Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Eight
“What’d she do?” Selkie asks.
I’d already thought the worst had happened, but I was wrong.
“She had Oscar and then, after she saw him through the baby stages, she took her life.” I choke as I try to hold back tears.
This is met with silence. Not horrified or sympathetic, just a quiet patience I didn’t know Selkie had, waiting for me to further bare my soul.
I focus my gaze on the wall across the room. “I came home one day, a police car with lights flashing was parked at the curb. The neighbor woman was standing on my doorstep, holding Oscar. Telling me that Chloe was dead.”
The memories are so vivid that my soul starts to splinter. I think I should end the story there, but Selkie has to know everything. She has to understand who I am. I need her to believe in me, trust me despite the blood on my hands.
“It wasn’t like she had this sudden urge; it was clear she had planned it.
She left Oscar with the neighbor, went home, took a bottle of pills, and let herself die.
” I take a shaky breath. “She left a note. It said, Take care of Oscar. Not sorry, not I love you. Nothing. After she was raped, I think she lost her ability to feel. I told myself she still loved me. Loved Oscar. I needed to believe that she forgave me.”
I turn my head so I can see Selkie’s face. It’s blank, thank god. I couldn’t handle soothing words or meaningless gestures.
“But I couldn’t convince myself. The guilt, the self-hatred, the bewilderment.
All the could’ves, should’ves. I had known she was spiraling but didn’t insist she get counselling.
I didn’t insist she file charges. All I wanted was for everything to go back to normal because I didn’t know how to handle anything else. ”
I let out a deep sigh thinking about how I failed my wife. She was soft, gentle, maybe even a little naive despite growing up in care. She believed in me, depended on me and I let her down in every conceivable way.
Selkie gently touches my thigh, rests her hand on it.
“I was respectable back then,” I tell her.
“Had a job, looked like what a decent husband and father should look like. Family Services offered their support but there was no talk of taking Oscar from me. They never called or came back and I never reached out to them. I was dead inside. I couldn’t reach out to anyone. ”
Selkie makes an ‘mmm’ sound, not disapproving, but understanding.
“I went through the motions for about a year. Went to work, came home, slept or tried to. Rasheeda, the same neighbor who found Chloe after she took her life, looked after Oscar during the day. When I was home, I fed him and clothed him. Did all the things a parent is supposed to. He was a good kid, even back then, so I never felt overwhelmed. But I also didn’t give him the care and attention he needed.
” I take Selkie’s hand from my thigh, kiss her knuckles, and let it drop into her lap.
Her presence is reassuring but right now I can’t stand being touched.
“You have to understand, I was catatonic, consumed by guilt. I didn’t care about anything, couldn’t find it in me to love that kid. Not then.
“A year later, Hangman shows up. Roars up on his bike acting like he belonged to the neighborhood.” I chuckle at the memory. “I was drinkin’ heavily by then. Any friends I had were long gone. Most of them disappeared even before Chloe killed herself.”
“People are like that,” Selkie muses softly.
“Yeah,” I reply, knowing I would probably be like that. I think of Reaper who took my brother under his wing in prison, who showed for the funeral, who knew my past and still stuck around. He ultimately became the closest friend I have. He wasn’t like that.
“Anyway, Hangman practically busted down the door, wanted to know where Oscar was.
“I remember wanting to punch him for daring to show his face in my house. Irrational, yeah, because he did so much for Chloe and me, but he was also a reminder of the hell I was going through. The fact that he was the hero and I was such a loser made me crazy. I didn’t want him there.
I started to tell him to get out but never got the chance because he grabbed me by the collar and slammed me into the wall.
I’m askin’ where the fuckin’ kid is? he snarled.
“I couldn’t process why he was there. Worried he was going to take Oscar away from me. It made me wake up, realize how much Oscar mattered. I told him it was none of his fuckin’ business.
“He punched me hard enough I hit the floor. Kicked me a few times. Raised his boot like he was gonna stomp my head.
“Sleeping, I told him. In the bedroom.
“He picks me up and throws me onto the coffee table, so hard it splinters under my weight. I try to get up but he kicks me in the gut.
“Stay down, you prick, he said in a voice that scared the shit out of me. I was drunk, I was grieving and I was not a violent man. So I rolled away from him, but I fuckin’ stayed down.
“What do you want? I said or something like that.
“He says, You got a goddamn kid to look after. You’re lettin’ yourself slide into an alcoholic coma. You’re gonna lose the kid and how’s that gonna help your fucking dead wife?”
Selkie sucks a breath at Hangman’s brutal words. “Jesus.”
“That’s Hangman,” I say as I gather my courage.
“He doesn’t mince words. Don’t think he has empathy.
He has a sense of justice, even if it’s skewed.
I didn’t think it at the time, but he was what I needed.
A deadly motherfucker to jar me out of my self-imposed stupor.
I couldn’t even react to the cruelty of his words. That’s how dead I was inside.”
“So what did you do?”
