Not with him. Not with anyone.
I’m not just ashamed of my family. I’m embarrassed as fuck that I came back here. I only did it for Kate, but now I know that was a stupid move. Things haven’t changed; they’re exactly right where they were when I left for college. It wasn’t that Dad was trying to get on my nerves. I was just so pissed because he was acting like we could just pick up where we left off, as if nothing had changed. And to see Mom take his fucking side, like she always does, was just too much for me. It sliced open a wound that’s still never fully healed. I’m sure Jordan and Kate are frustrated as fuck by how we keep doing this over and over again, but I’m not okay yet. And I don’t know if I ever will be.
I have this horrible knot in my gut—one that makes me want to vomit because it reminds me of how weak and stupid I was when I was a kid and he took advantage of me. And when Mom made me feel like I’d done something wrong.
Dad’s never treated Kate or Jordan the way he’s treated me because they’ve never challenged his authority. They’ve never betrayed him the way he believes I did, when really, he’s the one who betrayed me. They both did, and now they suffer in their miserable lives in that home, pretending to love each other while Mom stocks up on as many pills as her psychiatrist will liberally prescribe to her to help numb the pain of living a loveless life.
I don’t want Kate or her son to have to be around that sick environment for a single day, confronted with the horrifying reality of what happens when two people who once loved each other feel nothing anymore but hate and resentment.
It’s not good for either of them, not after all she’s already been through with Lyle.
I side-eye Scott as we reach the end of the cul-de-sac, then guide him onto a dirt path that leads through a gap in the woods where the power lines are. It’s the path I used to take when I wanted to get away from it all after a shouting match with Dad.
When I needed to get far away so that I could forget how they treated me… what they did to me.
Dirt crushes beneath my shoes.
“Roger doesn’t need to be here,” I say.
I wait for Scott to say something. Anything.
At this point, I’m not sure that he can say anything that’s right.
But he doesn’t talk. He just walks with me, being patient and supportive, which is all I really need as a mixture of emotions race through me—rage, guilt, sadness, defeat.
But vulnerability wins.
I lash out at Dad like that because I feel so hurt and wounded, and I need to do something to take my power back.
As we come to the path I usually take into the woods, I turn and start along it, Scott following me and not questioning where we’re going, though I can tell by the way he keeps glancing around that he’s curious.
I lead him to a small clearing. There’s a fallen tree that stretches alongside the creek. Moss and weeds spread across the soft earth.
“This is where I used to come to think,” I tell him. “When we would have a fight and I wanted a place to hide. To regroup. Don’t know why I’m even telling you this.”
“Can be nice to talk to someone, especially a total stranger who you’ve only boned a few times.”
“Sometimes it feels easier to talk to strangers about crazy shit than people you’ve known all your life. How fucked up is that?”
He’s quiet. He doesn’t know what to say, I know that. Figure he doesn’t want to set me off.
I take a breath. “It’s not just about some cheating or even about the fights with him,” I admit. “There’s a lot more to it than that, but I—”
I stop myself because I know I shouldn’t be telling him any of this. He doesn’t care or want to know how fucked up my life is. But considering how I feel right now, and how I don’t ever feel like I have anyone to share this with, I want to tell Scott.
I have to get it off my chest.
“It was much more than cheating,” I blurt out.
“Um… I think you should be a little more specific because that could mean a lot. Did he touch you…?”
“Oh, God no. Nothing like that. No. He didn’t do anything sexual or beat me. But what he did was pretty fucking shitty. And Mom isn’t innocent either.”
“What did they do?”
“When I was in middle school, Mom was taking Kate to a sleepover at one of her friend’s houses. It was just Jordan and I playing army. Jordan took the walkie, and Mom had thrown out the other since we’d smashed it a few weeks earlier, so I was going to use Dad’s cell phone, which he’d left in his laptop bag. I knew it was in there because that’s where he usually left it. Back then, he’d still use the landline for work. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be playing with it, but I was eleven and I figured Dad was so busy on his call that he would never know the difference.
“My and Jordan’s game was basically hide-and-seek, but I’d pretend I was radioing to my fellow soldiers in battle while we were looking for him. During the game, Dad got a message. And I was curious. I was a kid, so of course I was. I wanted to see what it was, and when I clicked on the message, a picture of some girl popped up. She was very young, and she wasn’t covering up the fact that she had some nice boobs. I knew what I was looking at was wrong, and I scrolled up the messages. There were a lot of pictures, not just of her, but of Dad, too. And messages from him saying how much he missed her… and then other things that are like the pictures… I can’t block them out of my mind if I try. I couldn’t really process what I was looking at. But Dad came out of his office, like he fucking sensed what I was up to, and I guess he knew by the look on my face.
