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SIXTY-THREE
Everything goes very still. I hear the static in the air, the breath moving in and out of my lungs. My heart. My pulse.
‘You mean. . .’
‘It’s time you knew,’ he repeats.
He’s enjoying this, but all I can think is Matty Melgren has spent the last twenty years exactly where he deserves to be. That I’ve been torturing myself for nothing. That I did the right thing.
I need more though; why he did it, why he didn’t hurt us too. Were we just a part of his scheme, a wall to hide behind? Or did he genuinely love my mother and me?
Was he off killing women all those times he cancelled on us? What was he doing the day of my Prize Giving? What was the champagne he brought around afterwards really to celebrate?
He was a father to me, but was I a daughter to him? Was I anything?
I need dates and details. I need to understand him.
I’m afraid to speak in case it breaks the spell and he clams up again, and yet there’s something bothering me, niggling like a nugget of corn caught between two teeth.
‘Why are you telling me this now?’
I don’t buy his spiel about time running out. That implies a compassion I’m pretty sure he’s incapable of.
‘I’ve been talking with a priest,’ he says.
I cock a brow. Yeah right, I think, but I don’t challenge him.
‘You must have suspected. . .’
I shake my head.
‘Not till—’
He scoffs, shakes his head, eyes half shut.
‘I still can’t believe it. I mean, after everything. . .’
My chest tightens as it slowly dawns on me. He’s known all along. Is that why he’s brought me here? To confront me, to pay me back?
‘It took a long time to truly believe it,’ he says. ‘And even then I had my doubts, but of course it was the only thing that made sense. That dark streak. Self-preservation too, I suppose.’
My cheeks burn, my mind going back to the past we shared. I think about how much I secretly enjoyed crushing Sally Sniders, a truth I’d shared only with him. The snarky comments I made about Des, how cruel I was about him. And then of course the thing with my mother that he can’t know but may very well have guessed at.
I did it for her, I tell myself.
You still did it, the other voice inside me whispers.
He’s talking, I force myself to focus. This is the last time we’ll speak. I can’t afford to miss a word.
‘. . . hated me deep down. Resented me for having all the fun.’
‘Fun?’
I’m nauseated, a pulse throbbing dully in my carotid.
‘I fought it for a long time, tried so hard to suppress the urges. It took such effort just trying to appear normal. All the while this force was building inside me, a pressure like I was going to explode.’
He pauses, looks at his lap, and for the first time his bravado fades. He almost looks ashamed.
