Chapter 14 BETH
BETH
Are you still there?
Julian Bourdet, my father, had confessed in court to find pleasure in the fear he saw in his victims’ eyes when he held a knife to their throats.
Yet his confession, delivered without remorse, did not sway me then. A part of me had believed he was lying. He was always a skilled actor. He even told me one time that if he hadn’t made it as a successful college professor, he would’ve pursued a career in the movie industry.
I was only 10 when it all happened. Now 19, you would think I knew better to separate truth from lies, deceit from sincerity, and a conscious act from manipulation.
But somehow, a minuscule part of me that I hated to acknowledge still wanted to believe he did all those killings because he wasn’t in his right frame of mind.
Something happened to him then. A voice in his head, perhaps could have compelled him.
And if a voice was in his head, then Julian Bourdet wasn’t the killer the court charged him with being.
See? I hated giving room to that thought. Because if I let the thoughts linger, then Mother would be right. It meant I was as psychotic as my father.
Then it meant there was really this black blood running through my veins.
A year had passed since our last conversation. Before we left for Scotland, I had found my way to the subway, entered a train that made a stop at Centre Correctionel de Bellevigne, the oldest criminal penitentiary in France.
That day, I had longed for a hug, a retraction of his words, an apology, and a return home to me and well, Mother.
But he couldn’t really do much. He just promised that he would come back home soon.
But it was obvious he was lying, just trying to make me feel better.
The guards were really mean and their eyes were cold.
They wouldn’t let him go home so soon and so easily.
That was our final physical encounter. Weeks after, Mother was in and out of immigration office, court and whatnot.
Then, exactly two or three months later, she said we were relocating to her country, Scotland. She still had her family home, a dusty bungalow that was almost falling apart.
Before I could protest, she just started chucking my clothes into a bag and dragging me to the airport. “Beth Fraser is your name now,” she said, harshly. “You’re not Juliette Bourdet. There’s not a person in the world named Juliette Bourdet. She’s dead.”
Far away from France, only video calls connected my father and I. I consistently visited Kenzo’s house for that because Mother would wring my neck if she ever stumbled upon me talking to that man. That vile man who ruined her life and ridiculed her in the eyes of society.
Now in front of my laptop again, I waited for prisoner 4185 to be escorted through a gated hallway. And I almost blurted, ‘Dad’ when Julian Bourdet appeared on my laptop screen a few seconds after.
In contrast to other nations, France did not enforce uniform policies for its prisoners. So he showed up again in his typical white sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. It might as well be a uniform now. Do they even let him wash that, at least?
“Juliette,” he drawled lazily.
Hearing my long-forgotten birth name made my chest tight. My eyes itched, and I thought I wanted to cry.
I loved my name. I didn’t want to change it. But Mother said I had to stop being childish and understand that changing my name was the only way to shield myself from the online frenzy targeting me as the seed of a monster.
“Hi,” I whispered. No matter how hard I tried, it seemed I may never get used to seeing him in prison, not in the lecture room educating students, not in the community park giving me a horse ride, not in the kitchen making peanut butter sandwiches.
Watching him through the camera, I felt cheated yet again, thinking about the easy communication, home visits, and proud mentions of fathers I’d had to witness among my schoolmates. Yet I dared not stay in a conversation where people talked about their dads. Because mine was a killer.
“It’s always a pleasure to see you, little rosette,” he said, a twitch at the corner of his lips hinting at a smile that belied his cold-blooded nature.
I noticed how his once luscious black hair, full of sheen, was now dry and marred with breakages.
Across from me, he stared, his blue eyes as still and lifeless as a frozen river. Not a flicker of emotion could be seen in them. Was the love I used to see in those eyes really just an illusion? Or was he still such a good actor?
“How have you been?” I asked. But it was obvious how he had been. He was fading away, getting noticeably thinner in the face.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, his fingers dragging over the years-old stubble shadowing his jaw.
“I’m stuck in a building filled with fools of different kinds, the food tastes like cardboard.
” His jaw tightened when he exhaled, his lips curling into something that wasn’t quite a smirk.
“But it’s fine. I’ll be out of here soon. ”
I stilled, my brow lifting at his words. He had said this before, too many times to be received as a joke. And each time, it carried the same quiet certainty, as if his conviction alone could bend the bars of the cell.
