“Where’s Jeff?”
Not offering time for her to answer me, I trail through the foyer to the stairs that I used to run up and down for hours at a time when I was a kid. My hand runs along the same dark railing that I almost cracked my head open trying to use as a slide on more than one occasion.
Like a character out of Wonderland, I shrink down as I walk through the hall. Every door holds its own memories and behind them, their own pain.
Brody’s tears as his body was torn apart from the inside. Edie’s sleepless nights spent crying and trying to soothe her own broken heart. Nash’s endless prayers as he begged God to fix something that was never broken.
I’m too afraid to even consider what kind of secrets might lie in the silence behind Graham’s door.
By the time I push open the heavy pair of two-paneled doors at the far end of the hall, I’m four feet tall and swimming in my clothes.
“Hey, Jeff,” I say quietly, crossing my arms over my chest as I lean against the door frame.
He looks like shit.
I don’t remember the last time I saw the old man wearing anything more casual or comfortable than a smoking jacket, but he’s got on a silken set of pajamas today. The top half of his body is propped up and supported by a wedged pillow. His face is more pale than it was the last time that I saw him, and I can only assume that’s because of his procedure.
My own brown eyes slide toward me from their place inside his skull, and I can’t meet their gaze.
They’re the one thing I can’t change. The one thing I can’t stand to see reflected back at me when I look in the mirror.
“You never were good about following an order,” he grouses. “What do you want?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell him, shoving my hands into my pockets as I chance a few steps closer. “I didn’t know if you were gonna die or not, and…”
“You thought that you would try to win your way back into my will before it happened?”
A deep huff pushes its way from my throat, my head shaking.
“I don’t give a shit about your will,” I tell him. “I didn’t want there to be any bad blood or whatever between us if you croaked. I think maybe a part of me wants to try to forgive you.”
A palm presses against his chest as he laughs, forcing a series of wheezing coughs out of him. Against my better judgment, I cross the room to offer him the small glass of water next to his bed.
He could probably reach for it himself, but…
Snatching the glass in his wrinkled hand, he pulls a sip from it.
“What in the world doIneedyourforgiveness for?” He demands. “I’ve not done a thing to you.”
“Right,” I nod toward the ground. My hands shove themselves back into my pockets as they ball into fists. “You just threw me out because I didn’t believe the same thing you did, and you ripped my brother away from me.”
Slamming the glass onto the table next to him, he pushes himself up into a sitting position, now supported by an elbow pressed into the pillow underneath his body. His brows stitch together as a red flush creeps across his face and neck, leaving his skin mottled.
“I purged sin and sodomy from my home,” he grits. “Youmay be able to tolerate those things, but—”
“Iamthose things,” I tell him with a hollow laugh. “You think that, just because you spent your life telling us that something was wrong, it would keep it from existing? Jules and I have a partner who we love, who makes us happy, and your God’sopinion doesn’t change that. I grew up to be everything you tried to teach me to hate, and I’mhappy. And all you ever amounted to is a bitter old man. That’s fucking embarrassing.”
His nostrils flare at that, his eyes narrowing at me.
A wrinkled hand flies toward me to snare the collar of my shirt, pulling my body closer to his as his lip curls.
“You disgust me,” he grits, spittle hitting my face like the venom in his words. “There was always something wrong with you. Your defiance, your affinity to serpents and Devils. If I hadn’t witnessed your birth myself, I’d believe you to be the spawn of the beast.”
Look in the fucking mirror, Jeff, I think.I may as well be.
“Okay,” I say with a cold smile, taking hold of his wrist to free myself from his grip. “Thanks for the clarity on that,Father.”
Picking up his water glass, I drop it next to his bed to send it crashing to the floor before pivoting toward the bedroom’s exit. My hand braces itself against the door frame, and I pause. I look back to the old man lying in that bed, and my head shakes with a glance up at the ceiling fan above him.
