Chapter Text
The day had otherwise been normal. Catherine Seymour-Parr had woken up next to her husband Thomas, got up to make breakfast for Mae and Bessie, and made coffee for Thomas and Bess to take to work and class, respectively. After that was done, she sat down in her study to write the articles she had been commissioned to do. Thomas knocked on the doorframe to her office, a sheepish, toothy smile on his rugged face.
“Love, can you take Mae to the Day Centre today? I gotta get my papers ready.”
Catherine stopped typing, looking up from her laptop.
“Tom, my deadlines for the articles are today, can’t you take ‘er?”
Thomas’s smile sank off his face. He shook his head.
“Cathy, it’s what? A half-hour at most to drive her over and get her signed in? You still have plenty of time, love.” Thomas urged. Catherine sighed, closing her laptop.
“Fine, fine. I’ll take ‘er.” She acquiesced, grabbing her keys off of her desk. Before she left the room, she turned to Thomas and pulled him down to her eye level by his tie.
“Guess you’ll just have to owe me later, yeah?” Catherine awkwardly winked, before standing on her toes to kiss Thomas. He was nonplussed.
“Yeah, sure Babes. Better get going.” He seemed distracted, but Catherine just wrote it off as him not being fully awake yet.
When Catherine pulled up into the driveway, she could see that Thomas’s car was still there. It wasn’t unusual for Thomas to get absorbed into whatever paperwork he was working on, especially when he was tired. She parked the car and walked into their house. The second she walked in, she could feel something was wrong. The air was too still, the house too quiet. This was a familiar feeling, a sense of deja vu. She carefully roamed to her study to begin her work for the day, but she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that there was something amiss. She opened her laptop. A yell pierced the uncomfortable silence.
“ CATHER-” Elizabeth’s voice rang throughout the house, echoing off the walls as it was abruptly cut off. Catherine could feel her stomach begin to turn as if her body was preparing itself for something it knew well. She bolted up out of her chair and ran towards where she thought the yell had come from. She found herself in the hallway that led to Elizabeth and Mae’s rooms.
“Lizzie?! Where are you, love?!” Catherine bellowed. She grew silent when she heard sobbing and a low groaning coming from Elizabeth’s room. She silently opened the door to her room. What she found was nauseously, deathly familiar. Thomas was pinning Elizabeth down to the bed by her wrists, kissing roughly down the girl’s neck as she sobbed, her eyes screwed shut, wishing for it to be over. Thomas’s shirt and Elizabeth’s pajama top had been discarded by the bed. Thomas reared back, releasing her wrists for a second as he began to take off his belt.
“You’re gonna like this, love.” He muttered. Elizabeth shook her head.
“Please, Mr. Seymour, please don’t do this. CAT- ” She was cut off as Thomas held a hand over her mouth.
“Stop calling her. Do you want to get in trouble?” He smirked.
Catherine cleared her throat. Thomas whipped around, his face carrying no shock, no regret. He smiled. Elizabeth, on the other hand, sobbed louder, her eyes wide with horror. She spoke first.
“Cath, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-” she rushed out. Catherine shook her head.
“No. You're not the one who needs to apologize.” She turned to Thomas.
“Get the fuck out of my house.” She spat, her jaw setting in anger.
Thomas let out a hollow laugh. He got off of Elizabeth, turning to shamble towards his wife.
“But this is my house, Cathy, I-”
“-No. You lost this house the moment you stepped into her bedroom. Get the fuck out of my house before I call the cops.” She stepped in between Thomas and Elizabeth.
“But Cathy-”
“You’ve lost that too. I’m Catherine to you now. Only my loved ones call me Cathy, and I don’t love you, Thomas. I don’t love men who prey on little girls. Out. Of. My. House.”
“But how will you explain to Mae where I’ve gone.” He crossed his arms, looking satisfied that she couldn’t answer it.
Catherine crossed her arms.
“I’ll just tell her that her ‘daddy’ is a bad man who likes to hurt little girls, that’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Thomas’s eyes widened.
“Cath- Catherine, you wouldn’t.”
Catherine nodded slowly.
“I won’t say a word to ‘er if you get out.”
With that, Thomas left the room. Catherine could hear him throwing clothes onto their bed down the hall as she turned to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth had been slightly shaken and bruised, but otherwise alright. She trembled as Catherine grabbed some of her clothes from the closet, laid them out on her bed, and picked up Thomas’s shirt from the floor. Elizabeth broke the silence.
“I’m sorry.” Elizabeth’s voice had normally been confident but now sounded broken. Like something inside of her smashed into a million pieces. For the second time that morning, Catherine’s heart broke.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s not your fault. You’re 15, he’s a married adult. He is to blame. Not you.” Catherine put the clothes down before sitting next to Lizzy on the bed. Elizabeth turned to her, trying to find anything to say, but whenever she spoke she would just choke up. Catherine gently wrapped her arms around the girl. Elizabeth broke down, sobbing violently in Catherine’s arms, her head buried into the woman’s shoulder.
The next day, Catherine filed for divorce. She knew Thomas could fight it, but she was beyond caring. Elizabeth had decided to move out of Catherine’s house, opting to live in her father’s home instead. Catherine hadn’t fought it, knowing that the girl’s room had been ruined for her, that all Elizabeth felt when she saw Catherine was guilt. Mae was blissfully unaware that anything had gone on, and for once, Catherine envied the preschooler.
A few months later, Thomas and Catherine went before a judge to finalize their divorce. They had agreed on a custody arrangement, provided that Thomas go to therapy for his “affliction”, and they parted ways. Catherine changed her name back to Catherine Parr and had decided to change Mae’s name to Mary Seymour-Parr. Thomas grimaced when she told him this, but there was little he could do with the legal stranglehold his ex-wife now held on him.
For the first time in months, absolutely nothing was happening in Catherine’s home, and she finally got time to sit and write. She wrote out the whole Thomas situation. Every flirtation and attempt at intimacy with the young Elizabeth that went completely over her head, the months of Thomas’s growing disinterest in his wife, the time she caught him attacking poor Lizzie. With all of it finally typed out on the screen, the truth became blinding, almost oppressive. She went to bed that night in tears, her eyes, and soul raw from processing what had happened to her, what she had done to allow her husband’s abuse of a teenager.
Though her body slept, her mind could not. Thirty-six years of a life that was vaguely hers flashed behind her eyelids. Every dead husband, every book, every psalm, every meditation. She thrashed about when she saw him. Henry. She saw him at their wedding, him threatening her, him laying on his death bed, relief washing over her when she realized that she had survived him. When she survived. She sobbed in her sleep when she caught Thomas in an embrace with Elizabeth, all the guilt welling up in her soul from both occurrences of it. She finally felt the weight of Mae in her arms, comforting her for a second before the pain in the pit of her stomach made her world go black. She bolted upright in her bed, phantom pain still coursing through her body. She grabbed her laptop off her bedside table, creating a new document. She began to type furiously.
I am Catherine Parr. Just not in the way one would think.