Chapter 21 #2
Owen released an ironic laugh. “I was concerned about ruining the doctor’s career before it got started, so I told him it happened the way my father said it did. I’ve thought so many times about what might’ve been different for all of us if I’d had the guts to tell that doctor the truth.”
“You were a frightened child navigating a nightmare,” Laura said. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for not stopping it.”
“Again, I know that now, but at the time, I felt like the biggest coward on the face of the earth. And my father knew. He knew that doctor had his number, and he knew I’d been too afraid to tell the truth. He got off on that.”
“Sick, sadistic, son of a bitch,” Laura said.
Owen laughed and hugged her tighter, his lips brushing her forehead. “If we weren’t talking about him, I’d think my princess’s dirty mouth was insanely sexy.”
“I’ll share some more of my naughty words with you at a more appropriate time.”
“I’ll look forward to that.” He ran his hand over her back, in a gesture that comforted and soothed her.
Wasn’t that just like him, to worry about comforting her while dealing with his own nightmare?
“The only respite we ever got was the summers we spent here with our grandparents. Gran could never understand why we cried for days when it was time to go home.”
“So even she didn’t know?”
“He warned us about talking about our family’s business to ‘outsiders’ and the dire consequences our mother would face if we ‘talked out of school.’ That was one of his favorite expressions.
Since she was stuck at home with him while we were here, we kept quiet.
Now we know Gram had her suspicions something was off.
After it all came out later, she said if she’d known how far off it really was, she would’ve shot him herself and borne his dire consequences. ”
“From the little I know of her from our phone calls, I have no doubt she would’ve done it.”
“Oh, I know she would’ve. She loves us like nobody’s business. If it weren’t for her and Gramps and those summers we spent here, we’d all be in the loony bin.”
“It must’ve been so tough to go home at the end of the summer.”
“It was horrible. We had this period of total normalcy every year, and we lived for it. Other than his deployments that got more infrequent the higher up he got, it was our only break from the insanity.” Owen’s fingers slid through her hair absently, as if he needed to touch her.
“I was offered a couple of scholarships to college, and my father wrangled me an appointment to West Point.”
“I thought you didn’t go to college.”
“I didn’t. I refused to go, which led to his never-ending belief that I’m good for nothing along with another violent confrontation. But I wasn’t a little kid anymore. I’d grown into a man when he wasn’t paying attention, and I laid him out flat. Knocked him right out cold.”
“Oh my God. What did he do?”
“He called the cops and pressed charges against me.”
Laura sat right up and looked him in the eye. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Smiling at her choice of words, he said, “I wish I was. I was eighteen at the time, so I was charged with felony assault, which was later whittled down to a misdemeanor, but it’s still on my record.
He saw to it that I spent a few nights in jail, too.
I lost my appointment to West Point, which further infuriated him.
Of course, he took no responsibility whatsoever for his own role in the incident. ”
Laura had never heard anything so outrageous in her life. “What about the scholarships?”
“As much as I wanted out of there, I turned them all down.”
“Why?”
His small smile conveyed a world of meaning.
“Your siblings,” she said as understanding dawned on her. She resettled her head on his chest. “You couldn’t leave them.”
“Righto. I did what I could for them until he kicked me out of the house when I was twenty. He was getting tired of not being able to pound on anyone because I was always interfering. After I knocked him out, he knew better than to screw with me. I took my sisters Julia and Katie with me. They’re the twins, and they were eighteen at the time.
We got jobs and our own place, and the others spent as much time with us as they could.
We thought about reporting him to the authorities, but we were always afraid he’d wriggle out of it because of his standing in the community and things would be even worse for the others.
So we kept quiet and did what we could for the younger ones.
When he was transferred to Ft. Hood in Texas, we went with them, doing everything we could for the four still stuck at home.
Our imperfect system was working pretty well until the youngest one, Jeff, tried to kill himself when he was fourteen. ”
“Jesus,” Laura said.
“Long story short, he made it very clear he would try again until he was successful unless we got him out of that house. That’s when we finally told my grandparents what’d been going on.
