Face-Slapping14 min read
Diary of Small Teeth and Big Truths
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2008, October 1.
"I came back from the sanatorium today," I wrote, because the doctor told me to write. "You are sick," he said. "You need to keep a diary." I looked at the doctor and thought, You are wrong. I am fine.
"Write what?" I asked no one.
"My mother says, write to the diary," she had told me on the phone. "You don't have to tell everyone. Make the diary know."
"So," I told the blank page, "can I write a birthday wish into it?"
"My birthday wish," I wrote, "is to be at the sanatorium with Mom next year, same day."
2008, November 8.
"She looked so well last time," I wrote, "I don't understand why she stays there."
"She says she likes it," I told the diary. "She says she feels safe. I said, 'Safe from what?'"
"She smiled and said, 'You'll know when you grow up.'"
My stepmothers—Collins and Jillian—were not delighted when I told them Mom might come home. "She'll be fine there," one said. "Leave it be," the other said.
"Why is 'fine' the same as 'locked up'?" I asked the page.
2009, February 3.
"People at school laugh," I wrote. "They say sanatorium equals crazy. When they asked why no mother picked me from school, I told them exactly that, 'My mother lives at the sanatorium.'"
"They laughed like it was a joke," I wrote. "I got angry. I fought."
At home, my father, Clive Davenport, seemed busy. "Don't pay them mind," he told me once, more interested in Emmett's algebra than in my bruises.
"Emmett?" I wrote under the date. "He tutors Lin—Rhys—on his math. He calls Rhys 'talented.'"
2009, March 1.
"I won first place on a test," I wrote. "I wanted to show Mom. I wanted to see her proud face. The hospital said no one today."
"When?" I wrote. "Whenever I asked, they said 'not today.' 'Not tomorrow.' 'We'll see next month.' A month became a silence."
I hid my certificate in my drawer. "I could feel the paper smell like the idea of being noticed," I wrote.
"I started to feel small with my victories," I told the diary.
2010, March 1.
"Mom told me to study with Rhys," I wrote. "Rhys is cold but smart. Emmett takes me out to eat and teases me. I thought life would tilt toward normal. It didn't."
"Rhys barely looks at me," I wrote. "He locks his door sometimes. At night I hear the bolt click and feel like a guest who forgot to be invited."
2014, May 1.
"Rhys started locking his door a lot," I wrote. "My grades slipped. He stopped helping."
"I wondered what he did in there."
2014, June 1.
"I found his door unlocked," I wrote. "Inside were pictures—so many pictures—of one girl. Not the school's famous girl, not the shining kind. A small strange girl with a small smile. She was ordinary and stayed ordinary in every picture."
"Her smile was... soft," I wrote.
2014, August 1.
"I kept looking for a year," I wrote. "At first I thought, 'She's plain.' And then, like getting used to a song, I found the small things that mattered."
"I liked the little tooth she showed when she smiled," I wrote. "A small tiger tooth. Ridiculous, I know."
2015, May 1.
"It wasn't ridiculous anymore," I wrote. "Every time I felt like hurting the world, I would go to Rhys's room, look at her photo and tell her all my secrets. It felt safer to tell someone who wouldn't answer."
"She listened," I wrote. "She always listened."
2016, June 9.
"One night Rhys was happy," I wrote. "He had a new photo up."
"In the new photo he kissed her," I wrote. "My world tilted. I thought he was with the other girl—Jennifer. He wasn't. I was furious on someone else's behalf and furious for a reason I couldn't name."
"I wanted to find her and tell her the truth about him," I wrote. "I wanted to tell her that Rhys could be cruel."
2016, August 1.
"His wall stopped changing," I wrote. "I cared more than I should. When the wall didn't update, I felt like the day lost its color."
2016, August 8.
"I found a letter in his mailbox," I wrote. "Signed, 'Lenora.' The name fit the face."
"I kept the letter. I couldn't give it to Rhys. I thought, 'If he sees this, he'll steal her smile away.'"
