VICTORIA
AFTER A COUPLE of weeks of in-home therapy and wound treatment, I’m finally feeling like myself again. My therapist told me I can even start walking in the park again, but I’ll have to wait until my leg fully heals before I can pick back up with jogging and running.
Tired of being cooped up in my apartment all day, I decide to go visit my father in the hospital. I got the news a few days ago that they successfully brought him out of the medically induced coma. I’ve been getting regular updates from the doctors, and he’s been improving. They were able to remove the breathing aides and feeding tubes, and he’s actually able to sit up on his own and talk now.
As I enter his hospital room, my father’s face lights up as soon as he sees me. I want to feel the same excitement and happiness about seeing him, but all I can think about is what he did to the Rossi family. I’m convinced now that everything Damon said was true, because why else would he go to such lengths if my father didn’t do those things?
My hands curl into fists, and I try to shake away the anger, but I can’t.
And so, by the time I make it to his bedside, I’m an angry, quivering mess. “How…couldyou?” I ask, seething.
His joyful face morphs into one of shock and then of indifference. He sits stone still, not even blinking as he sneers, “I did…what had to be done.”
I’m so stunned by his confession that I actually take a step back from him. “So everything is true. Everything Damon said is actually true,” I whisper, my hands trembling at my sides.
“You don’t know…the whole story, Victoria,” my father offers, struggling to talk between coughing fits.
“Then tell me. Tell me what that family did that was so wrong. Tell me how a little boy and girl wronged you in some way!” I yell.
My father cringes when my voice reaches a near hysterical pitch. “Calm down.”
“I will not calm down!” No longer able to look him in the face, I turn away and stare at one of the white walls of the hospital room. “I can’t even look at you,” I confess.
“Did you know…that Arlo’s father…killed your mother?”
“Wh-what?” I stammer, slowly turning once more.
“They were having an affair. Left a party drunk, too drunk to drive…but the idiot drove anyway.” He stops to cough violently before being able to continue. “He…wrecked the car, and your mother…was killed instantly on impact.”
“You…you told meshewas driving.”
“I lied.”
“You lied?!” I exclaim in disbelief. But at this point whathasn’the lied about?
“You were nine years old!” he yells in response. He begins to wheeze then, and it takes him a while to recover. Clearly, he’s not out of the woods yet, medically speaking. “There were things…you wouldn’t have been able to…understand at that age.”
“What about at sixteen, or eighteen, or twenty? I wouldn’t have understood then either?”
He solemnly shakes his head. “By then it didn’t matter.”
“Because you had taken care of theproblem?” I sneer. And by problem, I mean the entire Rossi family. “How could you sell them, Papa?” I ask on a sob. Tears track down my cheeks, and I don’t even try to stop them. “Sara was only a few years older than me.”
My father looks away from me then.The coward.
“I did what I thought…was right at the time. Now I know it wasn’t. What I did was…wrong,” he says, shaking his head. “So very fuckin’ wrong.”
An idea strikes me hard. “So then make it right. Damon wanted the name of the man you sold his sister to. Givemethe name.”
My father shakes his head. “Sara is probably dead by now.”
Angry tears blur my vision. “That’s all Damon wanted from you, and you can’t even give him that.” I turn away from my father once more. “Shame on you. And shame on me for thinking you were in any way a redeemable man.”
And then I walk out of his hospital room knowing that I’ll probably never see my father again.
When I leave the building, Marco, my assigned bodyguard, opens the back door of the black sedan for me. I climb into the backseat, catching a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. My face is red with tears tracking down my cheeks. Angrily, I wipe away the tears and look away from my reflection.
When Marco gets behind the steering wheel, he asks me, “Home?”
