They all stood around, waiting to hear what the young boy had to say. The rythmic tapping of his fists against the wheelchair was the only thing keeping Maria from exploding.
Then his mother opened her mouth.
"I think Scotty needs a place where he can think without all these eyes on him. I'll take him for a walk." Maria said, her plump lips now pursed into a thin line.
They were too flabbergasted to stop her.
"Where are we going?" Scotty whispered, looking around at his surroundings.
"You heard, Karevs testimony now it's time you heard mine." She said, locking the chair and kneeling in front of him.
"My dad used to beat my mom. He used to beat her so bad, she had pressure build up behind her eyes and crush the optic nerves."
He shook his head in confusion.
"He beat her so bad she lost her sight, Scotty. I saw that bruising on your mom and I saw her scans, she could've died from that."
A small bout of silence.
"I don't understand, what are you trying to tell me?"
Maria sighed, "I joined the military, Scotty. I wanted to make my old man proud, maybe he'd stop pounding on my mother all the damn time. I'm not going to talk about what I did but when I was stationed overseas, every damn time I pulled that trigger, I imagined it was him I was shooting between the eyes."
Loud footsteps resonated through the basement.
Scotty looked up to the source but quickly turned back to Maria when she grabbed his face in her hands, "I regret it. So much, I regret not doing something to help and now that I can I already lost my opportunity."
"What happened?"
"A coyote shot him. Straight between the eyes. He owed money and when he didn't make a payment they took it in full."
He took a small intake of breath, his eyebrows creasing.
"And you know what, Scotty." He watched tears of anger build up in her hazel eyes. "I wake up every day, angry. Angry that I wasn't the one to do it."
-
She walked into his room. His eyes were just looking, staring at the ceiling.
"You did the surgery." She said, small-like, as if she were a child.
In a way, she was.
"I did."
She didn't even have to ask, she sat at the edge of his bed and looked him dead in the eyes. One thing Maria learned from Scotty, he always told the truth.
"I didn't want to be like you." He whispered.
