by Jay McLean
Mom holds up a hand, shakes her head. She hasn’t stopped crying either. Like me, hers are silent.
Laney’s parents arrive, baby Preston in tow. “What can we do?” Misty asks. Laney’s Dad hugs her, and she sobs into his chest. He hugs Lucas, too.
My mom hasn’t touched me.
Has barely looked at me.
Tom says, “Can you take Lachy home with you?”
Lachlan puts up a fight that lasts all of two seconds. Our embrace is weak. As soon as they’re out the doors, Lincoln stands. “I’m going home.”
“You can’t leave!” Lucy cries, and her husband holds her to him.
Lincoln’s eyes narrow when he spits, “This is bullshit, Luce!”
“Enough!” Tom snaps.
But Lincoln isn’t done. “You remember the last time we were all in the hospital like this?” He points to Laney. “When she took four bullets from a guy who wanted to kill her!”
Lucas sighs.
Lincoln goes on, “She didn’t choose to have that happen to her! And the time before that? It was for Mom. She didn’t choose to get cancer, and she sure as hell didn’t choose to die! Logan—he chose to do all this shit! He chose this path! And now he has to deal with the consequences.” He crosses his arms, widens his stance. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to sit around and feel sorry for him because he’s so high on whatever drugs that he can’t see straight. That he drives his truck right into a goddamn lake. He could’ve killed someone! Jesus Christ, Lachy could’ve been out there playing with the pig when he sped through the yard, and we’re supposed to sit here crying about it?! No! No effing way am I wasting a single tear on that jerk. For all I care, he can—”
“Stop!” Mom cries out. “Just stop!” She covers her face, muffles her loud sobs with both her hands.
I stand, finally find my voice, find the words I’d been too scared to ask. “What the hell do you know about him that you’re keeping to yourself?”
“Melissa…?” Tom asks. “What is she talking about?”
Mom sucks in a breath, attempts to steady herself. “You should sit down, Tom.”
“I think I’ll stand,” he says, his jaw clenched. “Start talking.”
Mom wipes at her tears as she falls into the seat opposite me. There’s no color in her face, no hesitation in her words. “Logan was molested as a child.” She looks at me. “By your father.”
48
Logan
I am nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath my weight. The car still smells new, even though I’ve been in it for months. The dash is gray. I can barely see over it. In the pocket of the door, there’s a tube of hand lotion. It’s pink. I wonder who it belongs to. “Are you all buckled in?” he asks, looking down at me.
I nod, and he smiles.
“So… how are things at home with your mother?”
I frown. “She’s getting worse.”
“Is it sad being at home?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, my toes kicking at my swim bag.
Mom used to take me to my private lessons before she got sick. Then Dad did it for a while, but it became too hard for him with all the other kids. Mom says I have to keep going. That life has to keep moving. So I go. My Aunt Leslee takes me to the lessons. Coach Murphy brings me home.
His hand settles on my leg, and I look up at him. He smiles again, but this time, it’s different. It looks fake. “Do you want to go home, Logan?”
I shrug. “Not really.”
“Why don’t we go back to my house for a bit? We can watch a movie. I’ll let you eat whatever you want.”
“You got nut- free candy?” I ask.
“I would think so. Why don’t we check?”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Okay.”
I don’t know how long the car ride to Coach Murphy’s house is, but he doesn’t live in our town. There are no stairs at his house like there are in mine. He leads me into his kitchen where he opens the pantry and tells me to choose from all the candy. I choose one of everything I know doesn’t have nuts. He’s smiling at me when he pats my head. “Why don’t you go to the TV room and wait for me there?” He points to a room on the other side of the hall. It’s small. Like my bedroom. There’s a TV and a few toys. Girls’ toys. Nothing I want to play with. I push the red-headed doll off the couch, watch it fall to the floor. In the kitchen, I hear Coach Murphy talking on the phone. “Hey, Tom. The people in the pool before us went overtime. We’re still here. We’ll be running a little late.”
I don’t know why he’s lying to my dad.
I don’t ask.
When he comes into the room, he’s not wearing a shirt. Or pants. Just boxer shorts. I ask, taking the drink he’s offering, “Why did you take your clothes off?”
He chuckles. “We just do things a little differently in this house. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t seen each other like this before. We swim together all the time.”
“I guess.”
“And it really is comfortable. Why don’t you take your clothes off for me, Logan?”
49
Aubrey
My dad was drunk behind the wheel of a car that crashed head-on into a tree. That was my last memory of him.
The memory is real.
The events are real.
But the circumstances surrounding it? The lead-up? They were all things I didn’t know about. All things my mother tried to keep hidden from me.
His death happened exactly a week after the detectives knocked on the door of our family home two towns over from where we currently are. It’s the same town that holds the yearly autumn festival. The festival Logan had taken me to. The boy who made the allegations was from the same town. My father had been his swim coach.
He was ten years old.
My dad had written Mom a letter before getting in his car.
She calls it a suicide note.
I call it an admission of guilt.
