“But I mentioned Dr. Duret and Lenin. Surely you were planning to lock me up?”
“No. You had to visit Dr. Fenwick because you hadn’t seen him for a while, and when you mentioned Dr. Duret, I realized that we needed to do it urgently.” A deep breath rips out of him as he tightens his grip on my hand. “I know you don’t like small, confined places, and I’d never let them keep you in one again. You know that, right?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I really don’t.” There’s some water in my eyes that makes him all blurry. “I keep thinking one day I’ll screw up and you’ll leave…just like Mom. You’ll hug me and tell me you’re sorry, then leave.”
“I’d never do that. You hear me? I’d never…everleave you.”
“Mom said that, too, but she didn’t keep her promise. And yes, I know she killed herself since I was a teen, Dad. Grandma gave me the suicide note she left me.”
“Your mother…” He swallows, straightening up. “Didn’t want to leave you either, not really.”
“Then why…”
“It was guilt and self-loathing. She only ever told me this in her suicide note, but it made a lot of sense. Valerie came from an extremely abusive household, which I already knew, but I didn’t know just how far the depravity in that place went. In the note, Val said her parents sexually assaulted her and her three siblings, and she never forgave herself for being the one who got away. Two of her siblings died of drug overdoses in the streets, and the third died in an accident while drunk driving. Val was the only one who got out of France alive. She thought she’d start a new life in America and have everything she never had when she was a kid, including a loving family, but that wasn’t her reality, as you’re aware.”
“Why couldn’t you just stay with her, Dad?”
“I tried, but it was impossible. I woke up every day in fight mode, my muscles bunched for whatever disagreement she’d come up with. That’s not how relationships should be. She didn’t really want to stay with me either. You probably don’t know this, but we had an amicable divorce.” He pauses, his voice dropping, sounding scraped. “But you’re right, I should’ve stayed with her. That way, you wouldn’t have gone through what you did.”
“I don’t… It’s not…your fault. I don’t blame you or Mom.”
“You have every right to. We failed you as parents. Val knew that, and she felt it ten times worse because she invited what happened to her onto her son, and she couldn’t live with that.”
“She didn’t know. I’m the one who kept quiet and didn’tfight.” My voice breaks on the last word.
“No, Preston.No.” He clutches my shoulders. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. You were achild. A victim. And victims shouldneverblame themselves for their perpetrators’ actions.”
“But if I’d told you or Mom…”
He shakes his head. “Don’t think like that, okay? Don’t be trapped in a past you can’t change, son.”
Trapped in the past.
Is that what I’ve been doing all this time by refusing to let go or face it properly?
Instead of killing my seven-year-old self, have I actually been confined inside him, refusing to let him go?
“If you need to blame someone, blame me, okay?” Dad’s grip tightens around my shoulders. “Blame me for not protecting you, for not seeing the signs, for not insisting you stay with me when you wanted to. Keep loathing me all you want, but don’t ever,everblame yourself for something that was out of your control.”
Two rivulets of tears fall down my cheeks as all my fucked-up emotions rush to the front. “I n-never hated you, Dad. I just…wanted you to stay.”
“I am staying, Preston. For however long you need me.”
He pulls me close, and I wrap my arms around him, shaking, trembling, even as striking bolts of pain slice through me.
Even as my chest crumbles and the little seven-year-old boy inside me disintegrates.
“Dad?” My lips tremble around the words.
“Yes?”
“What happened tohim? Did Mom kill him that night?”
“No. He only lost consciousness.” His hand sweeps over my back in a slow, grounding stroke. “I locked him in a cell and tortured him for years, only keeping him alive just soI could torture him again. I cut his dick off and made him choke on it for days. Unfortunately, he died a couple of years later due to an infection. Otherwise, I would’ve tortured him for a lifetime.”
“Wow.” I chuckle through the tears, pulling away. “I didn’t know you could be this ruthless.”
He lifts a brow. “How do you believe I got this far in this world?”
