Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
E mpty. That’s the best way to describe how I feel right now. Just empty. There was nothing left for me here anymore. I knew Jackson resented me, but now I knew he hated me. Even as kids, we never laid hands on each other. Dad instilled in us from the time we could walk that we did not hit each other. He was specific when teaching us to keep our hands to ourselves.
“You are family,” he said. “Family is a bond that can’t break. You do not hurt your family.”
I always felt that Dad’s upbringing hadn’t been great. He never talked about it, but his actions spoke louder than words. We never saw his family. There were no doting grandparents, aunts, or uncles. It was just the three of us. Mom died after our c-section delivery from a blood clot. Every once in a while, I’d catch Dad staring at her picture in his room. A small gold picture frame sat on his nightstand holding a photo of them, embracing and looking at each other. The moment captured the pure love in their eyes. They stared at each other as if they were the only two people left in the world.
Often, he said I looked like her. He did this with the best intentions. However, there were moments when I could tell that it pained him to see her in me. It was always small things, like the first time I laughed so hard that I snorted. We were eating dinner and Jackson had done something obnoxious, and I lost it. At eight, anything could send me into a fit of giggles. This time, I couldn’t breathe, and when I took that eventual gasp of air, it made the most ungodly snort. Jackson howled, pointing at me as he did so. Dad stared through me, slipping away to somewhere else. He excused himself from the table and didn’t come back for a while.
That was the first time I knew that our resemblance bothered him. Even if he tried to hide it away.
My movements felt robotic. The void in my chest grew as I tried to wrap my head around Jackson’s actions. I came face to face with the canvas that haunted me the last few weeks. The assignment for my upper-level painting course was to create a self-portrait. We could run in any direction we wanted, indulge in any painting era, imitate any painter of our choosing. It was an open-ended assignment. This kind of assignment gave me the most trouble. I liked the parameters the professors usually gave. It kept me focused and didn’t allow for my mind to wander. I didn’t like it when that happened. There was too much that I could express if I wasn’t careful.
I poked the canvas. The multiple layers of acrylic had crusted on top of each other. I threw another paint bottle at it this morning. It appeared to be dry. I tilted my head to the side as I contemplated who I was. I used to know the answer to that. Not anymore.
Murderer.
My phone chimed, and I looked to see who the notification was from.