It made me wonder; did he actually have a way out? Some hidden plan the judge and the detectives never caught a wind of?
When his case set the tabloids ablaze, there were whispers of a partner. His killings suddenly bore an unsettling resemblance to those of the killer, The Crimson Artisan, who emerged in Scotland eighteen months before my father was caught.
The authorities tried to fit the timeline together, cross-referencing his whereabouts with the bloodshed overseas.
But every time, his alibi held up. Either he was in lecture halls, at home making dinner or at a shareholders’ meeting.
He was always accounted for. It was logically impossible for him to be in two places at once.
These left two possibilities; either the Scottish killer had been his partner all along, or he was just a fan dedicatedly taking notes.
But after my father was sentenced, The Crimson Artisan went quiet for a while.
Although I wasn’t sure if it was just a made up rumour but I heard he was still in business, especially in Glenfallow.
They said it was like a monthly thing. He would come out, kill at least two and disappear again.
“Well…” I trailed off awkwardly. “How, um, how do you plan on getting out?”
He tilted his head to the side, his brows furrowed as if in deep thought, then his lips curled. “Don’t worry about it. You just sit pretty and I’ll come get you when I’m out.”
“Where will we go?” I asked, playing along. Or maybe I really wanted to run away into the sunset with my psycho father.
His eyes glinted with something dark. It sent a chill down my spine. “Somewhere very far. No one will find us.”
“Okay.” I nodded silently.
We sat through an awkward silence for what felt like hours. I didn’t exactly know what to say to a possible psychopath. He already made it clear he was having the worst moments of his life. So I was just going to sit it out. In five minutes, it would all be over.
“So…?” He leaned over the table where the laptop was placed, his raspy voice breaking through the silence. “You haven’t gone ahead and got a boyfriend, have you?”
My brow furrowed. Was there a standing rule against that?
“Well, I had one, until about a few weeks ago. But apparently, a student isn’t supposed to have an affair with their teacher, so, yeah. It ended.” I glanced at him. His eyes had darkened, his jaw hard. It felt like he was boiling from the inside and just struggling to keep it all together.
“And then there’s this one now.” My cheeks heat up at the mere thought of my Snow White, my pretty boy, ignoring the unmistakable change in my father’s expression. “He’s kinda way older than me, by the way. But that doesn’t matter. He’s so kind and so…sweet.”
I hadn’t spoken to him in hours, hadn’t heard his voice that I had become addicted to. I wanted to talk to him, see him, hug him, kiss him. I loved kissing him, loved the way he would hesitate, then melt into me all at once.
“Foolish girl.” My father’s icy voice snapped me out of my daydream. His lips were tightened, fist slamming on the table. “Do you not listen?”
“Sorry?” I recoiled, eyeing him with caution, my pulse already racing.
“What did I tell you about boys?”
“Um, I don’t know–”
“–I fucking told you to stay the fuck away from them!” He almost lunged at the laptop screen. “I explicitly said that to you, you idiot. Have you no sense?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I jolted to my feet, irritation swirling in my chest. What was all this madness about?
“Okay, times’ up.”
With hands firmly on his shoulders, the guards pulled him up from his seated position.
He fixed me with a dark, stealthy glare before they veered him away from the laptop’s camera.
I rushed to my laptop and slammed it shut as if he was going to jump out through the screen and give me a good beating.
“What the hell was all that commotion?”
My gaze flickered to Kenzo who was standing with a weary look at the entrance of the kitchen, a spatula in hand.
“N-nothing,” I said, quite disconnected. “He was just upset that the officers were dragging him.”
I had no idea why I lied. It just…came out.
“Um, okay?” His gaze was skeptical, but he didn’t press as he shook his head, then disappeared into the kitchen again.
I lowered myself to the floor, my thoughts spinning, unable to make sense of what had just happened.
This wasn’t the first time he’d asked if I had a boyfriend. My answers had always been the same–no. Rowan was my first real one. The others before him were harder to name. There had been kisses. Sex. And then…nothing.
“Well, are you done?” Kenzo asked, strolling into the living room again, the smell of fried chicken following him in.