Chapter 30
Lauren
No matter how hard I wring my hands together, the trembling just won’t stop. It travels up my arms and settles in my chest before making its way through my torso and legs.
It’s as if I’m standing in a frozen wasteland, frigid, frozen to the bone instead of the living room.
“Don’t touch him,” Liana insists when I reach toward my father’s face.
“What did you do?” My voice is broken, sobs making my question come out in syllables rather than words.
“I had to,” she whispers, her hand strong and steady on my back when she offers a comforting touch.
“You didn’t,” I argue.
“You don’t understand.”
I look up at her, trying to see her through my tears but finding it impossible. She swims in my vision until I swipe at my eyes. “He’s dead.”
“He had to die.” She glances away from me, her eyes locking on our father.
“Because of a couple bruises?” I point to the handprint he left behind when he grabbed her.
They’d been arguing all morning. I hid in my room, curled in as small of a ball as I could manage in my closet.
“What did he want you to keep?” That’s the only part of the argument I can recall, and now with the knife sticking out of his neck, blood pooling around his body, those memories are already fading.
“Nothing,” she says, and it angers me as much as it always does.
My older sister is the queen of secrets. She never answers my questions, responding instead with don’t worry about it, or you’re too young to understand.
“I’m not a fucking baby!” I scream, the bad words foreign in my mouth.
I look back at my father, wondering if breaking one of his rules will bring him back to life just so he can punish me.
“It’s none of your business,” she spits back, just another familiar response when I demand answers.
“We have to call the cops.” My voice is pleading. “You’re going to be in so much trouble.”
“We’ll be in trouble,” she clarifies. “You watched it happen and didn’t try to stop it.”
I shake my head, immediately rejecting her words. “I didn’t do this!”
She frowns at me like I’m the disappointment here when she’s the one that stabbed our father. She’s the one that stood back while he gasped for breath, blood spilling from his neck as he begged for help.
She stood back, arms crossed over her chest, much the way she is now. She let him die, and it was nothing like I’ve seen in the movies where someone is stabbed and they fall dead to the ground. He rattled, his hands clawing at his throat. He twitched after falling to the floor.
I squeeze my eyes closed, wanting this day to have never happened.
“They’ll take me away. Do you want that? Do you want to go live with our grandmother?”
Just the thought of living with that woman makes me look at my sister for alternatives as I shake my head.
“We’ll leave. We can make it on our own.”
I want to believe her, but my sister can’t even make curfew. How will she ever make a living at fifteen to support us?
She brought her consequences on herself. I don’t know how many nights I heard her begging him to stop the punishment she earned only to go out and do it all over again the next night.
She begged the therapist he brought to the house to help her.
She begged the man next door he enlisted for help even though we were always warned to never be caught alone with him. It’s the same man that looked at me when he was here last week and asked when Dad expected that I’d need his help. My father telling him soon has kept me on my best behavior.
Nothing has helped her. She’s determined to break any rule set in front of her.
“I have to shower,” she says, the blood on the front of her shirt drawing my attention.
“Don’t leave me down here,” I beg, but she shakes me off when I reach for her.
“I’ll deal with it when I’m out of the shower.” Her voice is flat, emotionless, just like the many times it has been after Dad brought a visitor home.
I can’t be fooled into thinking she’s sorry for what she’s done because she never is.
Her shower goes on forever and ever, and she’s only making things worse. The longer she takes, the more we’re going to have to clean up.
Pain shoots through my head, and I know it’s probably because I haven’t had the chance to eat, but it isn’t the first time I skipped a meal to avoid the risk of being seen by my dad while arguing with my sister.
I don’t want to be called a disappointment the way he calls her.
I close my eyes, wishing it all away, but when I open them again, I’m no longer on the couch.
I feel weightless as I try to blink away the steam filling the bathroom.
Liana is there, her hand running over her lower belly, and I don’t understand. She’s probably sick to her stomach from what she did, or maybe it has to do with the red welts on her back and bottom. They look like they hurt.
I keep quiet because she’d be so upset with me if she knew I was in here with her. She’s always complaining about having no privacy to both Dad and me.
After plugging the bathtub, something I find very weird because she has the shower running, she climbs into the tub, letting all of it pour over her.
My first thought when I see the knife in her hand is that Dad is going to be pissed. We aren’t allowed to take any dishes out of the kitchen, but then I remember that he’s dead. She won’t get punished for it.
I gasp when she drags it from her wrist to the inside of her elbow, but she doesn’t hear me. It’s as if she’s transfixed on the rush of red that blooms on a wave.
She doesn’t stop there. She’s not content with one arm. I scream when she does the same to other, noticing how she’s already growing weak from the injuries as the knife doesn’t cut as far the second time.
