning down the local rehab. I clenched my fists. The one Neil had died in, talking to them...for me. For us. I looked at dad, and somehow he knew. He shook his head. I knew what he was thinking; Adrian may have set it alight, but he had been the reason Neil was there anyway.

What surprised me most, was that Adrian seemed defeated.

He pleaded guilty to it all. He was weary, tired and slumped in his seat, staring at the floor mournfully, knowing this was it. With all that he’d done, he was going away for a long time. Now, his wife hated him, he’d lose his job...but that was his fault.

Still, I felt a little bit bad. As much as I hated him, he had loved my mother and I guess it was heart wrenching for her to choose my dad over him. It didn’t excuse any of what he had done, but at the same time, I was a little empathetic.