"I will change school as long as Daddy stops hurting you, Mommy…." Mackie said. "Daddy is a bad man."
"Your Daddy has problems of his own, he's not a bad man," Chloe corrected. It was another lie, and she knew that Vernon wouldn't like hearing this.
But Chloe wanted Mackie to slowly learn about her father's craziness, so she could gradually accept that her father wasn't perfect, and their lives weren't perfect either. She still had to prepare Mackie's mental fortitude before she realized the full truth of Vincent's cruelty.
"Really?" Mackie lowered her head again. "But Uncle also has problems, and he never hurt Mommy. If Daddy is not a bad man, why can't he be like Uncle?"
Chloe's body stiffened, and she stopped caressing Mackie's hair as she felt guilty for lying to her daughter too many times. Mackie seemed to have grown resistant to her lies, and now Chloe was unsure what to say next to fool her daughter.