2020, April 1.
"I met her—Lenora Cortez—on a trip," I wrote. "Jennifer invited me and I hoped it wouldn't be awkward. I hoped she wouldn't notice she had been on my brother's wall for years."
"She was better in real life," I wrote. "Shy, soft, with that tiger tooth. I couldn't stop looking. She came into my room that night. I will not write the details—some things stay with your bones."
"I think I liked the feeling of being close to someone who had never known me," I wrote.
2021, February 1.
"At the sanatorium, Mom asked why I didn't fight for the shares," I wrote. "I told her I was tired. She said her sickness wasn't anyone's fault but her own stubbornness. She said, 'You can't let me hold all my past inside until it eats me.'"
"I thought of Lenora," I wrote. "Of how she had been trapped in Rhys's life and how she managed to get out."
"I dreamed she was trapped again," I wrote. "Every night I woke with the need to find her, to make sure she was safe."
2021, April 1.
"The nightmare kept coming," I wrote. "It had been six months. No matter how loud the day, at night the dream found me—Lenora caught and calling. I drove to her parents' house in a storm."
"I knelt on their porch and said, 'Please forgive me for what my family has done. Please take care of Lenora and the child.'"
"They invited me in," I wrote. "They said they'd come care for Lenora and the baby. I fell asleep on the porch and woke with the rain on my face and the feeling that someone bigger than me had listened."
2021, April 5.
"She came, smiling, with her parents," I wrote. "Sunlight made her eyes shine like she belonged in bright things. She told me stories about her father joking and the way her mother made coffee. She laughed and I felt a traitor to my own past."
"Thank you," I told her then. "For leaving. For coming back. For choosing light."
We started to meet more. She grew bigger with the small life inside her. I learned how she had gotten out: not with courage as loud as a shout, but with small strategic steps, a borrowed phone, a day she simply didn't open the door. She left while he slept.
"How did you do it?" I asked one afternoon in her small kitchen.
"I walked out," she said. "I walked out and didn't look back."
"But you had nowhere," I said.
"I had this," she tapped her belly. "I had the idea that the child deserved sunlight."
"You said you left because you didn't want to be the kind of person my mother became," I told the diary one night. "She said she didn't want to hold bitterness like an illness."
I kept writing.
We were talking more behind the scenes. I began to notice things about my family I had stopped naming. Collins and Jillian whispered. Father was a man who had long learned how to look away. Rhys—my brother—was not just cold; he liked to hide, to hold someone small and decide they were his truth. The truth of him felt heavier than any of the secrets we held in the walls of our house.
One night, after Lenora's parents had come to town and after the child was born, I went to see Mother. "Did you forgive Clive?" I asked.
She took my hand like a practice. "Forgiveness is not the same as trusting," she said. "And you can't save everyone."
"I can't save you?" I asked.
She smiled and said, "Save the ones who still want to be saved."
"I thought about Lenora," I wrote later. "She saved herself. I wanted to save others."
Weeks passed in small, warm ways. Lenora's laugh filled corners. The baby had a little mouth and a small, fierce set of fists. I found my sleep returning, but the memories didn't leave. Nor did the anger.
I decided to do something no one in my family had expected me to do.
"Our shareholders meeting is next week," I told Anton Shaw, Mom's old lawyer and the executor of a few things that mattered.
"You're going?" he asked, folding his hands.
"I'm going," I said. "I'm bringing the truth."
"You understand, Gillian," he said. "This isn't just a family argument. It could fracture the company and... people will watch."
"I'm not looking for fracture," I said. "I'm looking for witness."
The day came. The boardroom was cold glass and chrome. There were polished suits, phones leaning like small birds. Cameras of local reporters sat at the fringe—Clive liked to think the press would protect him; it rarely did. Collins and Jillian arrived with practiced composure. Emmett wore his smile, the smile people liked. Rhys came in late, hands in his pockets, a brief shadow.
"Good morning," my father said, smooth as always. "This is about the quarterly, the holdings—"
"Also the family," I said, standing by the door. "Also the family."
