Free Uncovering You 9: Liberation by Scarlett Edwards

haven’t been inside my head, Lilly. “ He taps the stretch of skin by his temple. “You don’t know what really goes on up here.”
    “No, but I’ve gotten closer than most,” I say. “And yes, I do think an explanation like that can encompass who you are. Occam’s Razor, Jeremy. The simplest explanations are often the ones with the most truth.”
    “So that’s your impression of me, then, is it?” He asks. “That I’m a slave to my childhood?”
    I’ve upset him. I can tell. But it’s too late to change course. And this is not the type of anger that might lead to physical violence.
    I hope.
    “It’s human psychology, Jeremy,” I say, softening my voice. “Even you are not immune to it.”
    He sneers. “So that’s what they taught you at Yale? How to psychoanalyze someone with such pinpoint conviction?”
    “Hey, you’re not innocent of that yourself!” I counter. “What about all that you’ve told me about the scars from my past? About certain things triggering relapses? If that’s not psychoanalysis, I don’t know what is.”
    “That,” Jeremy says with surprising dignity, “was different.”
    “Oh? How so?”
    “It came not from a textbook, Lilly, but from life experience.”
    “And that somehow tells you more about the world? How? Because you’re the one with the final verdict?”
    “Partially,” he says. “But also because I can’t stand the thought of something so grand, so wondrous as human life being distilled into little piecemeal definitions of the origins of underlying behavior.”
    “That’s a crude way of looking at things.”
    “It is not.”
    “It is! And utterly dismissive of the work that others have done before you. You can’t know everything, Jeremy.”
    “What about you?” he asks softly. He picks up his wine glass.
    “What about me, what?” I ask.
    “Where do you place yourself in this tight and pretty little definition of yours? To me, you are still—and will continue to forever be–” He pauses, and then gives a loving smile. “A complete mystery.”

Chapter Ten
     
    We drop the topic after Jeremy’s final declaration and finish the rest of dinner in contemplative silence.
    I am caught thinking about all the things Jeremy promised to do and never did. Threats and other allusions to such, mainly.
    After dinner, we go upstairs, together. He acts like he never hit me. I find that disturbing.
    “Lilly?” he says, just before turning off the light. “I did renew your employment, just so you know. If you cover up properly, you can come to work tomorrow.”
    ***
    I slip out of bed an hour after Jeremy falls asleep and wander downstairs.
    He did not touch me once. Maybe he sensed I was not in the mood. Maybe—more likely—he did not want to attempt physical intimacy so soon after striking me. It would feel like too much of a return to old times.
    I walk through the empty house. I never liked the stark sterility of the place. It’s pretty, to be sure, with all the furniture expertly arranged, the rooms in possession of more of those black and white abstract paintings that cover the four walls of the sunroom. But there’s no life anywhere. It’s like a storefront display. Tended with care, but without affection.
    It fits Jeremy Stonehart: who he was, who he is. But now that this is my home, too, it doesn’t fit me .
    Mindless chatter. Frivolous thoughts. I’m distracting myself from the more important things I need to think about.
    Such as Jeremy’s continued capacity to treat me like little more than a science experiment. A strange specimen to be poked and prodded from afar just to gauge her reaction.
    It’s almost like, at those times, he doesn’t even consider me human. Perhaps that’s not too surprising. Jeremy disassociates humanity from many things. It‘s not all that upsetting, even against the backdrop of love.
    No, what’s upsetting and disconcerting is that he does not seem to see anything wrong with it.
    That makes him impossible