I pause, recalling the scene. So explicit, burned into my mind like everything else around that time. Asked him how was I supposed to help a dead woman?
“Hangman grabbed me off the floor, holding me so close to him, I could smell the staleness of his breath.”
I don’t know why that memory sticks, the smell of him.
Diesel, leather, and his breath. “You didn’t rape your wife,” he said.
“You didn’t push your wife to top herself.
It don’t matter what you could’ve done to help her.
She was never gonna get over it. So quit wallowin’ in self-pity over a dead woman who’s never comin’ back. ”
I snort as I think about it. “Hangman’s words were cruel, but not wrong. Chloe was gone and I had other responsibilities.”
“Like Oscar,” Selkie says.
“Yeah. Hangman said the same thing. Your fuckin’ kid needs a dad, not a drunk.
You’re all he has left. The kid’s gonna get lost in the foster system, you fuckin’ loser, because you can’t pull your head out of your ass.
He dropped me on my ass then punched the wall.
” I stop, laugh softly. “Left a hole in it.”
At the time, it never occurred to me to ask him how he knew how bad I was spiraling. But I heard him loud and clear. Oscar needed me and I was at risk of losing him. For Chloe’s sake, I needed to give Oscar the love neither of us got growing up.
I run a finger down Selkie’s thigh. “Hangman kept lecturing me. Called me a pussy for letting her rapists get away for what basically amounted to murder. Egged me on.”
I stop to gather my thoughts. This is the make-or-break revelation.
I get out of bed and walk to the window.
It’s a clear night and I know the moonlight’s exposing the rawness of my memories.
“I’m gonna tell you something that’s gonna make you think differently about me.
” My mouth dries up. “If you wanna leave because of it, then I’ll have to live with that. It’s the only reason I’ll let you go.”
Her face is blank, not an ounce of emotion on it. A poker face. She’s not giving away her hand.
It doesn’t take a genius to know what I’m gonna say next, but she still says, “Tell me.”
“Hangman and I hunted down the fuckers who raped Chloe. Every fuckin’ one of them died by my hand. They got off easy. Chloe suffered for almost two years. These fuckers didn’t have to.”
Selkie sucks in a breath as she gets out of bed and walks over to me. From behind me, she says, “I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same.” She slides her arms around my waist and leans her head between my shoulder blades.
I grab her hands and squeeze, realizing she’s offering me a lifeline. “You’re too good to do something that brutal,” I say.
“No, I’m actually not,” she replies. After a heartbeat she adds, “I understand how much you love Chloe, but she can’t be that third person in our relationship.
” She stops, waits for me to respond, then when I don’t, says, “You have to let her go. You have to let that part of your past go. Not Chloe’s memory, but the grief and guilt you feel over it.
It will get in the way of whatever we are and if that happens, then I won’t stay.
You and I both know how shallow I am. I don’t have the capacity to support you. ”
I turn to face her and pull her close to me. “What happened to her defines who I am today. I’m overprotective, temperamental, and controlling. I keep the emotions inside or used to. You bring me out, piss me off. You’ve revived me in a way no one else has.”
She lays her head on my chest. “I sense a ‘but’.”
I shake my head. “There’s no but. You’re exactly what I need to move on. You’re like Hangman more than you realize.”
“Fuck you,” she says softly.
“That’s exactly it. You do and say what you want, give the world the finger when you don’t like how it deals with you.
Drive me crazy because of it.” I pause, take a shallow breath.
“A piece of me will always love Chloe. A piece of me will always feel guilt. I’m not over it, probably will never be, but she’s my past. You’re here now. You’re here always.”
“Don’t you forget that.”
This time I chuckle. “Like you’d ever let me.”
“Yeah. I’d bury you next to her if you let her come between us.”
“That’ll never happen.”
We’re quiet for a moment, holding each other, me contemplating how to move forward after baring my soul to this woman.
Then she says, “You realize that your confession is the reason I’m willing to take the risk of staying with you. I know about you now. You’re a good man, Eight. The best I’ve ever met.”
We kiss, gently at first, but it turns quickly to desperation. We cling tightly to each other, trying to meld. The fucking is frantic, more than before. It’s a letting go of the past for both of us, a new start.
After, we’re lying in bed under the sheet, both on our backs, staring at the ceiling. My hand is twined with hers but that’s the only part of us that’s touching.
I’m starting to doze off, when my phone rings. It’s Red.
“What’s up?” I say.
“Your kids took off,” he replies, sounding more cranky than worried.
“Fuck,” I say which prompts Selkie to sit up.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
I hold up my hand to stall her. “How long?”
“How should I know?” Red replies. “Sorcha woke up and couldn’t find Henri, so she came to me. I checked Oscar’s room. They’re both gone.”
“What?” Selkie demands.
I cover the mouthpiece. “Oscar and Henri took off.”
“Jesus Christ,” she says as she throws the covers off her and jerks to her feet.
She’s not wrong about that.