Chapter 11 - JOANNE’S VERSION OF LOVE
I wanted Joanne to be simple after that.
A monster.
It would have been easier.
She wasn’t.
She was a sixty-six-year-old woman who spent most of her life protecting one family business until she could no longer distinguish the company from her children.
Warren Holloway started with two vans because Joanne refinanced their house for the first down payment.
She handled dispatch while raising Derek and Olivia.
She drove night transports when employees called out.
She cleaned the office herself for years.
The company was not only money.
It was proof their marriage had survived poverty.
Proof her husband’s risk worked.
Proof her children inherited something better than struggle.
Then Warren got cancer.
The company became Joanne’s monument to him.
Derek became its heir.
Olivia became the threat because she kept insisting monuments still need audits.
When Derek grabbed Joanne and she fell, telling the truth might have cost him Warren’s trust.
So she lied.
Then she spent years defending the lie by convincing herself the incident had been partly her fault.
When Olivia challenged billing, Joanne again chose the company.
When I refused to sign declarations, she chose the company.
When she saw bruises on me, she chose Derek.
Not because she thought hurting me was good.
Because every alternative required admitting the thing she protected had become dangerous.
That did not soften what she did.
It explained why apologies took so long.
When I finally confronted her, I asked:
“What were you protecting the night I went to the hospital?”
“Derek.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“The company.”
“Closer.”
Joanne began crying.
“My life.”
There.
Everything she had sacrificed.
Every night shift.
Every mortgage payment.
Every year beside a sick husband.
If Holloway Medical Transit turned out to be corrupt and Derek turned out to be violent, Joanne had to confront an unbearable possibility:
Sacrifice had not guaranteed virtue.
She looked at me.
“I thought if the investigation ended, Derek would calm down.”
“He broke my face.”
She flinched.
“I know.”
“You knew he was hurting me before that.”
“Yes.”
“And you helped him make me sound unstable.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I kept thinking if we got through one more month, everything would settle.”
Temporary.
Again.
Every person in that family lived on temporary wrongdoing.
One more false claim.
One more hidden bruise.
One more discredited woman.
Then things would stabilize.
I said:
“You didn’t protect your son.”
Joanne looked up.
“You protected him from consequences long enough for him to become worse.”
She closed her eyes.
May you like
No argument.
That was the first honest silence I ever got from her.
