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Tears were running down my cheeks. Cold tears, like they’d sprung from insides that were frozen. Like my heart was frozen.
My father walked out. He didn’t look at me when he did. Not even a fleeting glance.
I knew now that it was from the shame of what he’d let happen. The kind of man he’d been to me.
“I never saw my father again,” I told Hades, slowly coming back to the surface. “He did just as he said; he drove over to my uncle’s trailer and shot him in the face. Then he went to prison for murder. He did not say a word in his own defense during the trial. I didn’t go, but my Aunt V told me years later. I don’t know whether he was trying to protect me, my honor, or trying to keep the shame a secret. I don’t know. I do know the judge took one look at him, his history, and sentenced him to twenty-five years.”
I imagined my mother might’ve screamed, cried or done something equally dramatic when the verdict was read. She had been there every day, pretending to be some kind of loving, devoted wife.
“He’s been up for parole a couple of times,” I looked down at my cuticles, still not letting myself see whatever it was that Hades was communicating with his eyes and body language. “He was rejected. He won’t see me either. I tried when I was younger. Wrote him letters. He never wrote back. I’m not sad about that. I’m sure he’s full of shame over what kind of father he was to me. That he let his brother into my life, let him ruin it in ways that he and my mother never could.”
I shrugged. “It used to bother me, only because I thought it was supposed to. I believed that I was supposed to try and contact him, have some kind of relationship with him. But the only way he was ever a father to me was killing the man who hurt me. I don’t think he was capable of anything else. He couldn’t give me anything except more pain and disappointment. So I’m good without him.”
I paused again, like I was running some kind of marathon I hadn’t trained for and needed to keep stopping to catch my breath.
“My mother doesn’t speak to me. She hates me. Blames me for opening my mouth, for putting my father in prison. “She told me that every day. But she didn’t lay a hand on me. She made sure I was fed, clothed, taken care of in the most basic of ways. She was afraid of my father. Even though he was locked up, she was terrified of him.”
Again, I stared at Hades’s eyebrows, not strong enough to look into his eyes. I had a few miles left to go before I could do that.
“But she was a smart and vindictive woman, so she knew that she didn’t need to lay a hand on me to hurt me. To damage me,” I sighed, thinking of those terrible years after my father was sent to jail. The ones that remained open wounds, still bleeding.
“I’m indifferent to my father, but I dislike my mother. No, I hate her.” My voice was ugly and angry now. “Sure, I’m supposed to be better than that. I’m supposed to feel sorry for her, recognize that her life empty, miserable and sad. But I can’t do that.”
I sucked in a long, deep breath, letting the oxygen seep into the limbs that felt numb and heavy. Parts of me felt lighter, but there were parts of me that felt more weighed down than before I began.
It was one thing to say all of this, to let it all hang out, to show Hades the dark parts of me. But now I had to deal with what happened after. After I’d shown him the damaged parts of me. In the time it took for me to recover from saying all of that, to find even footing in the present after lingering too long in the past, Hades did not say a word. The silence stretched on, yawning forward, creeping into the crevices inside me.
He wasn’t going to speak. Either because he didn’t know what to say or because he expected me to say more. Despite the fact I’d shared with him more than I had with another living soul, I did actually have more to say.
“So you see, Hades, I’m ruined,” I admitted, my voice little more than a whisper. “In the most visceral of ways. In a kind of way that makes it impossible for me to be with anyone who isn’t. I need someone who understands monsters, who understands and knows how to live amongst the ugliness of this world.”
I sucked in an unsteady breath, finally looking at Hades properly for the first time. “I need you.”
