21. PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
Now playing: Drag Path - Twenty One Pilots
The morning sun filtered through the sheer curtains of the Donovan kitchen, casting a warm, golden glow over the sprawling marble island. I sat on one of the plush barstools, staring blankly down at a half-eaten plate of eggs, the ceramic mug of black coffee warming my palms.
David stood near the entryway of the kitchen, adjusting the silk tie of his immaculate charcoal suit, getting ready to head into the law firm for the day.
Cindy moved fluidly around the space, pouring herself a cup of tea as she discussed her plans for the afternoon, her voice a comforting, steady hum.
“It’s been such a massive adjustment,” she was saying, leaning against the counter with a soft, thoughtful smile.
“Retiring from real estate after thirty years.… I woke up yesterday and realized I didn’t have a single showing or closing to rush to.
I’m thinking of finally starting that community garden project the neighborhood board has been talking about. ”
“You’ve earned the rest, Mom,”
David chuckled, reaching for his briefcase.
“She says she’s resting, but she’s already managing the HOA like it’s a Fortune 500 company.
Speaking of managing things,… Heather is doing brilliantly at the firm, Cal.
She took the lead on a massive corporate litigation case yesterday and absolutely dismantled the opposing counsel.
April is loving her new rotation at the pediatric hospital, too.
She says the hours are brutal, but the kids make it worth it. ”
“And Sarah?” Si asked from the stool beside me.
“Sarah is still floating around.” David sighed, though his eyes crinkled with fond amusement.
“She’s a bit uncertain about what she wants to do after graduation.
She’s talking about taking a gap year to travel.
I told her she has time. She’s young. She doesn’t need to have the whole world figured out at twenty-one. ”
I stared at the countertop, the words echoing hollowly in my skull. She has time. I didn’t know what it felt like to have time at twenty-one. At twenty-one, I was fighting for my life in bingo halls, bleeding for twenty bucks a night, desperate to prove I deserved the air I was breathing.
David paused, the light, conversational tone draining out of the room. He set his briefcase down on the edge of the island, his sharp, intelligent eyes finding mine.
“Fiona has tried calling the office a few times since yesterday,”
I scoffed, the bitter, jagged sound ripping from my throat. “Of course she has.”
“I haven’t returned her calls,” David continued smoothly. “When I texted her to inform her that all communications regarding the estate would go strictly through me, she read it, but never responded.”
“Her unreliable tendencies are no different today than they were when I was a kid,” I stated coldly, my fingers tightening around my mug.
“She disappeared when things got hard, and now she’s popping back up because she smells an opportunity.
I assume she thinks there’s some kind of financial gain for her from Ewan’s death.
She’s probably hoping I’ll cut her a check just to make her go away. ”
David’s jaw tightened. “She did leave one voicemail. She told me she was informed by the coroner that Ewan died from a massive, prolonged heart attack.”
I looked down at the dark surface of my coffee, desperately trying to hide the immediate rush of vindication that flooded my veins.
Prolonged. He hadn’t just gone to sleep and faded away peacefully.
He suffered. He’d been terrified, clutching his chest in that rotting, filthy house, completely alone, gasping for the air he’d so ruthlessly stolen from my lungs when he held my head under the freezing bathwater.
There was a profound, twisted release in knowing his death didn’t come peacefully.
But almost instantly, that dark satisfaction was chased by a suffocating wave of guilt.
I sat there in the warmth of my family’s home, questioning my own moral compass.
Did feeling this way make me a monster? Did the sheer lack of sympathy for a dying man make me a shitty person?
Had Ewan’s violence infected my blood so deeply that I was fundamentally broken, unable to feel basic human empathy?
I looked up, catching the intense, piercing look David was giving me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cindy quickly turn her back to the island, pretending to wipe down the pristine stove, though I could see the rigid set of her shoulders as she tried to hide her own heartbreak.
They were concerned. They were deeply, profoundly worried about the war waging inside my head, and I knew that.
Cindy and David were the only two people on this entire earth who truly knew the agonizing, bloody extent of the abuse.
