The eggs I just ate threaten to climb back up my throat.
I haven’t seen this man in ten years. Not since I turned eighteen and bought self-defense classes that paid off.
Five years of abuse stopped when I drove an elbow into his collarbone, fracturing it in a panicked, frightened, desperate blow.
As far as Dad knows, Callum had an ‘accident.’ He doesn’tknow what his own brother did to me all those years ago, and I can’t bring myself to tell him. It would shatter his fragile heart.
Callum’s gaze thickens as he stands in the doorway, a cloud of nicotine and rotting morals resting on his shoulders.
My hand tightens on the doorknob. “What are you doing here?”
“Your father invited me.”
Dad calls out from the living room. “Who is it?”
Callum shrugs out his arms. “See?”
I work to keep my tone calm. “You’re not welcome here.”
His eyes narrow. “Who do you think has been looking after him while you’ve been living several states away in blissful ignorance?”
I take in his appearance. He’s wearing a brown leather jacket from the seventies, mulberry-colored corduroy pants fraying at the bottom, and a half-smile that wouldn’t look out of place in a horror movie.
“You wouldn’t know how to look after anyone.”
He tips his head to one side. “People change, Pfeiffer. Now, are you going to leave me out here in the cold, or let your father make up forlost timewith his brother?” His teeth gnash together. “While he still remembers me.”
“Fine,” I mutter, stepping aside. “But don’t you dare—ever—lay another finger on me.”
He pauses in the doorway and curls his lip. “You think too highly of yourself, sweetheart.”
That word rolling off his tongue feels like a finger down my spine. My whole body shudders. He walks into the apartment leaving me to close the door with trembling fingers. Despite the number of times he’s forced me, violated me, humiliated me, I’ve never once threatened my uncle.
I didn’t keep up with the self-defense classes after I moved to Boston—I didn’t think I’d need to. But now I wish I had.
My father appears in the hall and, for a split second, frownsat the sight of his brother. Then recognition lights him up, sending my stomach into a spin.
“Callum!”
Dad opens his arms as if greeting a war hero, not a man who’s obviously been stopping by while I’ve been gone.
Callum looks back at me, victorious, but I’m so deep in shock I can’t respond.
“I’ll make coffee,” I say instead.
In the kitchen I grip the counter until the tendons stand out on my wrists. My pulse is thundering and I feel sick. How am I supposed to live here with that man dropping by whenever he wants?
How am I supposed to forget he ever existed, when he’s in my life? How am I supposed to function like a whole person when just the sight of him reopens all the wounds and breakages he caused when I was just a kid?
I make the coffee in a daze and leave it on the table in the living room.
“I’m going out for some air,” I announce to no one in particular.
“It’s raining out,” Callum says, an ugly lilt to his voice.
I avoid his cutting gaze altogether. “I like the rain.”
The unpacking remains unfinished as I pull on a raincoat and open the door. But I can’t leave because an enormous body is blocking the way, with one arm lifted as if it’s about to knock.