There was a cough. "Gillian?" said Emmett, small and surprised.
I had printed copies: Lenora's letter from years ago, the photos from Rhys's room, messages he'd sent when he thought none would read them. I had documented the way Lenora had been kept from her parents, the threats, the nights Rhys locked his door and made someone else's life fit his silence.
"You're making a scene," Collins whispered.
"Let her speak," Anton said, silently smoothing a thin paper on the table.
I put the first photo down.
"Who is she?" asked a board member, pointing.
"This is Lenora Cortez," I said. "She's the woman who was on my brother's wall. She's the mother of a child Rhys tried to keep secret. He kept her the way you keep a secret in a pocket."
Rhys stood. "This is ridiculous," he said. "Gillian, you—"
"Don't call me by the old rules," I said, and I remember how my voice was a little raw. "You kept her. You told her to stay quiet. You lied to the company, to our father. You used your position to put shame on her."
"That's not true!" he burst. "I loved her—"
"Love doesn't lock doors," I said. "And love doesn't write instructions that tell someone not to see their family."
He turned pale. The room made a small, hungry sound—like a bowl being set down. Emmett's jaw tightened. Collins' smile faltered.
A reporter stood. "Where did you get these?" she asked, voice like a wire.
"I have her permission," I said. "And she asked for witnesses."
"Lenora?" Anton called softly. "Would you stand?"
There was a rustle. A woman at the back—Lenora—stood. Her face was quieter than the photos but the tiger tooth was exactly where I remembered. She looked like a small sunlight. She walked to the front without help. The camera clicked. She steadied herself.
"How long did he keep you from your parents?" I asked, and my voice did not wobble.
"Two years," she said softly. "I was afraid, but I didn't want the baby to be alone. I thought if I held on, he would change."
"Did he stop you from calling them?" I asked.
"He took the phone," she said. "He said the world would judge me. He said I was lucky to be with him."
"This is the way he spoke to you?" I asked. "The way he told you your family wouldn't care?"
"He said they were charlatans," she said. "He told me to trust him. I closed the door and didn't leave for a long time."
Rhys moved like a trapped animal. "I kept her safe," he said. "I gave her shelter. You can't do this."
"Safe?" a board member asked. "By hiding her from her child?"
A young assistant in the corner typed fast. The room filled with small noises. People who had been polite to Rhys in other rooms now leaned forward like they were listening to a story they had expected not to be true.
"You used your privilege," I said. "You used our name. You told Lenora to stay because publicity would hurt you. You told her her parents abandoned her. You told her she had nothing. You lied to her until she left for everyone."
He laughed, a strange little sound. "That's not--"
"Tell them about the night you locked her in," I said.
"You can't prove that," he cried.
"I can," I said. "Because I have messages. I have dates. I have the letter he shoved into the mailbox and the receipts for the trip he forced her to take. I have the record of the nights he kept her phone and the call logs he deleted. I have witnesses in the hotel she escaped from."
There was a long, breathless minute.
Rhys's hands began to shake. He tried to speak. "You're lying. You don't understand. She wanted to—"
"She wanted to leave," Lenora said, looking at him, and for the first time his face had a flinch of shame. "She wanted to leave for our child."
"He thought he was protecting his image," I said to the board. "He thought our company's name would be dragged into gossip. So he chose his reputation over a woman and her family."
"You can't—" Rhys said.
At that, Collins made a small, stiff laugh. "This is family business," she said. "We have to keep the company stable. We can't have rumors."
"Family business?" the reporter said, smiling like a blade. "Is that what you call locking someone out of their own life?"
An older shareholder—who had been quiet—stood up. "If these allegations are true," he said, "this company will be associated with a culture we do not want."
"At the very least," Anton said calmly, "we will require an independent review. If any board member used their position to harm someone, there will be consequences."
