by Raven Scott
“I’m not going to get revenge.” My lips twisted in self-disgust, and I scoffed lightly as I rubbed my temple in a futile effort to release the pressure against the backs of my eyes. “Natalia and Valentine. The third one, her name’s Annabelle or some variation, right?”
“Annabelle, yeah. She’s five years old.” Blustering a squawk of a humorless laugh, I shook my head sharply, and goosebumps blanketed my arms and legs. Luke glanced up from my hand, and I hissed as he pressed an alcohol-soaked pad to my knuckles. “You didn’t break anything, somehow. You got strong knuckles. Let’s get you wrapped up.”
“I told myself, you know, it’s not his fault. He witnessed a murder, and he hid. He ‘died’ because he was going into Witness Protection. How could he come back after that? When I was sixteen or seventeen, I saw him on a college tour, and I thought, you know, he looks happy. His wife is nice. She’s happy. I was okay. As long as I never saw him again, I could handle knowing he was alive.” Even my ugly feelings couldn’t withstand my words, and I stared dazedly at my knee as I went numb. “I never thought he’d replace us. The names . . . it’s coincidence that it’s happening now, at this age. She’s a . . . a copy that’s better than the original— a new, better, version of a faulty first attempt.”
“You’ve never seen Terminator, have you? The original is always the best because it’s the most adaptable. You can find a way to upgrade and patch and fenagle cables, and it takes a bit of doing, but eventually, you figure out a way to make it all work.” Jason smirked grimly, and I inhaled deeply to cover my mouth and the grimace that dragged down my lips. Sitting in the chair, he propped his elbows on the table, and I exhaled my shaky breath. “You punched him hard enough to bust his eye socket in half. That’s impressive. It’s not easy to do that.”
“Don’t remind me, okay. I’ve never touched a man first, and—" Hissing as Erik’s brother pressed the gauze to my knuckles, I tensed, and he shot me a sympathetic smile without really looking up. “I . . . I’m honestly . . . okay, the truth is, it’s . . . I don’t care about Terminator, and no, I never saw it, and I don’t see how it applies to the fact that after he skipped out on us to start Family 2.0, I had to suck a guy’s dick at thirteen for groceries!”
My voice heightened and loudened, and I couldn’t control it just as my dad and his wife shuffled through the archway, him holding a bloodied towel to his eye. His wife froze like a deer in the headlights, and my lip curled in a disgusted snarl when he dropped the towel. The eye I’d punched was bulging, threatening to pop out from its socket, and blood dribbled down his clean-shaven face. When I tried to conjure a picture of my dad, all I could see was the photo of him they’d given us after he ‘died’. He wore a blue button down, a black tie, his hair combed back. But his face was the same.
“Does it make you feel bad? Did you know how bad Mom’s heroin use was? Is that why you ran away and left me and Valerie? Did you name them after us because you felt guilty? What about Annabelle? What about our sister that Mom lost because she was doing heroin? What about me? You wanna hear about how much Mom’s drug dealer liked me, liked me so much he shared me with his friends? Huh? Huh!” I stood up as fire raced through my veins, and my dad went pale as I stormed over to shove my ruined hand in his face. “She wouldn’t pay the bills, so I had to do it all myself. I had to go to them. I had to have sex at thirteen, and I had to pretend to like it because you were gone!”
“It’s sick and ironic that your new kids are twelve, the exact age we were when you disappeared on us. I hope you don’t disappear on your new kids now that they’re at that age. I hope Natalia doesn’t end up resorting to whoring herself out for a fucking can of SpaghettiOs. I hope you drop her off at, what, sixth grade? Seventh grade? I hope you drop her off at school and know she’s going to stay there and not sneak out to get rent money from a sweaty, dirty Mexican with gonorrhea.” For a fraction of a second, I felt bad for Aunt Kathy, but I was too angry. Glaring at Mike . . . Mike . . . Mike . . . I resisted the urge to smack him right in his ugly, guilt-drenched, shameful face. “And your name’s not fucking Mike— it’s Donald.”
“Natasha.” Stepping between us, Erik frowned with a slight shake of his head, and I hoovered a shuddering breath through dry nostrils. “That’s enough. Sit down so Luke can finish your hand.”