They were the ones who had photographed the bruises on my fourteen-year-old ribs.
They were the ones who had held me while I screamed in the grips of night terrors.
And they had also upheld my terrified, desperate wishes not to report Ewan to the police.
I knew it had never been an easy thing for them to swallow, knowing a monster was walking free, but they did it for me anyway.
Because unlike my biological parents, the Donovans’ only concern, their only priority, was making sure I felt safe, heard, and protected.
“I’m fine, Dad,” I lied quietly, breaking the heavy silence.
He nodded slowly, though he didn’t believe a word of it. “We’ll handle the legalities, Callum. You just…do what you need to do today.”
The drive into the decaying heart of Philadelphia was suffocating me slowly. Silas sat in the passenger seat, and although he hadn’t pushed me to talk, with his body pointed toward me, I could feel his brown eyes tracing each line in my face.
“Do you still have them? The nightmares, I mean?” he asked softly, his voice cutting through the hum of the tires on the asphalt.
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
“I remember you had nightmares all the time when we were younger,” Silas murmured, his brow furrowed. “But since we got back together, I haven’t really noticed them. I honestly thought they stopped.”
I swallowed the heavy lump in my throat. “No, they’re still there, I just got better at catching them before I wake you. If I feel one starting, I try to pull myself out. Usually, I curl into you and hold on until my heart rate drops.”
Silas stared at me, and a profound, aching realization washed over his face. “The night we got married…” he whispered, “I woke up in the middle of the night, and you weren’t in bed. You were sitting outside on the porch.”
I nodded once, and my chest tightened. “I didn’t want to wake my new husband on our wedding night because I was triggered by a man who wasn’t even there.”
Silas reached across the center console, his large hand wrapping securely around my thick bicep, his thumb pressing into the muscle. The physical weight of his touch was the only thing keeping me tethered to the present.
Ten minutes later, I pulled the truck onto the cracked, weed-choked driveway. Engine off, we sat there staring through the windshield.
The house was in horrific shape. Paint peeled in curling strips like flaking dead skin.
The front porch visibly sagged under the weight of moist, rotten wood, and the lawn was a graveyard of rusted car parts, shattered beer bottles, and overgrown, thorny briars.
It looked exactly like what it was: a decaying monument for a miserable and violent man.
“Do you think if I set it on fire I’ll get arrested?” I asked in a stoic voice.
Silas didn’t miss a beat. “Probably, but I’d help you anyway.”
A dark, humorless sound escaped me as we got out of the truck and crunched along the gravel.
I didn’t go to the front door immediately.
Instead, I walked around the side of the house while Silas followed closely behind.
The forest of weeds brushed aggressively against our jeans, snagging on the denim as we rounded the building.
Stopping outside a dirt-caked window, my breath hitched.
The screen was violently ripped, its jagged edges curling outward.
"That was my room." I pointed to the filthy glass. “That’s the window I climbed out of the night I ran away. Dropped onto the grass right here and ran toward the road. I didn’t stop until my lungs gave out.”
Silas stepped up beside me, brushing his shoulder against mine. He looked at the window with a tight jaw, like he was visualizing the horrifying reality of my youth.
We circled back to the front porch, the wood groaning in a miserable protest under our weight. I walked over to the dying, withered potted plant and kicked it over with the toe of my boot. The spare brass key sat there in the spilled dirt, exactly where it had always been.
“All these years,” I muttered with a shake of my head as I picked up the cold metal. “He never changed the hiding spot.”
I pushed the door open, and the second we crossed the threshold, the air hit me like a physical blow to the sternum.
Inside smelled exactly the same. A stagnant blend of stale cigarette smoke, Old Spice cologne, and sour beer hit me head on.
It bypassed my brain completely and injected itself straight into my bloodstream.
My vision swam, the edges of the room blurring as my nervous system hijacked my body.
I was instantly transported back to being a kid.
Stuck between these four walls, suffering at the hands of a cruel man.
Empty liquor bottles scattered like landmines across the coffee table and carpet. A layer of dust coated every single surface, magnified by the shafts of light bleeding through the broken blinds.