Chapter 7 - NO MORE SCORES
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The first therapist Ethan met wore bright yellow sneakers and kept no clock where he could see it.
Her name was Dr. Mara Ellis, and her office looked less like a clinic than a room where someone had deliberately removed every reason to be afraid.
There were shelves of books, two soft chairs, drawing paper, a box of smooth stones, and a basketball hoop mounted low on one wall.
Ethan noticed the absence of a timer immediately.
“Do I have to talk for the whole hour?” he asked.
Mara smiled.
“No.”
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Then we sit.”
He waited for the rest.
There was no rest.
“What if I waste the appointment?”
“It’s your appointment.”
Ethan looked at Claire.
She was sitting near the door, trying not to look as nervous as she felt.
Mara noticed that too.
“You can stay today,” she told Claire, “if Ethan wants you here.”
Ethan thought about it.
“Stay.”
So Claire stayed.
For the first fifteen minutes, Ethan said almost nothing. He rolled one of the smooth stones between his fingers and stared at the basketball hoop.
Mara did not fill the silence.
Eventually, Ethan asked, “Do you give scores?”
“No.”
“Even for being brave?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because then you might start performing bravery for me.”
Ethan frowned.
“What’s wrong with being brave?”
“Nothing. But sometimes brave looks like talking. Sometimes it looks like saying no. Sometimes it looks like crying. Sometimes it looks like leaving.”
Ethan considered that.
“Rick said quitting was weakness.”
Mara nodded.
“What do you think?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s a good answer.”
He looked suspicious again.
“You’re sure you don’t score answers?”
“I’m sure.”
Claire had to look down so Ethan would not see tears forming.
After the appointment, Mara asked to speak with Claire alone for five minutes.
Ethan waited outside with Mason, who had brought him a milkshake.
“He has learned to connect safety with performance,” Mara said. “That won’t disappear because Rick is gone.”
Claire nodded.
“I see it everywhere.”
“He may also test whether your new boundaries are real.”
“What does that mean?”
“He may make mistakes on purpose. Refuse something small. Break a rule and wait for the reaction.”
Claire’s chest tightened.
“He’s already doing that.”
The previous evening, Ethan had dropped a plate at dinner.
He had stared at Claire instead of the broken ceramic.
She had said, “Stay there so you don’t step on glass,” then swept it up.
Ethan had asked three times what his punishment was.
When she said there was none, he had looked almost disappointed.
Mara explained that predictability mattered more than perfection.
“Reasonable rules are still okay. Consequences are still okay. The difference is they should be connected, explained, and never humiliating.”
Claire breathed slowly.
“I’m scared of becoming too permissive because I’m scared of reminding him of Rick.”
“That fear makes sense. But Ethan does not need a house without structure. He needs a house where structure is not a weapon.”
Claire carried that sentence home.
The family began making changes.
They wrote household expectations together on a whiteboard in the kitchen. Not scores. Not rankings. Just simple agreements.
Knock before entering bedrooms.
No insults.
Anyone can ask for a break during an argument.
Chores rotate every week.
No one uses exercise as punishment.
Ethan added the last one himself.
Kayla added another.
No tracking each other without permission.
Mason wrote: Apologies do not erase consequences.
Claire looked at him.
“That one seems specific.”
“It’s universal.”
They left it.
The basement remained closed for another week.
Then, one Saturday morning, Ethan asked to go down.
Mason unlocked the door.
The room still smelled faintly of rubber and metal. The medicine-ball rack had been repaired, but Mason had not returned the balls to it.
Most of Rick’s equipment sat in boxes for the police to release or for Claire to dispose of later.
Ethan stood at the bottom of the stairs.
His breathing changed.
Mason noticed.
“We can go back up.”
Ethan shook his head.
“No.”
They moved slowly.
At the center of the floor, Ethan stopped where he had fallen.
There was no mark.
He had expected one.
The absence bothered him.
“It looks normal.”
Mason understood.
“Bad things don’t always leave marks on rooms.”
