My son stared at me, rigid. “Mom, Toby is dead.”
After saying this, he clung to the nearby trash can and vomited violently.
Lying beside him was Toby, the tabby cat, with unseeing eyes.
Its paws had been brutally broken and tied together, its body gaunt and frail.
It could no longer nestle in my arms and purr sweetly.
My mind went blank.
I had returned from a business trip filled with joy, only to be met with this horrifying scene.
The door was kicked open, causing my son to shudder as he expelled green bile.
Bradley absently adjusted his cuffs.
“Back from the mental hospital? Well, first, you need to apologize to Sara for that nasty cat of yours. Then, make sure to write out the rules I set for you thirty times so they really stick!”
His tone was so cold that it made the abuse of a cat seem trivial.
My son knelt on the floor, his head bowed, motionless.
When Bradley received no response, he grew impatient.
“Can’t hear me? The cat paid for your apologies to Sara; now it’s your turn to take responsibility as its owner! How can a child of the Malcoms be so irresponsible? How will you ever achieve anything?”
With red eyes, I stepped in front of Bradley and raised my voice to confront him.
“Why are you treating Toby like this? You know how much he means to our son!”
Toby would affectionately wind around Bradley’s legs and curl up like a little furnace on our son’s lap.
Now, it lay dead in a strangely twisted position, stiff and gray, its body desiccated.
The brutality of its broken paws was appalling.
I couldn’t comprehend how he remained so nonchalant.
Bradley, tall and imposing, pressed down hard on my shoulders, pushing me away.
“She’s an actress; she can’t have a single scar. How could your foolish son care for a cat like that? What if it injures her face in the future?”
The “injuries” he referred to were the faint white lines on Sarah’s hand.
He knew our son struggled with suicidal tendencies yet had cruelly killed the cat for his precious first love.
I refused to back down, my voice rising to drown out his.
“Did you forget that its mother saved our lives?”
His movements paused as Sarah gently covered her wrist where the injury lay.
“Brad, Alison is right. Toby is well-behaved; it’s the strays that always misbehave. Only the obedient ones deserve to be house cats. A well-behaved cat deserves to be a house pet, and while training is important, once they've learned, that's usually enough,” she sweetly said, her eyes filled with a hint of sorrow, yet she faced me with undeniable provocation.
I scoffed and furiously retorted, “I'm still here, and yet you've chosen to play the role of the understanding wife. What business do you, a mere mistress, have barking like that?!”
My hatred for her surged, and I raised my hand to slap her across the face.
But Bradley stepped in first, striking me hard enough to turn my head.
The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, and a ringing echoed in my ears as I looked at him in disbelief.
After all these years of marriage, he had never treated me with such coldness.
Yet now, he was defending his mistress against me?