They retired and moved to Florida. My father fought it tooth and nail, but Jeff went to live with them, and the rest of us were finally free. Everyone except my mother, that is.”
“With all of you out of the house, why didn’t she leave him?”
“Ahhh, isn’t that the question of the ages?
We did everything we could to try to convince her to leave.
We offered her money and places to stay and anything she could possibly need.
Every time we think she’s finally had enough, she goes back for more.
Eventually, we quit trying. After one of these incidents, the child of choice patches her up and listens to her swear this was the last time.
And then he or she comes home from work to find her gone again.
It’s happened at least a dozen times in the last ten years.
She’s never come to me before. It’s always one of the others. ”
“It’s because she knew if she came to you she’d have to face her own conscience for what she allowed you to endure for all those years.”
“Too bad I didn’t meet you sooner. You could’ve saved me a small fortune in therapy. That’s exactly what my therapist said.”
“Maybe the fact that she’s here is a sign that she’s finally had enough.”
“I’ve learned not to get my hopes up.”
They were quiet for a long time as his fingers continued to spool through her hair.
“Now you’ve got the whole ugly story. I can only imagine what you must be thinking.”
Laura rested her chin on his chest and met his gaze. “I’m thinking that you are, without a doubt, the most amazingly heroic man I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.”
“Oh please, Laura,” he said with a groan. “Don’t pin me with that. I missed so many opportunities to put a stop to it.”
With a hand on his face, she forced him to look at her.
“If I want to think you’re heroic, I’m allowed to.
You were very brave, and you stood up for your younger siblings, protecting them from the worst of it.
You sacrificed your own chance to escape to be there for them.
If that’s not heroic, I don’t know what is.
” She kissed the protest off his lips. “I hate to think about what you went through for so long. I wish I could’ve been there for you. ”
“I wouldn’t have wanted you anywhere near it.”
“If your mom hadn’t come here, would you have ever told me?”
“I suppose I would’ve had to explain at some point why I have nothing to do with my parents other than an occasional call to my mother to make sure she’s still alive.”
“Where are your brothers and sisters now?”
“Julia and Katie still live in Texas. Julia is an office manager and Katie is a nurse. I’m really proud of both of them. They lived through the worst of it with me, and came out on the other side happy and productive.”
“Are they married?”
He shook his head. “None of us are. I’ll let you shrink the deeper meaning of that.”
“It doesn’t take a shrink to figure out why the institution doesn’t hold much appeal to any of you.”
“My brother Josh put himself through college with some help from me and my grandparents. He’s an engineer living in Virginia. Cindy stayed in Texas, too. She cuts hair at a salon outside of Dallas and does really well. John is a cop in Tennessee.”
“And Jeff?” Laura was almost afraid to ask about his youngest sibling.
“He had some issues with drugs for a while. My grandmother waged war, got him into a top rehab and nipped it in the bud. Now he’s in college and doing really well. Fingers crossed.”
“You know, I thought the world of her before tonight, but now . . .”
“She’s amazing,” he said simply. “We never would’ve survived without both of them.”
“I wonder . . .” Laura stopped herself, not wanting to delve too deeply into things he might consider private.
“What, honey? After all I’ve told you, there’s nothing you can’t ask me.”
Laura chose her words carefully. “I don’t know Adele all that well, but I have a sense of her as a strong, capable woman from our frequent phone calls.
And now, after hearing what she did for you and your siblings, I admire her even more.
So I can’t help but wonder how a daughter of hers ended up in this situation. ”
“Gram and I have had many a conversation about that,” Owen said with a sigh.
“Apparently, my mother fell hard and fast for my dad at a dance when she was in college. Her parents had him tagged as verbally abusive and passive aggressive from the get-go, but there was no reasoning with her. After a while, Gram said it became a matter of pride to my mom. She refused to admit they’d been right. ”
“Pride goeth before the fall.”
“Exactly.”
With her hand on his face, she kissed him with all the love and passion she felt for him. “This doesn’t change anything between us. I was already head-over-heels in love with you, and after this, I love you even more than I did before.”
“Laura . . .” He cupped the back of her head and brought her in for another sweet kiss. “I love you, too.”