I grunt at that, drawing her attention once more. “How are things with you and your dad?”
“Why?”
“Just curious. I was shocked as hell he let you come back here.”
“Let me?”
I wince at the tone of her voice. “Let’s just say the relationship between your dad and Nevaeh is very different. I guess I was using that same yardstick to measure your relationship by.”
She huffs and throws herself down onto the sofa. I take the chair opposite her. “See, neither of them will give me the full scoop on what went down there. It’s hard because I feel like everyone is keeping secrets to protect me. But without all the information, I’m blind to so much that I feel like I’m stumbling around like an idiot.”
“It’s not my place to really comment, but I will say this: your sister lived a pretty sheltered life after you were taken. I think inhis head, your dad was trying to keep her close to keep her safe, but he wasn’t particularly nice to her either. Perhaps, like when we discussed Delphi before, it was a defense mechanism. He lost one daughter, and it nearly killed him. It cost him his wife, too. So if he kept the other at arm’s length and tried not to love her, it wouldn’t hurt if something happened.”
“Why are men so dumb?”
“Not sure I have an answer for that,” I tease.
“They seem to be trying to muddle through now. I know my sister speaks to him once a week because he tells me about it. They’re slowly building a relationship, just like I am with him, but I think they’ll be wildly different. If the shoe were on the other foot, I’m not sure I could forgive my dad for checking out and mistreating me when I needed him most. I get that he was hurt and scared and that he’d lost a child and his wife, but Nevaeh lost her sister and her mom. She needed her daddy, and he….” She shakes her head. “He fucked up. But that’s between them to sort out. I won’t get involved or take sides. I’m not even sure what my relationship will end up like with either of them yet. It’s still really early days. Maybe this time next year, we’ll all be estranged and the only time they’ll think of me is when a Lifetime movie is made about my story.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I’m not sure what to believe anymore.”
I get up and move to the sofa, sitting beside her. She turns so she can face me.
“You don’t trust them not to abandon you?”
She blows out a frustrated breath. “I wish it were that simple to explain away. I trust them as much as I trust anyone right now. You’d think it would be more, that they’d be my touchstone because we’re family, but family complicates things. I know I love them, and for now, that has to be enough.”
I don’t get where she’s coming from. I’d do fucking anything to have my family back, especially my sister, even if it were just for a day. I feel like there was so much I never got to say to her, so many things I thought we’d get around to doing that we never did.
“I know you don’t get it. That’s okay. I’m not sure I get it myself half the time.” She rubs her eyes tiredly. “They lived a whole life while I was gone. Made decisions they might not have made if I hadn’t been taken. The landscape was bleak for them for such a long time, and then when life slowly returned, it wasn’t the same as before. Nothing bloomed. Roots became tangled to the point of strangulation. If they had found a body in the first few years after I’d been taken, they’d have been able to grieve me and start to heal. Maybe they’d have cut their losses and gone their separate ways, let everything that had become so twisted and chaotic die out…But then I came back.”
“That’s a good thing, though. That’s all they both wanted.”
“Until the new seeds are planted—seeds of discontent and resentment. Nothing that happened to me was my fault, but at times I still blame myself. How can I not expect them to do the same? On the flip side, there is a tiny part of me that’s mad at them, too. It’s not rational and I’ll never admit it to them, but it’s there anyway, like a scab I keep picking.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“That makes two of us.” She taps her fingers against her forehead. “They lived a life while I was slowly dying. My mom removed herself from this earth so she didn’t have to feel the pain of losing me, while I was trapped in hell, losing baby after baby, and forced to endure it. I’m mad because she escaped, and I couldn’t. Mad that my dad and my sister’s relationship is so damaged over stupid fucking shit when I was being raped and beaten on a daily basis. I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like if my biggest issues were that my daddywas too strict or my daughter was too lovely. I mean, I gave you a whole spiel about how trauma is trauma, but I can’t deny that perspective changes everything.”
“And in the grand scheme of things, their issues are trivial compared to yours.”
“Yep, and then I feel like a bitch for feeling that way to begin with. They hoped for a miracle, but in their hearts, they thought I was dead. They had every right to move on with their lives.”
“But you were stuck in yours.”
She closes her eyes in defeat. Her voice came out as a choked whisper. “They stopped looking for me. Every damn day, I prayed for rescue, but nobody was coming. It messes with my head that if Jasper didn’t make a grab for Nevaeh, me and Star would be dead right now.”
“You’d have held on, found a way to survive?—”
She shakes her head, the look of guilt, shame, and devastation on her face as she whispers her secret to me. “No. Star had begun to catch Jasper’s eye. I thought we’d have more time, given how old I was when he took me, but I’d seen the change in him. I recognized that gleam of lust in his eyes.”
I swallow bile, willing myself to hold still so she can get the rest out.
“I’d have tried to kill him first. I’d tried before and failed over and over, but I’d have tried again. And if that didn’t work…” Her voice trails off as the tears start flowing down her face, horror hitting me a moment later at the cruel hopelessness she must have felt.
“You’d have killed Star.”