“Listen, okay. I just want you to hold out your hand. I’m not gonna touch you.” I dropped down heavily into the chair, hard enough for the front legs to lift off the floor. My hand shook when I lifted my arm, and I rubbed my throbbing chest with my free palm. “How long have you been having intermittent chest pain?”
“Uh-uh, I don’t . . . um, a couple months . . . maybe.”
“Do you mind?” Nodding toward my chest, Luke watched me cautiously as I nodded in return, and I inhaled a shallow breath. He pressed his ear to my heart, and I closed my eyes as tension thrummed through my whole body. “How long has it been since this happened last?”
“Yesterday, at the gas station. Why? What’s happening?” Leaning back, Luke frowned as he gestured me forward, and I stiffly did as told while Erik answered. He pressed a palm to my back and told me to breathe, and I did. Anxiety gripped my gut, and he sat back to frown at me.
“I’m just a medic, but I think you’re having stress-related cardiomyopathy.” Shit . . . this again. Luke’s eyes narrowed on me before my own fluttered closed. Could this fucking day get any worse? “You know about it?”
“Of course, I do. It started again after I shot my mom in the head at point blank range, but it hasn’t happened in about two years.” Staring directly at my dad as I said those damning words, I flicked my wrist in dismissal, and Luke gingerly took my not-flaming fingers. “I also had such a raging, unchecked case of gonorrhea that I can’t have kids, and also, I have chromophobia.”
“You’re seriously diagnosed with a fear of colors?” Luke cleared his throat of its mystification, and I jerked my head in a nod as his cheeks twitched in discomfort. “Ah, what else, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I’ll draw up a list.” Sinking into the hard dining room chair, I sniffed hard, and my dad still hadn’t moved a single inch even as his wife shuffled away from him. My mind whirred hastily, and I rolled my jaw and licked my teeth as my mouth dried. She was crying, hard, shivering, and the faintest twinge of guilt struck my chest. “You’re prettier than your pictures. I didn’t want this to happen. I was going to ignore it.”
Kathy jumped with a sputtering gasp, gripping the edge of the breakfast bar tightly, and I pulled an ugly scowl. She was Erik’s mom’s sister, I thought, and it was pretty damn obvious that she had no idea about anything.
And I felt bad, but, like, come on.
“When they stuck my ass in the hospital after we got rescued, the psychologists didn’t want to let us out. I was absolutely certifiable, way too calm, because at that point it’d been going on for a while. At least a couple months. And also, you know how bad those assholes tried to get the truth? It was aggravating, even at thirteen. Anyway, I was there for nine months, and Valerie stayed even longer because, I mean, she’d been . . . at least I was used to it.” Sniffing hard, I flexed my ravaged knuckles as a darkness engulfed the room. “What can you do about it, really. Anyway, I was diagnosed with chromophobia, cardiomyopathy, gonorrhea, and a few other STDs . . . and the usual shit. I’d been doped up, so I went through detox— severe dehydration and food depravation, and let’s not forget the bad breath.”
My eyes were dry, and I winced when Luke tugged the bandage across my knuckles and around my palm. The aching in my chest slowly died down, and my breathing evened out as the silence rang in my ears. Gulping down the fiery ball lodged in my throat, I closed my eyes and took a huge breath before forcing my gaze to Erik for the first time in a while.
He was obviously having a tough time, and my gut churned at the tumultuous emotions battling in his eyes.
“I’m great at parties, aren’t I?”
35
Erik
“What did you not tell Luke?” We were alone while Luke and Jason waited for an ambulance to take Mike— or Donald— or whoever the fuck he was, to the hospital. He might actually lose his eye, but hey, it was more than he deserved, in my opinion. Gulping down straight from her wine bottle, Natasha didn’t answer immediately, but I gave her time.
Propping my elbows on my knees, I clenched and released my fists together as my brain furiously tried to keep up with the last forty-five minutes. By marriage, Natasha and I were cousins, which I wasn’t sure how that worked. She clearly felt something for my aunt and the girls, but she was too angry at her father to care. Everyone in the back yard had heard her screaming through the stupidly open sliding doors in the living room, so the secret was out regardless.
