Chapter Eighteen #2
From the corner of his eye, he saw his mother’s steps falter, but her hesitation lasted only briefly. Pulling her shoulders back, she continued toward him, her mouth forming into something that might be considered a smile but was really little more than a baring of teeth.
His breath caught in his throat, and his heart seized. The very idea of her touching him made his skin crawl, but he didn’t know how to get out of it without making a scene.
Luckily, three feet from him, Meredith Tripoli slid smoothly into his mother’s path and caught her by the hand. “Thank you again for being here,” she said, greeting Suzanne like an old friend as she gestured toward the empty chairs. “Have a seat, and we’ll get started in just a minute.”
Releasing the breath he’d been holding and trying to calm his racing pulse, Asher looked out into the audience, his eyes going straight to the center of the front row.
Maybe Cameron had been watching him the entire time, or maybe it was just a coincidence that he’d glanced up at that exact moment.
When their eyes met, he lowered his head a fraction and smiled so sweetly Asher forgot to breathe all over again.
Cameron moved his lips in a slow, exaggerated way as he mouthed, “I love you,” then curved his hands together into a heart over his chest.
A bark of surprised laughter exploded from Asher’s throat, drawing the attention of pretty much everyone around him. He didn’t care. It had been exactly what he’d needed. God, he was one lucky bastard, and no matter what happened next, that wouldn’t change.
“Love you,” he mouthed back, then blew Cameron a kiss.
When the warning came that they would resume filming in sixty seconds, Meredith took her seat, perching on the edge of her chair with her ankles crossed and her hands folded neatly in her lap.
Asher adjusted as well, sitting up a little straighter.
Across from him, his parents shifted, leaning closer to each other, and his mother’s eyes instantly turned wet and shiny.
Asher snorted.
A harassed-looking man with a scruffy beard and disheveled hair began the countdown at the ten-second mark. Once he’d reached three, he went silent, using only his fingers to count down to one, then pointed that same finger at Meredith.
Here we go, Asher thought .
“Welcome back, everyone.” Meredith beamed into the camera, showing every one of her impossibly white teeth.
“We’re here with bestselling author Asher Dare.
” She spared him a brief look before turning to her right.
“As well as Asher’s parents, Lawrence and Suzanne Derringer. Thank you all for being here.”
“Thank you for this opportunity,” Suzanne simpered while her husband nodded beside her.
Asher only smiled.
“Now, earlier in the show, you spoke a little about what Asher was like as a boy.” Meredith’s smile was still impeccable, but her eyes narrowed a fraction.
“You painted a picture of a typical, happy family.” Suzanne opened her mouth to respond, but Meredith angled away from her, focusing her attention on Asher instead.
“Is that how you remember your childhood?”
Asher pretended to consider the question for several seconds, but in reality, he was relishing watching his mother struggle to keep her composure. Finally, he shook his head.
“I don’t really know what would be considered ‘typical,’ but I wouldn’t describe my childhood as a happy one.”
Meredith smiled encouragingly. “Can you elaborate on that?”
“For me, it was…lonely.” Tell the truth.
Keep it simple . “I don’t remember a lot of laughter in our house.
We didn’t have family dinners around the table where we talked about our day.
” He let a little of his whirling emotions seep into his voice.
“My parents didn’t really care what I did as long as I stayed out of their way and didn’t do anything to embarrass them. ”
“And if you did embarrass them?” Meredith pressed.
When his parents had noticed him, it had always been to belittle him, to tell him what a disappointment he was.
Every infraction, no matter how small, had been met with swift and brutal punishments.
He remembered having to wear long sleeves in August to hide the bruises after bringing home a B on a math test. He remembered the stinging welts on his back after he’d accidentally broken a glass in the kitchen.
He remembered the taste of blood that filled his mouth when he hadn’t made the junior high football team.
The audience gasped as he divulged just a small sampling of what it had been like to grow up in the Derringer household. Asher felt a little lightheaded as he concluded. He’d never told anyone those things before, not even Luke. Not Cameron.
Meredith smiled and touched his arm briefly before shifting her focus to his parents. “Suzanne, Lawrence, how do you respond to that?”
“I probably wasn’t around as much as I should have been.” Lawrence spoke slowly, his tone considering. “I worked hard to make sure we had a roof over our heads and food on the table. That meant a lot of late nights, and I admit I was quick to lose my temper back then, but—”
“We’ve always loved you,” Suzanne broke in, speaking directly to Asher. “We weren’t perfect, but we did the best we could.”
Her words weren’t as prepared or polished as they had been in earlier interviews.
Maybe she hadn’t expected him to be so blunt, or possibly, she hadn’t expected him to talk about his childhood at all.
To be fair, he hadn’t planned on sharing quite so much, either.
He did, however, find it telling that neither of them tried to deny the allegations, just excuse them away.
Inwardly, Asher smirked as listened to them scramble to justify what they’d done. On the outside, however, he kept his expression perfectly impassive when Meredith turned back to him.
