66. Enslee #3
“You’re shaking like a leaf,” Declan said in observation. “And your face is streaked with tears. Whatever it is can be expunged if you just talk about it.”
“It’s not that easy. I won’t do it.”
“I guess we go to plan B,” Brogan said.
“P-plan B?” I stammered.
“We can tie you to our bed and wait until you spill those painful parts in your sleep during a nightmare like I did. I know you have them. We’ll simply wait them out.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“I have some rope somewhere,” Declan said, and as he rose to his feet, I grabbed his arm.
“No, please don’t.” The very idea of being tied down sent terror racing through me. “I don’t have to be asleep to relive those nightmares.” Declan sat back down, and now both men were staring intently at me. “I can’t endure seeing the shame or disappointment in either of your eyes.”
“We’d never treat you that way, sweetheart.”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“Who do you think we think you are?” Declan asked.
I threw my hands up as I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m not her.”
“Let us be the judge of that,” he replied back.
“I’d confessed my darkest secret to you because I sensed that we’re a lot alike, Enslee.
I trusted you with that information, and I only ask that you trust me with whatever demons control you.
There’s nothing you could ever tell us that would change our opinion of you for the worse. You said that we’re friends—”
“We are,” I said.
“And that you love us,” Declan added.
I let out the sob that felt like it was ripped from my chest. “I do love you both.”
“Then let us unburden whatever’s weighing you down. Let us love you.”
At those four words, I hung my head and didn’t even bother to wipe at the fresh batch of tears streaming down my cheeks. “I was never supposed to be here,” I finally said.
“Why do you say that?” I heard one of the men ask, and which one didn’t even matter.
“Because I should’ve died inside my mother.”
“Fuck,” I heard, and this time I knew it was Brogan. “How did she die?”
“Days before I was supposed to be born, my father murdered her in cold blood.” Neither man said anything, and I forced myself to keep going, knowing their curiosity would never be satisfied with just that.
“After he’d stabbed her over a dozen times, he tried to cut me out of her, but he was neutralized, then arrested.
Later, he was convicted and given the death penalty. ”
“And deservedly so. Who raised you after that?”
“My grandparents on my mother's side had taken me in as soon as I was released from the hospital. I loved my grandmother so much. Unfortunately, she died when I was twelve. She had a widowmaker heart attack in her sleep, leaving me all alone with my grandfather, who couldn’t accept her death.
His grief was so palpable that I had to forgo mine to help him.
I'd put his well-being ahead of my own, so I could make him feel better because I knew I owed them my life.”
“Is this where the dream life became a nightmare for you?” Declan asked me.
I nodded. “And I can’t go into it, even for you two. I just can’t.”
“We’re here with you,” they both said in unison, and as I raised my shameful gaze to theirs, I could see the genuine concern in their gazes. Or was it something more? “Please, keep going,” they both said once more.
I wanted to deny them, but they’d never let this go.
Accepting surrender, I sighed. “My father was executed the same year. I’d tried to move on from the one loss, but I couldn't find an ounce of sympathy inside of me to mourn the other. That year was also when everything changed. In my attempt to help my grandfather, I started to spend more time with him. That was when he became more touchy. At first, it’d started with a simple touch.
I’d convinced myself that I was making more of things than I should have. ”
“What things?” Brogan asked.
“Sometimes, he’d hug me and his hand would slide a little too far down and he’d touch my ass.
Then other times, I’d walk by and his hand would brush against my breast. It was never anything that gave me any real concern.
I mean, it was my grandfather and I was just a kid.
Eventually, he became more daring and the touches became more frequent.
They lasted longer, and I soon found myself in a situation that I had no idea how to get out of.
I’d hoped by ignoring it that it’d go away, but it didn’t. ”
I stopped and covered my face with my hands. I’d half expected at least one of the men to come to comfort me, but neither moved from their spots. They hadn’t gotten everything they wanted from me. With no choice but to continue, I did.
“I went to school and church while keeping those shameful secrets to myself. I became withdrawn from everything but my studies. I made really good grades in school, and I’d wanted to go to college and to one day become a journalist. I wanted to bring truth to this world because mine was one giant lie. ”
“Someone much like myself who you’d thought was lying,” Brogan said.
I stared guiltily up at him. “I’d always loved watching true crime shows, and when I’d heard about a missing fiancée and had studied your profile, I—”
“You believed me to be guilty of something.”
“Maybe, but if not, I thought I could give a voice to you. I wanted to be another beacon of truth, but you kicked me out and—”
“We already know everything else that happened then because we were there,” Declan reminded me as he cleared his throat. “We want to know more about this piece of shit grandfather of yours.”
“He’d raped me, and sometimes even multiple times a day.
I wanted to get out of there, but I had nowhere to go.
The people in town already whispered enough about me behind my back.
I had no choice but to stay and focus on school.
I’d hoped to get enough scholarships to leave for good, but in my junior year of high school, he was diagnosed with dementia.
I felt responsible for him yet again. His life, or at least the life he knew, was ending. ”
My skin felt not only prickly, but as if it was crawling. I went to rake my hand through my hair to stop the tingling in my skull but had forgotten that I’d pinned it up. I tore at the pins, eventually ripping them from my head before dropping them to the ground beside me.
“I was so angry he could forget what he’d done to me, while I couldn’t.
Not then, and not ever. What seemed to be par for the course for my life, I’d stayed with this man, bypassing my chance to go off to college because we couldn't afford to put him in a nursing home. We could barely afford the home health aides that came out twice a week, so I stayed there as his caretaker, doing everything I could for him. And the morning he’d died.
I’d felt no sadness. It was more than even relief.
It was a triumph of some sort. I remember leaving the hospital before returning home to the house I’d grown up in.
As soon as I’d stepped inside, those memories came flooding back, but I was no longer afraid.
There were no tears in my voice. There was no hole in my heart.
There was nothing in my veins anymore other than my blood, yet something was still suffocating me.
I’d realized that until I’d vanquished the memories completely, I’d never be able to move on from them.
I went into the shed out back, grabbed the can of gasoline and the last match in his matchbook.
I burnt the house down, collected the insurance, then bought my van and started the first day of the rest of my life. ”