REBECCA #3
"After his last deployment with the 82nd Airborne, everything changed.
He came back different. Hollowed out. The war had eaten pieces of him.
In hindsight, I know now he was suffering from severe PTSD.
But back then, we didn't talk about that.
Instead, he threw himself into prepping.
We moved out to a cabin deep in the woods.
No neighbors for miles. Living off the land, he called it.
Stockpiling food, weapons, water. Teaching us how to shoot, how to fight, how to survive.
For a while, it seemed to help him. Gave him a sense of control.
" My voice cracks. "But every now and then he'd snap.
Nightmares. Flashbacks. He'd wake up screaming, drenched in sweat, convinced the enemy was coming through the trees.
Mom would calm him down. We learned to stay quiet during those episodes.
But that night… he was worse than I'd ever seen him.
He came in from outside, eyes wild. Talking about how they were coming.
How the government had betrayed us. How the only way to keep us safe was to make sure no one could ever take us from him. "
Daddy's hands were shaking as he locked the doors and turned to Mom. "They're coming, Jordan. They're coming for us." Mom tried to talk him down, but he wasn't listening. He kept muttering about traitors and enemies and how he had to protect his family.
"That night he was convinced we were all going to be taken from him," I whisper, tears spilling over. "He said the only way to keep us safe… was to make sure no one else could ever have us."
Mom had been reading to us on the couch. Rachel curled against her side. I was on the floor with a book when he stormed in. Nobody but Mom dared to move. Dad had a rifle in his hands. The same one he and I used that morning for training. His eyes… God, his eyes were gone. Empty. He raised the gun.
"Mom went first," I choke out. "He shot her in the chest while she was walking towards him, hands raised in that let's calm down way she had with him. She looked so surprised. Like she couldn't believe he had just pulled the trigger."
Mom's body hit the floor. I was numb with shock; all I could do was sit there while Rachel screamed.
"He shot all of them. My brothers Teddy…"
Teddy, my older brother, came running in, followed by Gunner, who was two years younger. Teddy never had a chance. He barely made it through the doorway when Dad shot him too.
"…and Gunner."
Screaming. Rachel was screaming so loud.
Gunner threw himself in front of Rachel, trying to shield her.
Another shot rang out. Both of them, Rachel and Gunner, went down.
I didn't know until later that Rachel's head cracked against the coffee table as she fell.
She went limp. I thought… I thought they were both dead.
"I thought he killed Rachel too," I choke out.
"Dad turned the gun on me," I close my eyes. The anger, the shame, the incomprehension still roiling through me. "He looked at me for what seemed forever. Just stared. And I just stared back. Numb. He had just killed everyone I loved, and I just sat there, staring at him."
Alessio's thumb moves over my cheek. Back and forth. He gives me the time and space I need.
"Then he shot himself. And I still just sat there."
Dad turned the gun on himself after that. One final shot. His body crumpled next to the others. I was the only one left alive—or so I thought—covered in their blood.
Alessio's thumb moves over my cheek, back and forth. Steady. Patient. He gives me the time and space I need. I've never said this out loud. Never. But it's been rotting inside me for years. He didn't shoot me. And I don't know why.
The water in the tub suddenly feels ice-cold.
Alessio doesn't say a word. He simply reaches down, pulls the plug, and lifts me out of the tub like I weigh nothing.
Water streams off me, soaking his clothes, but he doesn't care.
He wraps a thick towel around my shaking body and pulls me tightly against his chest, one arm banded around my back, the other cradling my head.
I'm trembling so hard my teeth chatter.
"I don't know why he didn't kill me," I sob against his wet shirt. "If he thought the government was after all of us, didn't he care that they would take me? Or did he realize what he'd done and decide to spare me?"
The questions I've carried for years pour out, ugly and broken.
Why didn't he shoot me? Why didn't he shoot me too? Why am I still alive?
He thought he killed them all. Did he not love me enough? Didn't he want me with them in the afterlife? Or did he realize what he had done?
I know how screwed up my thinking is. I've always known.
But I've never been able to stop it. For the longest time after I found out Rachel was still alive, I convinced myself I survived for one reason only, so I could look after my little sister.
That was my purpose. My penance. My only reason for still breathing.
Alessio holds me tighter, one hand stroking my wet hair, the other rubbing slow circles on my back. He doesn't try to fix it. He doesn't tell me it's okay. He just holds me while I fall apart in his arms, and my sobs echo off the marble walls.
"I'm sorry," I choke out between gasps. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save them. I'm so sorry I couldn't save her—"
"Shh," he whispers against my temple, voice rough with emotion. "You were fifteen, Beccs. You were a child. None of this was your fault."
I cry harder, because no one has ever said that to me before. Not really.
Wrapped in Alessio's arms, I let myself believe it might be true.