Chapter 11 #2
“Oh, nothing,” I blurted. My confidence wavered.
The old feeling of being in trouble crept up my spine.
I’d decided long ago that his expectations of my living life according to his map were too high.
He could never give support when any of us were having a hard time, and so I’d decided he would not be privy to my success either.
Bellamy House wasn’t a success, don’t get me wrong, but the surrounding armour was clinking itself tighter.
June kicked me under the table.
“What is it?” Dad asked, placing his cup down on the glass top of the table. He didn't miss a thing. I glared at June and hoped the telepathy we tried to share but never succeeded in during childhood finally worked and she could hear the creative link of curse words I was throwing at her.
“Honestly, dad it’s nothing. I can ask you next time,” I said, dunking a gingernut biscuit in my tea. I never really liked them, but I was happy for any excuse to have my mouth filled at this moment.
Dad leaned back in his chair. “Next time? You mean in another six months? I could be dead by then.”
The colour drained from my face, and June looked like she was about to spit out her tea.
“It’s a turn of phrase, girls,” Dad sighed. “I’m as strong as the legs on this table.” He gave it a kick for good measure, causing the tea in his cup to spill. June started spluttering and trying to explain about kids and work and the renovation keeping her from visiting as much as she’d like to.
“Riley’s been staying in Glades Bay though! She’s way closer,” she said. My mouth gaped. Way to throw me in it. I loved her to bits, but she’d always enjoyed throwing me under the bus and watching while I tried to climb back out. Dad turned to look at me, his expression expectant.
“I would have visited sooner, Dad. I’ve just been busy and, well—”
“Work?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. That’s been a bit dry, actually.”
He linked his fingers together and waited. I was prepared to sit in the silence, thick with disappointment, until the subject changed.
“Someone left her Bellamy Children’s Home in their will, and she’s trying to figure out who it was,” June blurted from her seat, her eyes flicking between us.
Dad looked visibly shocked and had to lean forward to cough out the biscuit he’d been chewing before it got lodged.
“June!”
I thumped Dad on the back. She’d never make it in Breeze’s spy business. She'd be a perfect candidate for interrogation, though. Dad’s coughing continued, and the redness in his face grew.
“Here, Dad.” I tried to put his tea in his hand, but he waved it away.
“We don’t talk about that place,” he announced once he’d composed himself. There were a lot of things we didn’t talk about. But that place was at the top of the list.
Josh had claimed his heroin addiction was rooted in the trauma he’d faced there.
Dad never acknowledged it. Never listened.
Never wanted to know. Josh never got the chance to share his side of things.
Except with June and me. We didn’t exactly want to hear it, but we could hold more space for it than Dad ever did.
The boys’ treatment had been more physical.
We were completely separated by gender—right down to school and recreation.
There were no cameras for the boys. No VHS tapes to find.
Which sounds like a dream situation now that the ones staring me were potentially in the hands of someone whose intentions weren’t good.
But what it meant for him at the time was way worse care.
With no evidence, no proof, of what was happening on that side, the treatment was more than severe.
I'd felt for Josh. I knew some of what he’d been through from my experience, but I never understood what led him to manifest into addiction when I got self-loathing instead.
I guess addiction is a form of self-loathing.
It looked to most people like escape, which no doubt it was.
But for Josh, it seemed as if it was an erasure of sorts.
He was trying to destroy the parts of himself he didn’t want to carry.
The uncomfortable bits. The bits that felt wrong.
In the end, he destroyed everything. His life.
Dad’s. Probably mine too, if I had an emotional capacity bigger than a quark.
Addiction doesn’t just affect the one with the needle in their arm or the powder in their nose. It spreads like smoke. Like stinging tentacles, reaching for everyone nearby. Dragging them under too.
Josh hadn’t seen it. He’d been too wrapped up in self-pity to notice the damage to anyone else. And while that egocentrism had driven me mad, I couldn’t really blame him.
He’d been broken.
They’d succeeded with him.
My eyes misted, and I turned my head to hide it. I felt the familiar burn in my throat that came with stomping down big emotions. My family had never been a safe place for tears. But lately, my defences were threadbare. Between the grief and the situation with the house, I was fraying.
Can you feel your feet? Dax’s voice echoed in my mind.
Good. Now tell me what the surface feels like.
I slipped my feet out of their yellow sandals and placed them on the wooden patio boards. Warm. Firm. A little scratchy under my toes.
For a second, I wished Dax were really there. Then I remembered I’d decided to find him repulsive for the rest of eternity.
“Whether or not we talk about that place, Riley owns it now. She deserves to know why.”
Dad leaned back and scratched his overgrown chin. “I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us. I’m just trying to figure out who left it to me so I can give it back and be done with it. I don’t enjoy going there. I don’t like dealing with it. I don’t like this conversation,” I said.
“You’ve been there?” Dad stood abruptly, visibly shaking. He raked his fingers through his white hair.
“I had to.”
He paced the patio, hands over his face. I hadn’t expected that reaction. It didn’t sound like rage. It was something else. Something I recognised in myself.
“What’s it like now?” he asked, pausing with one hand on his hip and the other pinching the bridge of his nose.
Weird segue.
“It smells like an old lady’s wardrobe and it could do with some TLC,” I replied.
He glared at me for a moment, but in his eyes I identified what it was in his response that I couldn’t label before. Fear.
“Did they leave you everything? What have you found?” He demanded now, and I looked at June, whose tented brows looked just as shocked as I was. But it was him asking what we’d found that had the trickle of ice dripping into my belly.
“What do you mean, what have I found?”
He pinched the corners of his lips, eyes fixed on the wooden floor as though calculating his next words.
“Nothing. Nothing,” he said, waving a hand and forcing the corner of his mouth into a friendly smile.
“Listen, girls, this has been lovely, but your visit really was unexpected, and I’m afraid I’m not feeling well.
” He pulled the cup out of my hand and put it on the tray.
June, looking as though she could catch a fly in her mouth, obliged and put her own back.
I tried to make eye contact with him as he did everything to avoid my gaze.
“Sorry Dad. We didn’t know you were sick. Can we do anything before you go? Run the vacuum around or something?” June asked.
“No, no. You girls be on your way. I wouldn’t want you catching anything—especially with your little ones, June.”
He shuffled back inside, his throat making a strange noise as the door closed behind him.
“Did Dad just kick us out?” June whispered.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“What the hell was that? He’s always been secretive, but this is a whole new level. And it’s not like you didn’t have a good reason to bring it up.”
Back in the car, June drove at her usual death-wish speed. I closed my eyes, not wanting to watch every near miss as we rounded corners.
Dad’s words circled through my mind again.
What have you found?
Pressure built behind my ribcage. I felt like one of those steam trains from a kids’ cartoon, about to shoot hot air from my ears. There was something else too. Something that made me squirm in my chair.
What did he know?
What information did he have that made him go from classic Dad invalidation to full-on fake illness and shut the visit down?
My thoughts returned to the tiny cabinet in the small room.
Did he know about the tapes?