As much as I was glad I was right, I knew this was no time for a victory lap, and Natasha set the bottle down hard on the table to wipe her mouth with the back of her free hand.
“Hah-h-h. You noticed that. I should’ve known.” A grimness twitched my lips up, and Natasha reached to cover my fists with her uninjured hand and sighed heavily. “Stress-related cardiomyopathy doesn’t really kill heart cells, it stuns them, which is inarguably not as bad. I’m extremely high-risk for a real heart attack, though. At least, I was at the time of being diagnosed. I haven’t actually been to a doctor since then, except the dentist.”
“So, even if you were emotionally stable enough to have sex, you can’t because your heart would explode?”
“A particularly low-fiber couple of meals could probably do it.” The confession crushed down on my ribs and shoulders, and a shuddering breath escaped between my tightly clenched teeth. “Are you going to try to convince me to go to the hospital to get an updated checkup?”
“I want you to.” Surprise rocketed through me when Natasha nodded and stood up, and I pushed myself out of the chair and onto weak knees. “Wait, you’re actually gonna go?”
“We’ve been sitting here for, like, five minutes, Erik, and I realized something. And, oddly enough, it’s not about my dad. It’s about Valerie.” My brows drew sharply together, and Natasha flexed her injured hand, the bandages creaking overly loud in my ears. “There’s so much wrong with me, but there’s not nearly as much wrong with her. How awesome is that?”
“Are you being facetious?” She shook her head, her shoulders touching her ears when she inhaled a shallow, staggering breath, and my frown deepened. “Why would that be awesome? How is any of this even remotely good, Natasha?”
“It means that everything was for something.” Stiffening at the lilt in her tone, I sucked in a sharp breath as Natasha’s eyes brimmed red, and she exhaled shakily. “Saying it all out loud . . . I’ve never done that before. It made me realize that, yeah, at the time, I failed hard. I couldn’t keep Valerie out far enough, and horrible things happened to her because of my failure. But, you know, I worked hard. I worked really, really, really hard, and she went to college, she has skills, she’s humble and kind and she can feel. I wouldn’t have doubled down and forced her so hard, and she wouldn’t have been so susceptible, if that initial failure hadn’t happened.”
“That’s such a fucked-up way of saying ‘failure breeds success’, Natasha.” I mean, I understood where she was coming from, but I didn’t like it. Natasha smiled warmly at my grumble, and I rubbed my head with both my palms to cover my temples with my forearms. “I honestly don’t know what to do, now.”
“I’d like to stay and eat. Also, I should apologize . . . a lot.” I couldn’t exactly argue with that, so I simply nodded, and Natasha’s smile became a little warmer. “Those diagnoses were a long time ago. Maybe, things got better. I never had a reason to check. Besides, that episode I had a few days ago, that was the worst one ever, and it wasn’t because of the memories or the trauma. It was because of you, and I think that’s telling in itself.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.” Just when I thought things couldn’t get crazier, they had. And in the most fucked up, unpredictable, unmanageable way possible. Natasha’s smile widened a sliver, and I swung my arms down to release some tension. “If you want to stay, we can stay.”
“Do you want to stay?” She shuffled the few feet to me to rest her forehead on my chest, and I cupped the back of her head as I grumbled in thought. I should’ve known Natasha wasn’t going to run away with her tail between her legs— she was going to face it head-on. This was her mess, or at least, that was how she saw it. The very least she could do was apologize for it.
Whatever happened outside of that was beyond her control, and she knew trying was futile. Anyone who heard her yelling at her dad understood that she’d been through some shit. We all had demons, and hers were just a little more ravenous. We’d all killed people at some point, under some circumstance, for some reason we were forced to acknowledge.
If nothing else, my family probably had a very healthy respect for Natasha and what she endured and how she dealt with it.
“I do. I would be a shitty honor guard if I left you alone, Natasha.” She huffed, the warmth of her breath seeping through my t-shirt, and I inhaled deeply to clear my throat. Stepping back, Natasha pushed herself onto her toes, and the feathery brush of her lips on my chin sent prickles down my neck and across my face. Tensing as she fisted my shirt, I clenched my jaw hard and tried not to flex my hand, and her lips lingered for a second before she pulled back.
