Chapter Thirty-Two
The sound of Lauren’s heartbeat kept me anchored to the bed where we laid.
With my head set against her chest, the steady rhythm of her beating heart through the fabric of her funeral dress had a calming effect, like a lullaby.
Behind me, I could feel her finger tracing soothing circles along the back of my head, the sound of her breathing matching the calmness of her heart.
“What do you feel right now?” she questioned softly.
“I don’t know.” I really didn’t. “Today’s just been a lot.”
“Start from the beginning then. Tell me about your day.”
“Well, the funeral… You were there. That was…”
“Tense,” she finished my sentence, finding just the right word.
“I shouldn’t have went.”
“Did going make you feel worse?”
“It didn’t make me feel better.”
“Do you think you’ll always feel that way?”
I’d never been to any form of therapy before, but I knew a therapy session when I heard one.
Lauren was cross examining me, asking me leading questions so that I could find the answers to my own questions from within.
I had to smile at her efforts. Knowing that she had goals of becoming a psychiatrist someday, I didn’t mind letting her practice on me.
“I probably won’t always feel this way.” When all these feelings subsided, several years down the line, going to the funeral would likely be one less regret for me.
I could see where Lauren was trying to lead.
It didn’t make me feel better in that moment, but it did give me something to look forward to.
“And so then with your father,” she encouraged me to keep talking.
Even though talking to Lauren did have its easing effects, I made a decision to keep Silas’ threats to myself.
As far as she knew, he’d wanted her dead for a while now, so making a point to tell her about his latest threat would only scare her unnecessarily. So I kept the details quiet.
“Nothin’ new,” I replied. “You just gotta continue to be careful in these streets. But I got you. Trust me?”
“I trust you.” She was sincere. “But who’s got you, Kain? Who keeps you safe?”
I turned my head in order to meet her eyes, indifference in my voice when I responded, “I keep me safe.”
Wordlessly, she nodded, her eyes growing sympathetic. “You look so tired.”
“I’ll sleep soon.” It was a little after midnight, the only light in the room coming in from outside, silvery light from the night sky, giving Lauren’s brown skin a cool blue undertone.
The full moon reflected back at me against the nearly black irises of her eyes.
There was always such warmth in Lauren’s eyes.
It’s how I knew she loved me before she even told me.
I wondered what she saw in mine.
“No.” Lauren shook her head. “You don’t look sleepy. You look… tired.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. I wasn’t even sure I had fully grasped what she was trying to tell me. Without an explanation, Lauren’s fingers wrapped around the collar of my white dress shirt, pulling me towards her. Of course I didn’t resist.
“You don’t have to put up a front for me,” she whispered against my lips, pressing her forehead to mine. There was something almost disarming about the gentleness of her words. “You can be vulnerable with me. Kainie, you can cry.”
When she pulled back, her soft hands were on either side of my face as said the words, “Let it out.”
She waited, but there were no tears. I couldn’t do what Lauren was telling me to. It went against everything that I believed myself to be, everything I was told I had to be. It wasn’t that I just wouldn’t do it.
I honestly didn’t know how.
“You’re so tired,” she whispered, tears readily pooling at the rims of her eyes. I reached in to catch the first one before it could fall. Lauren made crying look easy.
I couldn’t remember the last time I shed tears for anything. I supposed that’s what mothers are for. They sit you down real calm like and tell you that it’s okay to cry if that’s what you’re feeling at that point in time. I might’ve had that once upon a time. If I did, I certainly didn’t remember.
When it came to my mother, I didn’t try to grasp at memories that weren’t there.
Once upon a time there was a younger version of myself that often wondered where she was, but years of having a front row seat to the depths of my father’s ruthlessness told me that wherever she was, she likely had no intentions of coming back. Even if that meant abandoning me.
It was nothing to lose sleep over. You can’t miss what you never knew.
But it was in moments like this that I would think of her the most. When your girl looks you square in the eye and tells you that it’s okay to cry, only for you to realize you’ve forgotten how, you think about your mother, you think about how she wouldn’t have let you forget.
But it is what it is.
Accepting things as they are and not wasting time mourning them is practical. And I suppose coming to that realization is what fathers are for. I had a lot of that growing up. I could still hear echoes of Silas ringing in my head from when I was just a boy.
It is what it is, Kain. What you cryin' for?
He said these things so often that it wasn’t long before I began saying them to myself, hearing his voice in my head any time I might fuck around and feel something.
And then one day, the voice stopped, and everything felt more numb than it did before.
Resulting from a constant dulling of my emotions that turned the world around me into metaphorical shades of gray.
Life lost all color. And the only time I could get it back was when I saw red.
Soon, the only time I really felt anything was when I got angry.
To hear Silas tell it, I became a man.
***
Lauren picked at her breakfast, having little to no appetite it seemed.
It bothered me today especially because I was sure she hadn’t eaten all day yesterday as she waited for me to come back.
It had never been like me to give a damn about whether or not people skipped their meals.