Rhys's face changed in a hundred small ways. First, he looked annoyed. Then threatened. Then the color left and a sudden, animal panic showed through. He tried to laugh it away. "You want to destroy me," he said. "You want—"
"This isn't about destroying," I said. "This is about making public what has been private."
"Make public?" he repeated, then his voice cracked. "You don't know—"
People in the room shifted. Emmett looked between us like a man who had been taught there were sides and now couldn't pick one. Collins's hand found Jillian's. They both looked... small.
Someone in the back—an intern—started to whisper. "Is he going to resign?" the intern asked another. The whisper spread like a ripple.
Rhys's eyes landed on Lenora. For a second I saw something other than anger—fear, and a plea. He opened his mouth and then closed it. He looked at our father, Clive. Clive's face had turned gray and hard.
"You're tearing the family apart," Clive said. "This is a private matter."
"It's not private if a man used the company's name as a shield," Anton answered. "And it's not private if he used power to keep a woman from her family."
"You're going to be prosecuted?" someone asked.
"That's not what this is," Anton said. "But we will supply records to any authority that needs them. Meanwhile the board will vote to put Rhys on leave pending investigation."
There was an explosion of sound—phones waking, pens scratching, the rustle of papers. Rhys walked to the table, grabbed his things. He was muttering. His face changed to a few desperate expressions—anger, denial, pleading, collapse. He tried to raise his voice. "I loved her!" he shouted, then someone in the room laughed, a short, bitter sound.
"You loved control," Lenora said. "You loved being the judge of who could see me."
"You're lying!" Rhys shouted. "Who are you to—"
"Who am I?" Lenora repeated. "A woman you tried to erase."
The cameras clicked. A woman at a nearby table began to cry softly. A businessman took off his glasses to rub his eyes. One of Rhys's friends in the back made a video with his phone and uploaded it as if the sound itself could cut bone.
"I resign from the board," Rhys said, voice going thin. "I—I'll step aside."
"No," I said. "You will not step aside quietly. You will not have it both ways. You will apologize to Lenora in front of everyone who might ever hear our name and believe him."
"There will be a formal apology," Anton said.
"Now," I said.
Rhys's face went white as paper. He stood and walked to the front like a man approaching a scaffold. He looked at Lenora. He opened his mouth and the first words were breathless.
"I—" he began.
"You used your power to make me forget my family," Lenora said, eyes dry and sharp. "You told me my parents didn't want me. You told me I had no right to my own life."
"I wanted to—" he said.
"You wanted to keep your story neat," she said. "You wanted to be the hero in the book. You forgot I had a life."
"You're tearing the family apart," Clive said, voice small now.
"This family," Lenora said softly, "needs to learn that keeping someone's life private is a violence when it is done without consent."
Rhys's face crumpled. He laughed, a broken little thing. Then he put his head on the table and started to sob. People around the table exchanged looks. Some were shocked, some disbelieved, some relieved.
"He used me," Lenora said. "He used me for his image."
"That's enough," Collins said, too late. Her throat made a small sound.
"He's leaving the company," the shareholder said. "We have no tolerance for this kind of abuse in our leadership."
Rhys looked up, pleading with our father. "Dad," he said, "tell them—"
Clive's eyes were soft for a second. Then he turned away. "We will not have my name associated with this," he said, and his voice had the edge of someone fearing reputational ruin more than losing a son.
Rhys had a different collapse. He did not beg on his knees. He did not have the camera-ready breakdown a tabloid would enjoy. He had a private, searing panic of a man who realized his story had been rewritten by the woman he mistreated. He tried to shout again, but the room shrank.
At the end, when the board had voted to suspend his duties and when Collins and Jillian were publicly admonished for having ignored complaints, Rhys stood alone in the middle of the room. He tried to meet my eye, then looked away.
The punishments were not theatrical. They were practical and public:
- Rhys was put on immediate leave; the board would conduct a full investigation into abuse of power. His name would be removed from all promotional material.
- Collins and Jillian were publicly reprimanded; they were stripped of their informal privileges and warned that any complicity would affect their social standing within the company and the family.
