My heart twists, full of grief for that little boy who went over the side of the roof, for the boy who watched his brother fall, and for the man in front of me who still thinks that a decision when he was a child without a developed prefrontal lobe is akin to murder.
“It sounds like a horrible accident.” I tell him honestly.
I don't even realize what I'm doing until I reach across the table and place my hand on his, which is clenched against the wood. His eyes linger for a moment on the point of contact before flicking back to me.
“I've tried to tell myself that my whole life. But I'm the one who gave him the idea to climb on the roof, to go upstairs when we weren't even supposed to be in the house.”
“Because you were achild.” I shake my head. “It's not like you did it hoping he'd get hurt, right?”
“God, no.” He sighs, and when I find his eyes again, they're cloudy with all that pain, glossy with a few tears that he doesn't seem to have realized have gathered there. “It should have been me. I should have gone over the roof to check on Charlotte.”
“Neither of you should have.” I correct him. “Your parents should have taken care of her. The fact that you guys cared tells me you weren't bad kids.”
“I didn't care, though.” He says quietly. “I didn't care because she was always crying from the minute she was born, and I just wanted her to shut up. Conrad could always get her to stop by making funny faces or telling her a story, but I just ignored her whenever he wasn't there to deal with her. Maybe if I'd been a better brother to her, I would have been a better brother to him, too.”
I'm not qualified to even begin unpacking that psychology, but the fact that I've lost Parker makes me emboldened enough to offer my two cents... whatever that's worth to him.
“It sounds like you were a great brother back then to Conrad. But he's gone, and the past is done. Maybe you can fix things with Charlotte?”
He scoffs, withdrawing from my touch so he can scrub his hands over his face.
“There's no fixing things with Charlotte. Trust me, we'll never find common ground.”
I watch him for a moment, considering that. He told me he thinkshe'sresponsible for his brother's death, but part of me wonders if he doesn't somehow blame his sister. It would certainly explain why he seems to have so much disdain for her.
Either way, from what I've heard, nobody is responsible for that tragedy... except maybe the parents, who should have been keeping an eye on their children instead of kicking them out of the house because they had friends over. It certainly doesn't get me any closer to understanding Cal.
I refill my wine glass and help myself to a long swig, trying to gather the courage to ask the thing that's been in the forefront of my brain all day.
Now or never.
“Tell me about the snakes.” I say suddenly, leaning toward him to pull him from the abyss of his mind.
He blinks at me in surprise, like he's forgotten I was there. “The snakes?”
“In the basement.” I nod. “You have six of them.”
“Yes.” He agrees.
O-kay. I guess I'm going to have to do all the work here.
“When I was in... captivity, they kept snakes there.”
He doesn't seem too surprised by that knowledge, so I carry on. “If you were bad, they'd toss you in the pit with the snakes and make you stay there until they'd tired of your screaming. Sometimes they'd leave girls down there while they threw in the rats to feed them.”
I close my eyes, which is a mistake, because it conjures the mental image of the girl whose real name I never learned. She got thrown in the pit because she didn't say thank you when one of the guards jacked himself off in front of her and demanded she open her mouth to take his release. They weren't allowed to touch us, but a few of them pushed the boundaries; it's why the snake pit was such an effective punishment. No trace of physical abuse, and the snakes didn't usually bite. They were just as trapped as we were. I think they felt our same anguish. When they tossed the rats down into the pit, though, the rats clung to her, clawing into her skin to try and escape the prison.
And the snakes were hungry enough that they went for their food regardless.
I heard somewhere, probably in a movie, that mobsters sometimes will trap a rat against someone's chest and surround them with heat, like a metal bowl. A rat's survival instinct is to fight, to claw and bite, so they'll tear the flesh of their cage and burrow to try and escape the heat. I've never had to worry about crossing the mob, so it's not something I thought of again after I learned that little nugget. At least, it wasn't until I watched a woman who couldn't have been much older than me stand in a pit of snakes with her arms out like a scarecrow as the rats jumped onto her head, clawed her face, and did everything they could to aid in their own escape. They didn't burrow into her, but they messed her up badly enough that when they finally pulled her out of the pit, she looked like she'd been in a fight with a lawnmower.
She'd lost her voice at some point when she was screaming, before she realized she had to keep her mouth shut to avoid offering a place for the rats to escape, and I never heard her speak after that.
I don't know how she healed, either. Her face was still wrapped in bandages by the time I was taken out of there to be sent to Cal.
“When they came to take me, they drugged me. But it must not have been a good enough dose, because I woke up as they were packing up the girl beforeme. I watched as they folded her inside a crate and then put the snakes in overtop of her. Three of them.”
Cal's eyes are full of something I can't quite place. It's not sadness, but it's heavy all the same. “Were there three in my box when you got me?”