But Lauren had lost weight in the time between the Poseidon Massacre and now.
I suspected that although some of that was on me, I knew something else was weighing heavily on her mind.
“Baby, we need to talk about your family.”
Lauren flinched. I guessed right. That was it. She shrugged at first, shaking her head as if to say none of it mattered. I only looked at her, waiting patiently for her to speak.
“While you were in the shower, I turned on the local news,” she revealed. “Uh… nothing too major. You know, with the um… With the court proceedings against your father set for August, local reporters stopped by my dad’s office and interviewed him about how the investigation was going.”
It’d been a little over a week since Lauren had shown up at my doorstep, having been kicked out of her home by her father earlier that day. This news interview she’d watched would’ve been her first time seeing her father in days.
“He looked…” Her voice cracked. “…normal.”
I wasted no time rising from my seat at the table, stopping at her side in a crouch as she remained seated. She turned to face me, hurt still prominent in her voice as she spoke.
“He kicked me out in the middle of the night with no phone and no money, and hasn’t heard from me in days.
And to see him on the news, complaining about how your family is standing in the way of him securing any witnesses, as if that was the only problem he has right now…
I just… It’s like he doesn’t even care about me, Kain. ”
I leaned in, tucking a finger under her chin so that she wouldn’t look down.
“Can I be honest with you?” I asked.
“Sure.” She nodded, wiping away at a tear that had found its way travelling down her cheek. “Go ahead, be honest with me.”
“Your Pops…” I sighed, shaking my head in irritation. “Your Pops ain’t shit.”
If ever there was a way for a laugh to sound sad, it was Lauren’s laugh in that moment.
“No, I mean it. It’s a well-known fact out here that Joshua Caplan is literally the worst human being in Miami.”
“Worse than your father?” she hit back.
“Shit, he just might be,” I replied with a chuckle, taking her by the hand and leading her into the living room for a seat. “Your father is a ruthless piece of shit.”
“Well I can see why you would feel that way, considering you come from a crime family.”
“Nah,” I replied with a shake of my head.
“It’s not about that at all. Your father is on some next level bullshit with how he operates.
He knowingly puts innocent people in prison because he’s more concerned with his image and conviction rate over everything.
Your father is crooked and egotistical. Trust me, I know what I’m talkin’ about. My father’s just the same.”
“Why are you telling me all of this now?”
“Because parents, at the end of the day, are just people. They have character flaws just like the rest of us. Your father is no different. I don’t think you’ve realized this yet.
” When she hit me with the confused eyebrows, I tried my best to explain.
“Your father is a walking ego, and like all egoists, he will never love anyone as much as he loves himself.”
I reached into the distance between us, holding her as I continued to lay the ugly truth at her feet.
“Your father sees your decision to be in a relationship with the likes of me, a Montgomery, as an affront to everything he’s worked for—a threat to his image.
Lauren, I’m sure your father does love you, but so long he continues to see your decisions as a threat to him and what he’s worked for, he will always love himself first. Know that. ”
“He never used to be like this,” she whispered.
“You never used to give him a reason to be.”
“Does my father really get innocent people put in prison? How?”
“You’d be surprised to find out just what kind of man he is,” I warned.
When she didn’t back down, I told her a few things I knew.
“Your father has a notorious reputation around here. He’s not above convicting the wrong person if it means his picture is still put in the paper.
He will step on whoever needs to be stepped on.
And I know you think my family is threatening the witnesses so that they don’t testify against Silas, but…
Your father’s track record with witnesses is really why he can’t find any willing people to take the stand. ”
“His track record?”
“Yeah, when he manages to get a witness and loses the case, your father does absolutely nothin’ to ensure those people are safe on the outside.
Once your father doesn’t feel like he needs them, he’s content to let them die.
” I shook my head, tone serious when I revealed, “And they always die. That’s why nobody wants to take the stand for your father against Silas.
Because if Silas doesn’t lose, they’re as good as dead.
Your father won’t do anything to help them. And everybody knows it.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Lauren whispered, a nauseous look settling into her features. “Everybody may have known this, but I never did.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “That’s normal. The ability to see our parents for what they are comes with the ability to see them as people first. Once you do that, the warning signs essentially reveal themselves, but enough about this -- let’s get out of here.”
This seemed to take her by surprise. “Wait – you mean, like, outside?”
I nodded. “What else would I mean?”
“But aren’t you worried about—” She stopped, her eyes widening. It was then that Lauren realized the obvious. Now that Silas knew about us, there was nothing left to keep secret. “Well, what about the local gossip blogs?”
“What about them?”
When she realized she didn’t have an answer to that, I could only crack a smile. I didn’t care about showing up on Miami gossip sites, and if she didn’t, there was no reason for us to stay in this hotel room all day.
“Come on.” I nodded for her to follow me to the door. “I need a new phone, and so do you. Especially you, actually.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Sanaa asked for your number yesterday,” I replied, explaining, “She needs your help with something.”