See? I hated giving room to that thought. Because if I let the thoughts linger, then Mother would be right. It meant I was as psychotic as my father.
Then it meant there was really this black blood running through my veins.
A year had passed since our last conversation. Before we left for Scotland, I had found my way to the subway, entered a train that made a stop at Centre Correctionel de Bellevigne, the oldest criminal penitentiary in France.
That day, I had longed for a hug, a retraction of his words, an apology, and a return home to me and well, Mother. But he couldn’t really do much. He just promised that he would come back home soon. But it was obvious he was lying, just trying to make me feel better. The guards were really mean and their eyes were cold. They wouldn’t let him go home so soon and so easily.
That was our final physical encounter. Weeks after, Mother was in and out of immigration office, court and whatnot.
Then, exactly two or three months later, she said we were relocating to her country, Scotland. She still had her family home, a dusty bungalow that was almost falling apart.
Before I could protest, she just started chucking my clothes into a bag and dragging me to the airport.“Beth Fraser is your name now,”she said, harshly.“You’re not Juliette Bourdet. There’s not a person in the world named Juliette Bourdet. She’s dead.”
Far away from France, only video calls connected my father and I. I consistently visited Kenzo’s house for that because Mother would wring my neck if she ever stumbled upon me talking to that man. That vile man who ruined her life and ridiculed her in the eyes of society.
Now in front of my laptop again, I waited for prisoner 4185 to be escorted through a gated hallway. And I almost blurted, ‘Dad’ when Julian Bourdet appeared on my laptop screen a few seconds after.
In contrast to other nations, France did not enforce uniform policies for its prisoners. So he showed up again in his typical white sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. It might as well be a uniform now. Do they even let him wash that, at least?
“Juliette,” he drawled lazily.
Hearing my long-forgotten birth name made my chest tight. My eyes itched, and I thought I wanted to cry.
I loved my name. I didn’t want to change it. But Mother said I had to stop being childish and understand that changing my name was the only way to shield myself from the online frenzy targeting me as the seed of a monster.
“Hi,” I whispered. No matter how hard I tried, it seemed I may never get used to seeing him in prison, not in the lecture room educating students, not in the community park giving me a horse ride, not in the kitchen making peanut butter sandwiches.
Watching him through the camera, I felt cheated yet again, thinking about the easy communication, home visits, and proud mentions of fathers I’d had to witness among my schoolmates. Yet I dared not stay in a conversation where people talked about their dads. Because mine was a killer.
“It’s always a pleasure to see you, little rosette,” he said, a twitch at the corner of his lips hinting at a smile that belied his cold-blooded nature.
I noticed how his once luscious black hair, full of sheen, was now dry and marred with breakages.
Across from me, he stared, his blue eyes as still and lifeless as a frozen river. Not a flicker of emotion could be seen in them. Was the love I used to see in those eyes really just an illusion? Or was he still such a good actor?
“How have you been?” I asked. But it was obvious how he had been. He was fading away, getting noticeably thinner in the face.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, his fingers dragging over the years-old stubble shadowing his jaw. “I’m stuck in a building filled with fools of different kinds, the food tastes like cardboard.” His jaw tightened when he exhaled, his lips curling into something that wasn’t quite a smirk. “But it’s fine. I’ll be out of here soon.”
I stilled, my brow lifting at his words. He had said this before, too many times to be received as a joke. And each time, it carried the same quiet certainty, as if his conviction alone could bend the bars of the cell.
It made me wonder; did he actually have a way out? Some hidden plan the judge and the detectives never caught a wind of?
When his case set the tabloids ablaze, there were whispers of a partner. His killings suddenly bore an unsettling resemblance to those of the killer,The Crimson Artisan,who emerged in Scotland eighteen months before my father was caught.
The authorities tried to fit the timeline together, cross-referencing his whereabouts with the bloodshed overseas. But every time, his alibi held up. Either he was in lecture halls, at home making dinner or at a shareholders’ meeting. He was always accounted for. It was logically impossible for him to be in two places at once.
These left two possibilities; either the Scottish killer had been his partner all along, or he was just a fan dedicatedly taking notes. But after my father was sentenced, The Crimson Artisan went quiet for a while. Although I wasn’t sure if it was just a made up rumour but I heard he was still in business, especially in Glenfallow. They said it was like a monthly thing. He would come out, kill at least two and disappear again.
“Well…” I trailed off awkwardly. “How, um, how do you plan on getting out?”
He tilted his head to the side, his brows furrowed as if in deep thought, then his lips curled. “Don’t worry about it. You just sit pretty and I’ll come get you when I’m out.”
“Where will we go?” I asked, playing along. Or maybe I really wanted to run away into the sunset with my psycho father.
His eyes glinted with something dark. It sent a chill down my spine. “Somewhere very far. No one will find us.”
“Okay.” I nodded silently.
