AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Once back at the hotel, he showered and texted Mariella again, asking if she had plans for the rest of the day, but she still didn’t respond. Her silence was starting to piss him off.
Antsy, and bored, he grabbed his keys and went for a drive. Twenty minutes later he was parked outside of his childhood home, unsure what he was doing there.
No one was home, and no one would know if he went inside. It seemed like a safe time to look around. For what, he didn’t know.
He didn’t have a key, but he knew where one was hidden. Shimmying loose the corner brick of the back step, he found the hidden key and let himself inside.
He’d been prepared for the pungent stench of his father’s cigarette smoke but was surprised by the fresh scent of paint and wood polish. The carpets were gone and there was hardly any furniture.
What the hell did Erin do with everything?
The house looked completely different, yet strangely the same. His hand traced over the newly painted moldings, the sheen of high gloss latex highlighting the architectural detail he’d never noticed before.
Had Erin done all this herself?
Guilt churned in his stomach. He should have helped her—sent her some money. At least she would have been able to take whatever she needed from the store.
The sun faded behind the mountains on the horizon, leaving the hall dim. He slowly walked the narrow path as he’d done a thousand times before.
Echoes of childhood memories teased the silence, and a chill of unease set his teeth on edge as he staired at the unpainted door at the end of the hall.
He stared at the corner, where his father used to make him stand. Divots carved into the sheetrock where the clasp of his dad’s belt had missed him and hit the wall. Those little nicks matched some of the scars that spattered his skin.
There used to be a table at the end of the hall. His fingers traced the scar on his temple as he recalled Ward throwing him into it when he was no more than nine.
He pushed open Erin’s door and found a room that belonged to a woman he didn’t know. Perfume bottles and books and several other signs of her maturity filled him with a sadness he couldn’t square away.
A picture of her and Giovanni sat on the nightstand. He picked it up and smiled at her happy expression, something he hadn’t seen in a long time. In just a glimpse, he made up his mind that Erin’s husband was good for her. He wanted to know the man, perhaps buy him a beer.
Staring at her smile, he tried to imagine her laugh but couldn’t remember the sound. He needed to work on that.
Leaving her room as he found it, he faced the chipped door to his childhood bedroom. Images from that final day flooded his mind unbidden. He remembered Erin’s panic as he shoved whatever he could fit into a bag and rushed through the house, needing to get out before his father got home.
When he told Ward about the scholarship falling through, his father pelted him with a laundry list of disappointments, calling him a failure who would never amount to anything. For most of Harrison’s life, his indignant anger and determination to prove his father wrong provoked a strong work ethic.
But over time, there seemed a primal wound that wouldn’t heal, a scar that forever reminded him the two people who should have loved him most in this world never loved him at all. And when his father died, he’d expected that lifelong vendetta to die, too, but it hadn’t.
All the unresolved battles, and missing explanations, stung on a daily basis, a swarm of yellow jackets that never tired and couldn’t be outrun. He’d swipe away the memories and barrel toward some other challenge, anything that demanded enough of his focus that the peripheral of his past might fade.
The floor creaked as his weight settled forward into another step. His muscles locked as he stared at the battered wood and chipped paint of the door.
Before he left Jasper Falls, Harrison told his father that he was the failure and blamed him for all their problems. Ward got ahold of him then, cursing him for being an ungrateful son and bellowing about what a burden both he and Erin had been.
For a moment, Harrison stopped fighting him, thinking it might be easier to simply let go. But as his father’s thumbs crushed into his windpipe, something came over him, demanding he get out of there.
He swung, needing only one good hit to knock his dad off of him. Harrison scrambled to his feet, every inhalation burning like fire as the air scraped down his ravaged throat.
He looked down at his dad with such hate, he feared if he stayed one of them would eventually kill the other. If he ended up killing Ward, he’d only prove his father right and end up living a wasted life. With no college future and no place to go, maybe prison wouldn’t be that bad. Thoughts like that spurred him to leave, and he frantically packed what he could before allowing himself the chance to change his mind.
