“I was a SEAL,” he said simply.
I searched for what to say next, but the words seemed like they were lodged deep inside my throat.
“I saw the video.”
I closed my eyes as disgust, loathing, and horror washed over me.
To know that this man knew what kind of sick fucks my parents were…
“I’m nothing like them,” I rasped.
For freaking years, I’d done everything in my power to distance myself from them.
So had Nettie.
My parents, Minnie and Barton Wheeler, were pastor and pastor’s wife to one of the biggest church communities in the area. Everyone loved them. Man, woman, and child.
My dad played stupid Santa for every public event in Sawtooth, Jawbone, and Bear Pass. My mom was on the school board for the county schools. My dad was at every single high school sporting event. My mom visited the sick and elderly every week. They both volunteered at the shelter.
Seriously, two people couldn’t appear better on paper.
But they’d never been that great to me.
“When I was twelve, my father backhanded me across the kitchen because I was talking to a boy,” I said softly. “When I was sixteen, he caught my sister having sex in the high school parking lot with a boy he’d told her never to talk to. He beat the both of us within an inch of our lives because I’d lied for her, and she’d lied to him.”
The man turned to look at me, and I felt like a thousand suns were shining directly on my face.
“Men like that are cowards,” he responded. “But I’ve known you for all of two minutes, and I can see that you’re nothing but good.”
I snorted. “It’s about to not matter.”
“It’ll matter,” he promised. “Tell me what you saw that day, please.”
So I did.
“I walked in and they weren’t upstairs. I meet with them once a week to play the dutiful daughter that cares. I don’t. But appearances are everything, and if I show up and visit for an hour once a week, they mostly leave me alone.”
“Okay.”
I closed my eyes as I replayed that day in my mind.
“I heard them in the basement, so I went down there. When I got down there, there was a door open that I’d never seen before. And I’ve lived in that house for nineteen years of my life, Mr. Grant.”
“Weaver.”
“Weaver,” I said quietly. “When I went into the open doorway, at first, I wasn’t quite sure what I was seeing.”
“Take your time,” he said when he watched me wipe sweat from my brow.
“There were a bunch of photos of kids. I thought it was us at first. They were all ages and sizes. And at first, I thought they were innocent enough. Babies, toddlers, older kids. All in half-naked states.”
He grunted.
“I was confused at first, because none of those babies were us. I knew what we looked like. Remembered every hellish family photo session we attended because my dad freakin’ hated taking photos. And we had to take a lot of them for appearance’s sake.” I licked my dry and chapped lips. “I didn’t see them at first, too busy trying to figure out the photos. Then I moved my gaze toward the corner of the room where they were sitting on a couch with each other. My mother was su…” I gagged. “Performing fellatio. On my dad. And my dad was watching a video on the TV across from him. A video of a child in a bathtub….”
I couldn’t finish the rest.
It was just too much.
