THIRTY-ONE #2
Those words played on a loop in Splice’s mind, and before he knew what he was doing, he strode over to Vince, pulled back his head by the hair, and, using all of his strength, he landed a fist in his uncle’s face.
“You fucking fuck! A good life? A good fucking life? I’ve been empty without Lisa! You stole ten fucking years from us! And you were trying to do it again!”
Blood spurted from Vince’s nose, and he groaned in pain. Splice stood back, baring his teeth, on the very edge of his sanity, barely holding it together.
“I apologize,” he gasped, his head drooping on his neck.
“What mess did you make that you’ve been hiding all this time?”
“I... don’t ask me that, son. I can’t say.”
“If you want out of here, you’ll tell me.”
“I can’t.”
They went around that same thing for far too long, and Splice sighed.
“Ruin!” he shouted.
Vince panicked, his eyes wilder, and he struggled in the chair, almost tipping himself over. “Wait! Wait, Splice. Fucking wait, okay?”
The door creaked open, and Splice said, “Never mind, Ruin.” The door closed again.
“Fuck,” Vince cursed, inclining his head. “Just hear me out before you do anything rashly you can’t come back from.” He pleaded.
Then it all poured out of Vince in a run-on paragraph.
“You don’t know how hard it was back then.
Guire and I were broke, but he was happy letting the dealership tread water as long as he got a paycheck.
I wanted more. I had overseas contacts who could get us cars and expand the business, but he shot down every idea.
Talking to him was like talking to a brick wall.
All he wanted was his salary and weekends fishing with you.
He wouldn’t even let me buy him out. Said the dealership was yours one day.
Meanwhile, he was running it into the ground with his stubbornness. I had to do something, Splice.”
He implored, and some recess of Splice’s mind splintered off, putting memories from back then with what Vince was saying.
“It was a simple mugging, son. I swear it. I never wanted my brother dead. We had our difficulties; we barely agreed on anything, and he pissed me off all the time, but he was my brother. I loved him. I loved him, Splice, I swear it,” he was breathing hard, speaking faster, his face even redder.
Splice took a step toward him, paused when he heard the word mugging.
That was how his father had died. A supposed mugging.
Back then, his dad would bag up the day’s takings and walk them down to the bank a few blocks away.
The case remains unsolved to this day. No one was held responsible for stabbing his dad multiple times and leaving him to bleed out in a back alley behind the dealership.
“It all went wrong. I swear it. I never wanted him dead, just to scare him enough that he’d sell the dealership to me.
The guy I paid went off script. He said Guire fought back, and the guy panicked.
That’s what I thought Lisa overheard. The guy came looking for me that day; he wanted a bigger payoff so he could get out of town. ”
For Splice, absorbing every detail of his uncle’s account of the most traumatic experience of Splice’s younger life felt as if Vince were narrating a fictional tale, causing an unprecedented explosion inside his brain.
Pain and rage warred inside Splice.
Vince had killed his father.
When Splice broke his heart at his dad’s funeral, it was Vince who picked him up from the floor.
When Splice’s mom went into a deep depression, it was Vince who came by the house every single day to make sure she was eating.
It was Vince who kept Splice out of jail, who’d paid for Bart to go to school.
This reliable man, the pillar of their family, had been the catalyst for all that pain and grief.
Splice felt the sting of betrayal with each breath, barely holding himself together.
Vince had just signed his own death warrant.
There was no getting out of this shed.
“I’m so fucking sorry, son,” Vince wheezed, his head hanging low, slumped in the chair, only held up by the ties behind his arms. “It was never meant to go that far. Believe me. I beg you, believe me. I’ve tried to make it up to you all these years; shit just spiraled out of my control.”
One minute. Then two.
Splice was fixed to the floor, trying to digest that the one man he loved as a father had killed his dad and had gone on living as if nothing had happened. Vince had happily been in Splice’s life, living a lie.
“What happened to the guy who stabbed my dad?”
“I got rid of him long ago. He was a fucking leech and wanted more money from me.”
That took a job off Splice’s plate, or he would have hunted him down.
The silence felt like a bomb trapped in his sternum.
“You killed my dad.” He said the words out loud, and they tasted like blood and death in his mouth.
“Splice, listen.”
“You killed my dad.”
“We can talk it through, okay, son? Listen to me, please.”