I shift on the Adirondack chair but don’t meet his gaze.
The normalcy we shared there for the span of a moment has vanished. Tension pulls between us, and I remember that for Sullen, a part of me hates this man.
“Cosmo.” I speak his name sharply. He needs to know his time is nearly up, and he either confesses, or I will refuse to have his back, ever again. Our friendship is frayed, at best.
“The doctor,” he says in answer. “Klein.”
What did your dad do to you?
He was a doctor.
My fingers tighten around the glass. I don’t react, otherwise. I just say, “What about him?” This is where I stopped him last night.
He is quiet for another moment. His arms are on either side of the chair, and he is perfectly still, but even with my gaze averted, only taking him in from my periphery, I know he is close to trembling with whatever secret he has hidden in his angry heart.
“I didn’t want it to be true.” His voice nearly breaks. “I asked Maude for research on Burbank Gates, to discuss at theEmporium. I personally traced Stein’s movements to Haunt Muren and with that theft I did for Mads, I asked whatever questions I could.”
I swallow hard. The lump still feels stuck in my throat, and I am grateful, for one single moment, that Sullen is in there, and he does not have to hear.
“I kept making excuses. It was allcoincidence,I told myself. And I convinced myself it didn’t matter anyway. Plenty of sons walking around without fathers, right? What does it matter if they add me to the statistic?” He snorts, performing nonchalance he doesn’t feel.
“My mother took me to Manhattan after her one night stand with him, but it didn’t work. Expensive, and she didn’t have money for it for long. My tuition at your school,” I feel his eyes on me but don’t look up, “I never knew how she paid for it, working clerical jobs like she did. But we came here one summer.”
I lift my eyes then, to meet his.
He is staring at the hills around Haunt Muren, bathed in only night and stars. “For work, she said. She had to get something. Child support, I think it was now. I was twelve?” He frowns. “Eleven? I don’t know and I don’t want to fucking remember.”
I can’t stop staring at his cheekbones, his eyes, his posture, so rigid.
“There was a plague mask in the entranceway, haphazard on a bench. I couldn’t forget that. Mom told me to wait in the sitting room, but I’ve always been a little shit.” At this, he looks at me, and puts on that performer’s smile.
I don’t return it.
“I peeked through a door.” The smile is gone. He is still staring at me, but it is as if he is not seeing me. “Mom wasn’t in there. She was looking for him or dealing with someone else, I don’t know. But there was a crack in the door, someone in achair, someone standing over him. A dentist’s chair that held a little boy. I told myself it was a doctor’s visit.” He breathes a broken laugh. “I had to make it make sense, inside my head.”
The hairs along the back of my neck stand on end.
“Since I saw Sullen in the hotel, since I saw his scars… I’ve had to tell myself I didn’t recognize them from that chair.” His voice is rough. “I told myself he was a freak and that he did it to himself. He wasn’t worth my attention. My pity. Nor yours.” He jerks his chin at me and I can hear it, how he talked himself out of basic human empathy, the way we all do in this world of mine. “I told myself I couldn’t know him.” He takes a breath. “But I did. I do.” The words are twisted in his mouth, like he hates speaking them out loud.
“Are you saying that Klein is…” I trail off, unable to ask.
He’s a doctor,he said.
“Yes.” The same roughness in his tone. “Speaking to Sanford, pressing him for more on Klein, I think he is.”
The last of the fire pops and smoke curls between us.
“But Karia, I’m not…” He stops, and swallows. I can hear it as I close my eyes, like when I open them again, none of this will be real. None of this will be true.
I am dreaming. This tangled web is only a nightmare.
“I’m not asking for pity. I’m telling you because you deserve to know, given everything I’ve put you through. You should know it’s why I taunted Sullen and wanted to hurt him, even this morning. The guilt…” He trails off.
I open my eyes, and we are staring at one another.
“But I’m not like him. I don’t want to be likethat.” His father, I know he means.
He breathes in. “When I stripped Sullen, I needed to know if what I saw before, here, with my mother, if he was the same. Everything I said about him doing it to himself, it was denial.”
