Chapter 472
The next time she wanted Goodwin back, she did something she could never undo. She forced Colton into ice-cold bathwater to make him sick.
Goodwin came — but only for a few minutes before leaving again.
Victoria refused to stop. She put Colton back in the tub and left him there for a full day and night, only pulling him out when he began convulsing and lost consciousness. Only then did she understand that she had gone too far.
She rushed him to the hospital, but the truth came out eventually. When Padgett Yates learned what she had done to the boy, he took Colton away to live with him.
Victoria abandoned her pursuit of Goodwin after that. She recognized, finally, that her plan had been a catastrophic failure.
Even so, she never apologized to Colton. She told herself that an apology was unnecessary — she was his mother, and besides, it had all happened more than twenty years ago.
But now that Colton was laying it out in front of her, a deep and ugly feeling was spreading through her chest.
“Colton, I know I made terrible mistakes back then,” she said. “I was young and I didn’t know what I was doing. Your father and I didn’t love each other, but none of that was ever your fault.”
“Don’t worry yourself,” Colton replied. His voice was absolutely cold. “I hated you every time you forced me to study. I especially hated you the night you nearly killed me in that tub. I swore to myself that one day I would make you pay for it. But as I got older, I let that anger go.”
Victoria exhaled, a fragile sense of relief beginning to take shape.
It lasted less than a second.
“But,” Colton said, his voice dropping into something quieter and far more dangerous, “Kristine has nothing to do with any of that. Don’t you think you treated her rather cruelly?”
Victoria felt the fear of him then — the full, quiet force of it.
She pressed her lips together, working to hold herself steady. “Colton, I only acted the way I did because I was worried. I was under enormous stress.”
“Mom,” Colton said, “I still remember something you told me when I was very small.”
The word — Mom — made Victoria’s heart lurch. “What… what was it?”
“You told me that if a person is willing to do something wrong, they must be willing to accept the consequences.”
Victoria’s breath caught as the meaning of it settled over her. “What are you going to make me do?”
Colton turned and looked out at the darkness beyond the window. “It’s still raining outside.”
Victoria’s breathing quickened. “You’re telling me to go out into that storm?”
“Not just to go out,” Colton said slowly. “I’m telling you to go out there and kneel.”
The color left Victoria’s face entirely. “You’ve gone too far! I am the woman who brought you into this world!”