Amish Breaking Point by Samantha Price Read Free Book Online

I had to sleep on the floor. It was so cold, and hearing mother crying, begging, made my heart ache. But the fear of losing Mom, and the memory of the dead man crippled me."
    The doctor was silent for a few moments. “We’ve just had a good result. It could have taken months or years to reach this point.”
    Bailey knew it had taken him years already; he needed to resolve it now.
    Dr. Phillips spoke again, "You were close to your mother? Tell me about her."
    "She was soft and kind, opposite to my dad." He sniggered though he felt no humor. "In the end dad let me out because he'd made me believe he'd kill her if I told anyone. We lived like nothing happened for years after that. Dad was away a lot after that, with work. I guess it’s all real isn’t it? How could I have pushed the whole thing out of my mind? How could I forget such a thing, Doctor?”
    "Children are only able to deal with trauma such as this by departmentalizing it. Essentially, you packed up your pain and stored it away, in a box, buried far, far into you subconscious. Otherwise, how could you go on living with your father, and under such a threat?"
    "Why did it decide to return now, in flashes and nightmares?"
    "Perhaps because to move forward, to start your new life with Silvie, you needed to let go of the past.” The doctor raised his hands in the air. “We’re still learning about the human brain. We can really only make assumptions and work with what we know.”
    "It was better when I couldn't remember. Knowing my father is a murderer and a bully doesn't release me from anything, it gets in the way."
    "No, you still knew it, only it was hidden. Whether it makes sense to you or not the knowledge was influencing your decisions and emotions, even though you didn’t realize it.”
    Bailey rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. The dying man's face haunted him, as did the sweet face of his dear mother, shining with tears. "What do I do with this knowledge now?"
    "Deal with it and lay it to rest. Tell me about your father? Is he still alive?"
    At that moment, an alarm sounded. “Times up for today, I’m afraid,” the doctor said. “Well, we can go a little overtime. My next appointment’s not for a while.”
    “No, I won’t take advantage of your time, thank you, Doctor. I have to get going myself.” Bailey was pleased the time was up because he had no knowledge with which to answer that last question of the doctor’s. He had not seen his father for many years. His father had left his mother long ago, and Bailey never cared to ask questions of his whereabouts. If his father was alive, he had made no effort to contact him.
    Just before Bailey joined the Amish, his mother sent him an email with her new address, but he deleted his email account, and now he wracked his brain trying to remember what she had said. He had only read it quickly since their relationship was strained, and he never paid much attention to any of her emails. Did she say she was going overseas for a time, or to visit someone somewhere? It was all hazy and in what town did she now reside? Details like that did not stay in his brain, whereas his mind was like a steel trap if it was anything to do with a case on which he was working.
    He wondered what sort of parent he would be since he hadn’t had the best of childhoods. He wanted to be the sort of daed Jack was to his kinner.
    He would have to contact both his mother and his father to finally lay things to rest. But how would he do that? He hadn’t heard from his father in years and he had no idea where his mother lived.
    Crowley. Crowley the local detective could help him. He’d done Crowley favors in the past; surely Crowley could track down his parents. But he could not mention to Crowley that his father was a murder. He might now have been convicted for the murder, or he could be in jail already for all Bailey knew. There were however, two people he could tell anything to, and those people were his two great aunts,