“Everyone else moved on a long time ago. It’s about time I did, too.” But we both knew that was easier said than done. Natasha’s episodes weren’t as bad, her nightmares weren’t as bad, but they still happened almost daily. Only nodded curtly, I dropped my hand from her scalp, and her smile faltered some. The faint whirr of an ambulance siren burst into my scope of comprehension, and I reached to gently brush her bottom lip with my thumb.
“No pressure . . . no rush.” How did things get so bad only to calm down so easily? The question had no answer, and Natasha nodded with a little sparkle of relief in her eye. “I don’t think you’re sexy, anyway.”
She friggen snorted, clamping a bare hand over her mouth and nose, and I smirked faintly. We shuffled out of the dining room and through the living room, and the paramedics were pulling up to the side of the house. Uniformed police officers started questioning, but the air in the backyard was solemn and frigidly cold.
Taking Natasha’s hand, I led her around the grill and onto the lawn, and my family gave us a wide berth. Mike, or Donald, or whoever he was, was checked out, but my aunt was nowhere to be seen, and neither were their children. I wouldn’t be surprised if she filed for divorce by the end of the day. She was probably drowning in shame.
“I take it you’re the one that popped the guy’s eye out?” An officer approached us wearily, sounding almost bored, and eying Natasha’s hand dubiously. “Wanna tell me what happened?”
“I had a few drinks, and he pissed me off. Not really much to tell.” The officer nodded, scribbling down in his little notepad, and a plume of nostalgia billowed in my chest. Just a couple weeks ago, I’d been like that, and it was a little awkward knowing that the vague description was going to be more than enough. There was a ton of beer and other alcoholic beverages flowing, this was private property, and God only knew that bastard wasn’t going to press charges.
“Right, and what were you arguing about?”
“He’s my dad, what do we not argue about?” Avoiding again. I really admired Natasha’s ability to answer well enough, and I glanced around the yard through narrowed eyes. I could tell everyone was getting their stories straight, just in case, but these kinds of fights weren’t uncommon. Everything Natasha said could be construed to the simplest explanation, anyway. There was no point to ask anyone else what happened.
Even then, the truth was probably ‘I only saw the aftermath’.
“Well, he’s not pressing charges, so maybe slow down on the sauce. The dude’s eye socket is broken clean in half. You don’t want that iron fist to get you in worse trouble.�
� This officer hadn’t even asked her name, and Natasha nodded before he strolled off to talk to Mike, or Donald, or whoever he was. Sitting in the ambulance at the lip to the side of the house, he looked so small and miserable, but the worst was yet to come, I thought.
“Natasha.” My mom came wandering over, her face pale but a small smile cresting her cheeks, and she held out her arms in silent offer. Natasha stiffened, but pride blossomed in my chest when she walked slowly into my mom’s embrace. The older woman hugged her tight, and I stuffed my hands into my pockets to rock back on my heels. Watching it was like seeing something I wasn’t supposed to, and I tore my eyes of them to stare at a particularly long blade of grass between my sneakers.
36
Natasha
“I’m sorry, again, ma’am.”
“Oh, I’m not gonna tell you again to call me Carol.” Waving me off, Carol sat back to sip her wine leisurely, and I heat crept up my neck. “I only get called ‘ma’am’ when I pick up my kids from the base. Today has been a rollercoaster for us all.”
“Carol . . . um, yeah. About that, I saw her, and she looks just like me when I was twelve years old. It wasn’t right, the way I handled it wasn’t right.” She twisted to face me more from across the sofa, and I took a sip of my own wine to sigh heavily. “She shocked me, and it was wrong to do that in front of her.”
“My sister’s been wavering about her marriage recently. She said Mike has been controlling, trying too hard to be involved to the point of being overbearing. Now, she knows it wasn’t because he was hiding something as superficial and common as cheating. No one in my family has gotten a divorce, and Kathy is probably drowning right now. I told my sister he was fishy when she met him, when she fell in love so fast. She’s the youngest for a reason, I suppose.” Carol smiled faintly, serenely, almost, and I took a huge gulp of my wine as my chest tightened. “You may have been wrong, and you may feel bad for those kids, but your absolution doesn’t depend on the acceptance of others. You’re proof, Natasha, that children are malleable, and I suspect that Natalia is very, very much like you.”