In the letter, he’d admitted to what he’d done and named all his victims from oldest to youngest.
There were five names.
Logan’s name was last.
After his death, we moved to Raleigh, where she went through the process of changing my name, homeschooling me, blocking all access to anything that might reveal who he really was, and burning anything and everything that could possibly remind me of him. She kept me sheltered, hidden from his actions, and was grateful I was still too young to ask questions.
She did it to protect me.
She tells us all of this in an unoccupied, private room of the hospital where a clock ticks too loud, and my pulse is too thick, and everyone’s sniffs and sobs are constant.
I sit on the floor in the corner of the room, holding on to my knees. I rock back and forth, back and forth, her words replaying in my head like a broken record. “I burned his letter, but I’ve memorized the names, and I’ve spent the past ten years trying to find each one of them, trying to make sure that the actions of a monster I once called my husband hasn’t ruined them,” Mom says. “For the past ten years, I’ve been paying for therapy for the first boy who came forward. There are two who want nothing to do with me, who swear they don’t know what I’m talking about. One of them is currently deployed in the army. I was about to find Logan when… when he brought you home that first time.” My mom cries through her words, her heartache.
Toms stops pacing. Starts again.
“Aubrey, honey,” Mom says. “Say something.”
I shake my head, press my cheek to my leg, and rock harder. Faster.
I am empty.
I am void.
I am eight years old, and Dad’s letting me sit in the front seat of his car for the first time. He’d bought the car when Mom was deployed. He didn’t ask her if he could buy it, and I heard them arguing about it the first night she was home.
I reach into my backpack and sift through my clothes.
“Put your seatbelt on, sweetheart,” Dad says.
I find the hand lotion Gr
andma gave me and do as Dad asks.
“How was your sleepover at Grandma’s?” he asks, reversing out of the driveway.
“Good,” I say, looking up at him. “How was your night?”
Dad smiles. “I had a lesson that ran a little late. Besides that, it was the same old boring night.” He taps my knee with his finger. “Don’t tell your mom, but I had candy for dinner.”
I laugh to myself as I rub the lotion into my hands. I try to put the tube back in my backpack, but with my seatbelt on, it’s impossible to reach, so I drop it into the pocket of the door. I sniff my hands, and Dad says through a chuckle. “That’s really smelly, Aubs.”
“It’s nice,” I say. “It smells like summer. Like sunshine and cut grass and strawberry milkshakes.”
“It smells like poop,” he says, scrunching his nose.
I sit on my hands, saddened by his words. My fingers brush something flat, something cold. I pull out a penny from between my butt and the leather seat and hold it up in front of me. “Where did this come from?” I ask, looking at the coin.
Dad glances at it quickly, then back at the road. “One of the kids I coach was in my car last night. It must’ve fallen out of his pocket.”
“Aubrey,” Mom says pulling me from the memory.
I gasp, get to my feet.
Whatever reaction is on my face has Cameron stepping toward me. “You’re in shock, Aubrey. It’s okay…” His hands settle on my shoulders. Strong. Defiant.
I shrug out of his touch and aim my glare at my mother. “You wanted to protect me?” I growl, my anger and hatred directed at her. “You may have protected me then, but you didn’t protect me now, and you sure as fuck didn’t protect Logan!” My heart pound, pound, pounds, then stops. Drops. I scream, “You knew! This entire time, you knew, and you didn’t say a thing!”
“Aubrey,” she cries. “I tried. God, I tried. But, how could I? How does one…” She falls into a heap on the bed, her head in her hands. “I tried, Aubrey,” she repeats. “And then I got to know him, know his family, and he seemed fine—”
“Fine?!” I shout, throwing my arms in the air. “How the hell is this fine?!”
“He told me he grew up happy, I assumed—”
“Why the hell didn’t he say something?” Tom says, his tone breaking my already dead heart. “Why wouldn’t he come to us… why…”
Lucy lets out a sob. “Because Mom was sick… and we were all… we were going through so much that he… he…”
I run out of the room, her words slicing at my soul, killing me from the inside. I race down the hall, ignoring the heavy footsteps behind me. I can’t deal with my mom right now, and I sure as hell won’t force the Prestons to be in my presence for a second longer.
My heavy legs carry me to the exit, where air hits my lungs, and I bend over myself, my hands on my knees. My stomach lurches, my entire body convulsing with the force.
I clasp the penny in my palm, look up at my dad. “What’s his name?”
“His name is Logan.”
I giggle. “Is he cute?”
I empty the content of my stomach into the bushes by the front door.
“Aubrey.” I recognize the voice as Lucas’s, but I don’t turn to him. “Don’t, Luke,” I cry out, my mouth covered in spit and tears and turmoil. “Don’t come near me!” I start to walk away, my phone gripped tight in my hand.
“Where are you going?” he calls out after me. “You can’t leave him, Aubrey. He needs you now more than ever!”