I’m locked in place, unable to go to her, unable to help her the way I did Dad earlier today.
The knife falls from her hand, not making a sound as it sinks to the bottom of the rapidly filling bathtub.
“Pitiful, isn’t it?”
I jerk my head toward the voice, but it doesn’t make sense. Liana is somehow in the tub but also standing beside me.
“What have you done?” I scream.
She doesn’t wince or tell me to keep my voice down.
She smiles, her eyes locked on her body in the tub. She’s started to turn that weird gray color that Dad turned after he stopped twitching.
Tears burn my eyes. I know what’s happening. I know this means I’ll be left all alone.
“Why did you do this?” I sob.
“I had to.” It’s the same answer she gave when I asked about Dad’s death. “You’ll be fine.”
Liana turns me to face her, but I can’t look. The girl close to me is the same putrid green color as the one in the tub.
“You’ll be fine. I promise.”
“I won’t.”
I expect her to argue, to attempt to assure me that everything will be okay, but instead, I get a sinister laugh.
It bubbles out of her, somehow sounding exactly like Dad did when he was dying.
The tears don’t stop. I don’t know if they ever will.
“You did this,” she says, her voice vile and filled with hatred. “You’re the reason I did this.”
I shake my head.
“You hid. You let him hurt me, let those other men hurt me. My death is your fault.”
I want to deny it, but I can’t. I was a coward, always staying hidden, always trying to be the best daughter I could be because I saw what misbehaving included.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my head hung low.
Once again, warmth covers my cheek, and I’m almost tempted to lean into it, but she’s being so mean to me.
“You can end your pain, too,” she urges.
I shake my head. I could never do what she just did. It would hurt too much.
“I’m not brave enough,” I confess.
“You are,” she urges. “We can be together again. You’re older. You have access to ways that will be quicker, less painful.”
“Older?” I look up at her, once again confused.
But she’s gone. The bathroom is gone. Even the sound of running water has disappeared. I’m standing in blackness with nothing but silence. I scream into the pitch black, but only my voice echoes back at me.
I’m too scared to move, too scared to run.
It’s in this darkness that I realize that the pain is gone. My heart is no longer racing. My skin isn’t clammy. My mind is blank. I don’t know what I’m missing, but even that sense of isolation fades away until calmness takes over.
Did I do it? Did I manage to finally slay my own demon?
“Lauren?”
The voice is like a bomb going off. It bounces around me until I have to cover my ears.
“Lauren?”
My eyes flutter open, the warmth on my face from Angel’s hand on my skin.
I feel so out of place and disoriented. I know it was a dream.
I’ve had it many times. I know I never witnessed my sister’s suicide, never had a conversation with her ghost. She never opened her mouth to blame me.
That finger pointing was read in her diary, her only outlet for the pain she’d been suffering for years.
Her diary was a mix of rants about my father and the abuse, about the way he brought other men into the house to hurt her the same way he was.
The other half were hearts and flowers, and how much she loved him and hated that he claimed the world wouldn’t understand the way they loved each other. She was tired of the secrets.
I feel sick just thinking about it, my body hot and shaking from the dream that just gets more real every time I suffer through it.
Angel watches my face silently, but the sinister man is gone. All I’m looking at is pity. He feels sorry for me, and that is a cut I can’t survive.
“Let me go,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “I can’t.”
I watch his face. He looks as exhausted as I feel, and I know what I have to do to help us both.
“El Salvador,” I whisper as I close my eyes.
***
This time I dream of cool breezes on my skin, but it feels off. The freedom in it feels short-lived, and when I open my eyes, I understand.
I’m no longer tied to the bed. My body is covered with a blanket, and I know without even having to leave the room that I’m alone in the house.
I no longer sense him near.
He’s freed me.
I knew it would happen when I spoke the safe word, and I can’t really take it back now.
I’m weaker than I’ve ever been as I climb out of the bed and make my way to the shower.
Bathing takes forever, but despite being more tired than I’ve ever been in my life, I force myself to dry off before digging through his closet for something to wear.
I have no plans, no direction, no safety net, as I scrounge around in the kitchen and pack some food and water into a bag I found in his bedroom closet.
I don’t leave a note.
This isn’t a goodbye, see you later.
This is forever.
El Salvador ensures it.
His truck is gone when I step out onto the porch, fighting the urge to call Cerberus. I don’t know that they’d even help if I begged. I wore out that welcome long ago, but I also don’t want to risk any chance of them going after Angel.
I shouldn’t feel the urge to protect him, but somehow I do.
I can’t stay even though deep down I know that’s what I want. I’m not allowed a reprieve from my pain. My dreams remind me of that constantly.
If only I were as brave as Liana.