Ethan looked at him.
“Do they leave marks on people?”
“Sometimes.”
“Forever?”
Mason sat on the weight bench.
“I don’t think forever means unchanged.”
Ethan waited.
Mason searched for words.
“I still remember Dad leaving when we were little. I used to think remembering meant I wasn’t over it.”
Their biological father had disappeared from their lives when Ethan was a toddler.
Mason rarely mentioned him.
“What do you think now?” Ethan asked.
“I think memory is just memory. It doesn’t have to drive the car.”
Ethan smiled faintly.
“That sounds like Mr. Bellamy.”
“It probably is. I steal half my wisdom from mechanics.”
They began clearing the room.
Claire joined them with trash bags.
Kayla carried boxes.
Natalie came later with sandwiches and refused to decide where anything belonged unless Kayla asked her opinion.
They removed the oversized wall mirror first.
Ethan hated seeing his reflection where Rick had watched him struggle.
Behind the mirror, they found pencil marks from years earlier.
Mason had measured Ethan’s height against the drywall before Rick moved in.
AGE 5, one line read.
AGE 6 stood higher.
Then the marks stopped.
Claire touched them.
“We should keep these.”
Ethan nodded.
They painted around the marks instead of covering them.
The room slowly changed.
One corner became a small art table for Kayla.
Another held Mason’s old stereo.
They kept the treadmill, but Ethan insisted it face the window instead of the mirror.
Claire brought her yoga mat back downstairs.
By evening, the gym no longer looked like Rick’s command center.
It looked unfinished.
That was better.
Unfinished meant it could become something else.
Two days later, Simone called.
Rick’s attorney had requested a modification to the protective order involving Kayla.
He wanted supervised contact.
Kayla sat at the kitchen table while Simone explained options over speakerphone.
“No one is asking you to decide whether you love your father,” Simone said. “The issue is what contact is safe and appropriate right now.”
Kayla twisted the drawstring of her sweatshirt.
“What if I don’t want to see him?”
“Then we tell the court that.”
“What if I change my mind later?”
“Then we address later when later arrives.”
Kayla looked at Natalie.
Her mother stayed silent.
“What do you think I should do?” Kayla asked.
Natalie took a slow breath.
“I think you should notice what you want before you notice what any of us want.”
Kayla’s eyes filled.
“That’s annoying.”
Natalie smiled sadly.
“I’m learning.”
Kayla ultimately decided she did not want contact yet.
The decision terrified her.
That night, she dreamed Rick stood outside her bedroom with the stopwatch, clicking it every time she tried to speak.
She woke before dawn and found Ethan sitting at the kitchen counter eating cereal.
“Bad dream?” he asked.
She nodded.
He pushed the cereal box toward her.
“No score for sleeping badly.”
Kayla laughed.
“Who told you that?”
“I made it up.”
They ate in silence.
At seven, Claire found them both asleep at the table with their heads resting on folded arms.
She took a picture, then stopped herself before sending it to anyone.
The old family habit had been to document everything.
Now privacy itself felt like care.
She put the phone away.
That afternoon, Detective Brooks called with the result of the missing belt investigation.
A neighbor’s doorbell camera had captured Rick’s truck entering the cul-de-sac at 4:18 that morning while the family was at the hospital.
He had stayed eleven minutes.
The footage did not show him entering the house.
But the timestamp aligned with access activity from the hidden garage key.
Claire sat down.
“So he came back.”
“That appears likely.”
“Did you find the belt?”
“Not yet.”
Claire stared toward the basement door.
Then Brooks added one more detail.
A search warrant for Rick’s storage unit had been approved.
The unit contained boxes removed from his previous marriage.
Among them were old notebooks.
More scores.
More rules.
And one small digital camera labeled KAYLA — AGE 11.
The system had started years before Ethan ever entered it.
For Kayla, the next hearing was no longer only about whether she wanted to see her father.
May you like
It was about whether she was ready to name what he had done to her too.
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