- Our father, Clive, had to face questions in front of shareholders about accountability and the family's role. He answered with the hesitant voice of someone who had assumed silence would protect him.
- The company released a statement within one hour acknowledging the complaint and promising transparency. Reporters asked sharp questions. The cameras were not kind.
What I remember most was the reaction in the room. Journalists whispered. Business partners pivoted. Some executives switched seats like men rearranging chess pieces. Some employees stood and clapped when Lenora walked back to her chair, as if the simple act of listening had been a victory.
Rhys's breakdown was not a clean fall. He went through stages—denial, outrage, shaky protests, then collapse into a damp, defeated man. He tried to rationalize. He tried to claim love. He tried to blame me. None of those things relieved him. The crowd watched his face as if it were a lesson.
Outside the boardroom, people took pictures. They stared. They asked questions. Someone shouted, "How could you keep a woman? How could you do this?" And other people murmured, "We thought he was different." Another voice said coldly, "So it's true. So it's been true."
I left the room with Lenora and her small child in my arms and a feeling I couldn't name. It wasn't triumph. It wasn't revenge. It was something steadier—like having opened a window in a room and hearing fresh wind.
"Did you think they'd do that?" Lenora asked later, as we sat on the marble steps.
"I thought they'd listen," I said. "I hoped for witness."
She leaned against me. "And now?"
"Now," I said, "you can tell your story and they have to hear it."
The days after the meeting were sharp and loud. There were articles with all the angles, people with hot takes. Rhys was on leave. Collins and Jillian's social invitations dwindled. Emmett walked through our house like a man who had seen a painting he loved torn off a wall. Father became present in strange, small ways—he began visiting Mom more. He apologized in short sentences—old, rusty words.
Lenora received apologies too, but not all of them were meaningful. "Why did you let it go for so long?" a woman at a reception asked her excusingly. "Why didn't you use the law sooner?" Another man said, "Why would you stay?" Lenora answered with small dignity. "Because leaving is a step," she would say. "And some steps are taken in secret until your feet are brave."
Some punishments were different. Rhys was publicly shunned in business circles. He had to answer to lawyers. Collins's social calendar emptied. Jillian found old friends who suddenly had other plans. Father lost a certificate of favorable mention from one charity.
It was not the dramatic end of an archvillain. He was simply diminished in the precise ways that mattered—reputation, authority, the illusion of heroism. He tried to demand sympathy in interviews. The press did not hand it over.
One day, a month later, he stood outside the sanatorium gate where Mother sometimes sat by the window in the old waiting room.
"Gillian," he called.
I went to the window. "What do you want?" I asked.
He looked like a man after all his armor had been removed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I tried to do right by us. I thought I knew how."
"You tried to keep people small so you could feel big," I answered.
"I thought I protected you," he said. "I was wrong."
He asked to be forgiven. He asked for his job back. He cried.
"Forgiveness is not a switch," I told him. "People who were harmed by you get to decide. You will have to live with what you did and hope your tiny regrets become real work."
He left. The world did not end. He didn't get everything back. He lost the easy assumptions that come with a surname. He had to build from the ground. For him, that was the punishment that matched his crime—a slow, everyday shrinking of privilege and an enforced consideration of how small acts create a life of harm.
Lenora's life grew. Her child had the tiger tooth I had loved in the photos. I kept writing the diary to remember the shape of things.
One evening, I opened the diary and wrote: "Mom told me to let my pains be paper. I did. The paper spoke back."
I kept the letter Lenora had once signed. I kept the photograph from Rhys's room. I kept the memory of a tiger tooth smiling in sunlight.
When people asked me later what had happened to our family, I would say plainly, "We were forced to see each other. Some of us didn't like the view."
That night, I closed the diary and did not tell it everything. Some things I let stay like a photograph in a drawer—kept safe, not shown to everyone. The last line I wrote before sleep was small and stubborn: "If anyone thinks our house's silence was quiet, they haven't listened to the sound of a child laughing after being hidden for too long."
The End
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