23. Blesk #4
Sighing, I unwrap the letter with shaky hands.
I swallow hard at the sight of a crayon-drawn rainbow cake with six candles.
I turn it to face him. “You drew this. For her birthday. She didn’t get a cake that year.
" My eyes meet Elise again, thinking she'd be uncomfortable by now, but she doesn't look that way, so I continue, "She didn’t get a cake most years. "
Konnor’s jaw tightens. “Please stop talking about yourself in third person.”
“It’s just a habit.” Which is a lie. A habit you can break. This one is forced and chewed on and still comes out strongly.
“Well, I don’t like it.” Reaching over the box, he strokes my hair and runs a finger along my jaw. “I remember some things… not much, but… It’s like flashes.”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember things about you. I remember certain days, especially the days you didn’t visit me. And I remember the last day. I could never forget that day, Duch."
I ring my hands together, guilt rolling inside me. I know exactly why he remembers the days I didn’t visit. It was my fault he was forgetting in the first place.
“I think we should tell Elise."
He nods. “So do I.”
“So do I,” Elise says jokingly and slides down onto the floor beside us, and we looking ridiculous in a circle around this old, rusty fishing tackle box on a luscious cream rug.
Konnor looks at her. “Blesk and I know each other from when we were children.”
Elise frowns. “Okay.”
He thinks, then says, "I don’t remember a lot. Give me a moment.” Pushing to his feet, Konnor goes to pour himself a glass of what looks like bourbon, his hands shaking as he fills it. Elise and I share a meaningful look.
Walking back to us, he sits down. “Dutch courage," he mutters with a feigned chuckle. Then he doesn’t hold back. “I was taken from my parents when I was five!”
Elise blinks at him. “What do you mean 'taken.’”
"Kidnapped. I don’t remember the night it happened.
I’m not sure if most of the things I do remember are actually my memories or if they are from reading articles or hearing stories from other people.
The last few years are a bit clearer. Obviously, I was older.
The first few years are nearly completely lost. That place you saw yesterday…
" The words get wrapped around his tongue. "I was locked in there for a while."
Elise’s face pales. “A while?”
“Four years.”
Elise gasps.
He continues, “My mind was foggy. I don’t know what from… From the lack of sun... I don’t know what it was, but I was confused. I don’t remember specifics."
With a heavy sigh, Konnor continues, “It was Blesk’s biological father who took me. Liz and I were both so young and really only knew what we were told, believing things we shouldn’t and imagining things that had never happened.
"I find it hard to separate my fantasies and dreams from reality. Liz was younger than me by half a year, which felt like forever to me. She would…” He blinks, trying to remember.
“She fed me. She was my best friend, then she was my everything. After the police caught her father, I thought maybe I’d get answers.
” He scoffs. “Nothing. He wouldn’t say a word.
The newspapers made claims that it was related to organised crime in The District.
That Liz's father was somehow involved and that he'd never speak up or he'd suffer a fate worse than imprisonment.
I read that he pleaded guilty. That there was little to no trial at all. It felt… anticlimactic…
“I was adopted because my bio-dad thought it’d be better for me to get a fresh start.
Whatever that means. And my bio-mum had died a few years earlier so…
I still don’t understand why he didn’t want me back.
I just accepted that the police knew what was best for me.
I was sort of famous, in a shitty way I never wanted.
It was all over The District News for years.
They thought a new name; new family would be the best outcome for my future. ”
“Four years…” Elise mutters, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’re so... normal.”
"Yeah right! I drink like a fish,” he says, glancing at the empty glass in his hand. “I lose my shit in confined spaces. I’m… a fucking psycho, remember?”
She laughs softly.
“But my new family were the best. Like, my sisters, my Dad and Mum, just really decent people. Rich, too. They went through hell with me for those first few years, but they got me a shrink, loved me like their own blood, and gave me pretty much anything I ever wanted.”
Tears fill my eyes now. I haven’t had time to process this, and hearing it out loud, from Konnor’s mouth, is a lot. His eyes soften as he looks at me. He touches my cheek and rubs his finger over my lower lip as it trembles. “I can stop if you want? We can have a break? Eat that cold bacon.”
“Or donuts?” Elise adds.
“No, I want you to know,” I say to her. “It’s just hard hearing this stuff.” I sniffle, pathetically. He should be crying not me. I look back at Konnor. “I don’t know how you talk about this with such steady—”
Konnor’s thumb goes to my lips, cutting me off.
“I’ve spent hours talking about this with my family and with my shrink.
They told me that the little girl in my memories did exist. She was the daughter of the man who held me captive all those years, but she died the day she helped me escape.
That she fell into a hole. Hit her head. It was fast.”
“I was put in witness protection,” I say softly.
I wasn’t safe.
I knew things. Things about the man who gave us a little boy with rope around his wrists. Who put the boy in our trunk where he cried and cried. About my father’s meetings with businessmen who smoked cigars and put them out on the furniture. About the wads of cash under my dad’s bed.
Konnor looks at me. I can hear my own breathing.
“All this time…” He shakes his head. “I mourned you. Not in a well-adjusted way either, in a… lonely and destructive way. I felt like a piece of me died that day with her—with you. I wanted to go back to the basement. Live there forever with her ghost. I wanted to fall into the same hole, crawl up beside her corpse. That little girl kept me alive and gave me hope for four years. Her sweet voice and golden hair reminded me of the sun. I would have forgotten what that colour was without her. She was my everything. I called her my sunshine because that was exactly what she was to me.”