I freeze in the middle of the road, my shoulders tense. Then, slowly, I face him, his dejected figure blurred by the tears that won’t fucking quit. “He needs me?” I repeat, my voice breaking. “Lucas… how can he ever look at me the same? Every look we’ve shared, every touch… God… how can he look at me and not feel sick to his stomach?”
“Because… because he loves you, Aubrey.”
“Love isn’t enough anymore! He can’t… he can’t pick and choose the parts of me that will settle his mind. That’s not how this works. No…” I cry, walking backward, giving me the distance to breathe. “He can’t love me. Because I’ll always be my father’s daughter, and my father will always be the man who molested him.”
Behind me, Leo’s voice echoes through my agony. “What is she talking about, Lucas?”
50
Logan
The first thing I do when I come to is pull the fucking tube from my throat and sit up, searching for somewhere to empty my stomach.
Dad’s next to me, holding a trash can beneath my chin.
I puke and I puke and I puke until I can no longer breathe.
My head pounds. My heart does the same.
Dad strokes my head, my back. “Let it out, son.”
Doctors and nurses and too many people fill the room, and I fall back on the bed, call out for Mary.
She isn’t here.
Neither are her friends.
The only one here is Misery, and Misery becomes my poison, weakening all my senses.
I close my eyes, let her destroy me.
The voices are hushed but loud enough to hear through the fog of my mind.
“It makes sense.”
“He was always acting up, but it got worse around that time.”
“I think we all assumed it was because of Mom getting sick.”
“Why wouldn’t he say something to us?”
“Be glad that motherfucker’s already dead.”
“What do we do about Aubrey?”
Aubrey…?
My jaw tenses.
They know.
They all know.
Melissa… she must have told them...
My shoulders shake before the sound of my cries fall weakly from my throat.
Tears land on my pillow, wetting my temple.
“You’re okay, son. We’re here. We’re all here for you.”
Dad reaches for my hand.
I pull it away.
Hours pass. I stay semi-lucid. The door of the hospital room is forever opening, closing.
People come in.
People go out.
Laney cries.
Lucas comforts her.
Leo stands by the door, his hands behind his back, his head lowered.
The twins whisper to each other but never to me.
Lachlan isn’t here.
Neither is Lucy.
Dad sits in a chair next to the bed. He never leaves my side.
I don’t want them here.
I only want Mary.
And she’s nowhere to be found.
Cameron enters, stands with Leo.
Still no Lucy.
I remember the steering wheel shaking in my grip, the bump of the seat as I sped through the property. I remember seeing the lake. And I remember wanting to be submerged…
I’m twenty years old, and all I wanted was to hear my mother’s voice.
“Dad?” I whisper, and he leans forward, his eyes wide. It’s the first time I’ve spoken. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, his tired, worried eyes on mine. “No, Logan. No one is as sorry I am. I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry—”
“Stop it!” Lincoln cries. “We’re all sorry.” He walks over to me, stops next to Dad. “God, Logan. We’re so sorry.”
The doctor comes in, someone I don’t know. He has a clipboard and stethoscope. They all do. He asks about my medical history, my allergies, my past intake of drugs. That’s when I lower my gaze, ask everyone to leave. I don’t have the energy to hold on to secrets, and so I tell the doctor about my unconditional love for Mary, about her friends, about the good times we all had together.
When he leaves, no one else takes his place.
I lie in the bed, stare up at the ceiling, the beeps of the machines sound around me—another playlist, just one song, one genre. In my head, I title the playlist “The Downfall.”
Time passes too slowly, and then the door opens and
Lucy appears. “Hey,” she says, her voice low. Her short legs shuffle across the room and toward me, where she stops at the foot of the bed, her eyes on mine. She’s in flannel pajamas, the type Mom used to wear, and she looks so much like her that it rips at my heart.
I try to respond, but my words catch in my throat.
Then Lucy’s trying and failing to get onto the bed with me. I reach to the side, where the controller sits, and lower the bed for her, let the electronic whir fill the room. When it’s completely down, she climbs on and settles in next to me. I start to move to give her more room, but she asks, “Stay close?” And so I do.
She settles onto her back, I do the same, and then we let the silence bleed into the atmosphere. Regret stretches time, and time stretches pain, and I roll my head to the side, watch the single tear streaking down my sister’s temple.
For the year before my mother died and the few months after, Lucy became the strength that mom’s cancer had left behind. I reach up, wipe away her liquid sadness with the back of my finger. “I’m sorry for putting you through—”
“Shut up, Logan,” she says, her jaw unmoving. “Don’t you dare—” She breaks off on a sob that clogs my throat. Then she turns to her side, both hands under her head. The direction of her tears change, and I wipe all of them away. “I love you so much, and I’ll never stop loving you. Ever. And I’m so, so sorry that you—that you…”
“I know, Luce. We don’t…” I shut my eyes tight and count to five, before opening them again. “I don’t want to…”
Nodding against the pillow, she says, “I understand. And I won’t make you, Logan. I won’t ever make you do anything you don’t want to.” She rolls onto her back again but keeps her eyes on me. “But, I have to tell you something…”
“Okay…?”