5 #2
“I didn’t, but now I do. It’s like… like… a grey-out. Like what happens after I drink a fuck-ton of alcohol, Logan,” adds Piper, “which I don’t usually do, but I’m twenty-two, and every so often, I have a few glasses. And I’m allowed to! And when you said that, Lia… I mean, mom… mother…”
Her voice chokes up.
“Mama. I think you used to call me mama.” Lia hesitates. “And you called Logan… papa.”
“Mama,” repeats Piper tentatively, like she’s trying out the word.
My chest tightens when she doesn’t try out the other word. Papa.
“A grey-out,” murmurs Lia. “Did they give you…” She swallows. “Did they give you Memoril?”
I can’t help it—my head snaps around and I stare at her. “How the fuck do you know about that?”
“Uhm…” She sits down on a kitchen table chair, her eyes still resolutely on Piper. Or rather, on the parts of Piper visible from behind Quill. “I think that… I think that I was injected with it. By my father.”
“Your father, who’s lying dead in the shed outside,” I say, somehow hoping she doesn’t know and that it hurts her.
But then I remember what Piper said. I guess since it really was Lia on the phone, the other part must be true too. About how she killed her father.
“Why’d you do it, by the way? Pretty sure the Catholic Church doesn’t condone patricide.”
She stares at her hands. “Well, because he was injecting me with Memoril.”
I frown at this information I had disregarded at first. “What do you mean? Regularly?”
“Yeah.” She nods. “Every week, he’d give me some medication. He didn’t tell me what it was for. Then one week, he couldn’t do it, so he told my mother to.”
“Your mother,” repeats Piper. “My grandmother. Is she here?”
“She was. We were in hiding.” Lia twists her hands in her lap. “My father was hunting us. But he found us, and...”
“I don’t care,” I interrupt, and she wilts under my murderous gaze. “I don’t care how scared you were of your father. It doesn’t matter. You should have contacted me. You know I would have protected you.”
She doesn’t answer me, only staring at the floor.
“Why did you go back to Ireland?” Piper asks her in a cheerful voice I know she’s using to ease the tension. “Why didn’t you stay in America?”
“I don’t… I don’t really know.” Lia blinks. “Everything’s a little cloudy in my head. I think I was staying with my mother. And my father came regularly. Every time he came, he injected me with Memoril. When he wasn’t able to come… that’s when my mom ran away with me.”
“How long ago was that?” asks Piper.
“I’m not… really sure.”
For Piper’s sake, I try to control the rage threatening to overwhelm me. “Stop fucking lying, Lia. Stop with the bullshit. You aren’t a helpless child. You’re a grown woman, and the least you can do is own the horrible person you are.”
I rest a hand on my holster, and her eyes follow my movement.
“I’m trying to remember, Logan,” she whispers. “I’m trying really hard.”
I force my eyes away from her. I just can’t look at her. It’s too fucking painful.
“Ignore him,” says Piper, still speaking in a fake bubbly voice. “What happened next?”
“Well, we came here. To this little cottage. We hid out for a while, but I was ill, very ill.” She pauses and licks her lips, as if hoping her words will make me pity her.
I don’t pity her. I’m glad she was ill. I really fucking hope she suffered.
When I don’t answer, she continues. “I had a lot of dreams… so many lucid dreams. Or at least, I thought they were dreams. I thought they must have been, but then I started to realize they weren’t…”
I swear to god, I’m going to shoot her. Or shoot myself, because I already know I can’t hurt her, but something needs to happen, because I’m pretty sure I’m running out of broken bones.
“Get to the point,” I grunt. “Or stop talking. One or the other, but do it fast.”
“Oh.” She lifts a shaky hand to her eyes.
“Okay. Well, my father found us. He… killed my mother. He made me bury her.” She swallows audibly, and I can hear the tears in her voice.
I rest my aching forehead against the glass window.
“Then he prepared another injection, and that’s when I killed him.
Stabbed him with a pair of scissors until he died.
” She shudders. “It took a long time for him to die.”
“Mama!” Piper runs over to Lia. I watch her crouch beside her, wrapping her arms around her mother, her head falling into her lap.
It doesn’t make me as angry as it should. I try to access the anger that was boiling inside me just moments ago. It’s still there, but it’s lessened enough that I can wonder.
I really don’t want to fucking wonder. But somehow, I can’t help it.
“Tell me,” I begin, looking at Lia. “Why did you never contact me? In eighteen years, why did you never once try to contact me?”
I didn’t think it was possible to look more ghostly than she did, but now, any remaining color drains from her face. She blinks her watery eyes at me. “Please… don’t be mad at me. I mean… I know you already are. But please don’t… don’t…”
“He’s not going to kill you,” murmurs Piper, stroking her mother’s arm. “You’re okay, mama.”
The world has gone fucking upside down.
I merely shake my head, regretting having asked.
She probably won’t answer, anyway. There’s just no possible explanation for not contacting me once in eighteen years. It doesn’t matter if she was being held against her will. If she was in the hands of her abusive family, or kept in a somewhat confused state by the injections.
Nothing can explain it. Nothing can justify the fact that she didn’t once try to reach me. For eighteen years. Eighteen whole fucking years. She should have found a way, she shouldn’t have stopped trying until she found a way.
There’s a very long, heavy silence, and I’m just reaching the conclusion that she won’t answer when she suddenly blurts out, “I’m sorry, Logan. I had… I had forgotten you existed!”