“Asher, tell us about the day you left your parents’ house. It was right after you were caught kissing another young man, correct?”
Asher nodded. The story wasn’t particularly salacious, but it also hadn’t happened how his mother had described it to Landon Dwyer. He never would have been bold enough to bring anyone back to his childhood home, especially not a boy he’d been crushing on for almost a year.
“I don’t know what happened to him, and I won’t embarrass him by saying his name, but yes.
It was my first kiss, and it wasn’t a very good one to be honest.” He paused while the audience chuckled in amusement.
“It was in the park after school. I don’t know who saw us, but my mother was waiting for me on the porch when I got home. ”
He’d known immediately that something was wrong, but he hadn’t yet guessed how much worse it would get before the end.
Suzanne had been crying, but unlike now, the tears hadn’t been for the world.
They’d been entirely for herself, because Asher had embarrassed her.
He’d brought shame to their family. She’d screamed at him, calling him a filthy, disgusting freak and telling him he would surely burn in hell for his sins.
She had then continued her tirade by proclaiming that she’d always known there was something rotten in him and that she wished she had never given birth to him.
It had gone on in the same vein for more than twenty minutes before his father had pulled into the gravel driveway in his old, rusted Chevy pickup.
Asher could still remember the look of abject rage on Lawrence’s face as he’d thrown himself out of the cab and charged across the lawn.
Asher had managed to duck the first blow his father had aimed at him, but he hadn’t been so lucky the second time.
Or the six times after that.
Asher lowered his head and stared down at his knees. He couldn’t remember what he’d been saying, and he definitely wasn’t faking feeling “overcome by emotion. ”
“It’s okay,” Meredith said, her voice soft and coaxing. “Take your time. What happened after your parents found out?”
Asher took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself, then recounted the events of that afternoon, pausing intermittently when he thought his voice might break. Shocked gasps echoed around the studio again, followed by a chorus of angry muttering that grew louder as he neared the end of his story.
“Then, they told me I wasn’t welcome in their home any longer,” he concluded. “I was able to grab a change of clothes and some money I’d saved up before my father dragged me outside and threw me into the yard.”
Meredith reached over and took his hand, giving it a firm, reassuring squeeze.
“Thank you for sharing that with us. I know it couldn’t have been easy.
” Pulling her hand back, she moved her attention to his parents, but instead of giving them a chance to respond to his accusations this time, she asked, “Did you ever try to find your son after he left?”
Suzanne’s glare was filled with fury, but when she spoke, her voice was soft and fragile.
“Of course, we looked. We notified the police when he didn’t come home that night. We searched the whole town.” She sniffled brokenly. “We looked for days.”
Apparently, Meredith wasn’t impressed with this answer, because she arched a dark, sculpted eyebrow and tilted her head. “Your only child went missing, and you stopped searching after a couple of days?”
Her tone was mildly curious rather than accusatory, but Asher couldn’t hold back his smile, especially when Lawrence’s face turned scarlet as if his whole head was about to explode.
“You say you searched the town,” Meredith continued when neither of them responded. “Did you ever check at the bus station?”
“The police did,” Lawrence bit out through clenched teeth. “There were no reports that a boy matching his description had been there or purchased a ticket.”
It was obvious he was lying. Judging by the renewed murmurings, the audience seemed to think so as well.
“I see,” Meredith mused. “Yet, there was no missing person report filed with the Wrightsville Police Department during that time. In fact, there were no children reported missing at all that year. So, who were the police looking for at the bus station?”
Lawrence sputtered. Suzanne’s nostrils flared as she chewed vigorously on her bottom lip. Asher wanted to pump his fist into the air, but instead, settled for a short nod and a quick glance at Cameron, who was smiling so broadly his eyes were mere slits.
Meredith wasn’t finished, though. “You sold your house and moved out of town a few months after Asher’s disappearance. Can you tell us why? ”
“That’s…we…you can’t,” Lawrence blustered, subsiding only when his wife placed a hand on his arm and shook her head.
“We moved,” Suzanne answered in a quavering voice, “because it was too painful to stay. There were just too many memories.”
More likely, they couldn’t stand the shame. It would have been torture for them having the whole town whispering behind their backs.
Meredith gave her a dismissive nod, then refocused her attention on Asher. “Do you have anything to say to that? Any questions you want to ask?”
There had once been a time when he’d had lots of questions that he had thought he wanted answers to. Had his parents ever loved him? Had they ever been proud of him, even once? Why hadn’t he been good enough? What had he done to make them hate him so much?
Catching Cameron’s eye, seeing his encouraging nod, Asher realized none of those things mattered to him anymore.
He didn’t need his parents love or their approval.
Any answers they gave him would be lies, practiced speeches for the world, not for him.
No, all he really wanted where they were concerned was for them to quietly slink back to wherever they’d come from and leave him in peace .
Still holding Cameron’s gaze, Asher shook his head. “No, I already have everything I need.”