Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 163089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 815(@200wpm)___ 652(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 815(@200wpm)___ 652(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“No, it was too risky when I still hadn’t figured out who was behind the attack. I also needed Dad to excommunicate Mom, and he probably wouldn’t have done that if he’d known you were alive. The whole theatrical show needed to happen. Besides…” He trails off, and I catch my breath.
“Besides…?”
“I believe it’s a good idea for you to disappear.” His usually dead eyes soften a bit. “Leave the Armstrong name that suffocated you all these years.”
“You’re…kicking me out?”
“No, I’m giving you a way out of this life.” He frowns. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I don’t want to live my life alone without my friends or family, Dad! I don’t…want that.”
“Then what do you want? Tell me, and I’ll make it happen. Whatever it is. No conditions, no buts. Just talk to me, Preston. Tell me what it is you need so I don’t have to see footage of you baring your chest in front of a bullet or throwing yourself down the stairs or against walls or punching and bruising yourself. Tell me what I need to do so you don’t go to empty houses and talk to an empty chair for hours.” He almost chokes on his own words, then clears his throat. “I failed you before, but I don’t want to fail you again. I don’t want to watch you inviting death upon yourself any chance you get.”
I press my shaking lips together. “Just…don’t kick me out.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t lock me up either.”
“I didn’t intend to do that.”
“But the visit to Dr. Fenwick…”
“Was just that—a visit.”
“But I mentioned Dr. Duret and Lenin. Surely you were planning to lock me up?”
“No. You had to visit Dr. Fenwick because you hadn’t seen him for a while, and when you mentioned Dr. Duret, I realized that we needed to do it urgently.” A deep breath rips out of him as he tightens his grip on my hand. “I know you don’t like small, confined places, and I’d never let them keep you in one again. You know that, right?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I really don’t.” There’s some water in my eyes that makes him all blurry. “I keep thinking one day I’ll screw up and you’ll leave…just like Mom. You’ll hug me and tell me you’re sorry, then leave.”
“I’d never do that. You hear me? I’d never…ever leave you.”
“Mom said that, too, but she didn’t keep her promise. And yes, I know she killed herself since I was a teen, Dad. Grandma gave me the suicide note she left me.”
“Your mother…” He swallows, straightening up. “Didn’t want to leave you either, not really.”
“Then why…”
“It was guilt and self-loathing. She only ever told me this in her suicide note, but it made a lot of sense. Valerie came from an extremely abusive household, which I already knew, but I didn’t know just how far the depravity in that place went. In the note, Val said her parents sexually assaulted her and her three siblings, and she never forgave herself for being the one who got away. Two of her siblings died of drug overdoses in the streets, and the third died in an accident while drunk driving. Val was the only one who got out of France alive. She thought she’d start a new life in America and have everything she never had when she was a kid, including a loving family, but that wasn’t her reality, as you’re aware.”
“Why couldn’t you just stay with her, Dad?”
“I tried, but it was impossible. I woke up every day in fight mode, my muscles bunched for whatever disagreement she’d come up with. That’s not how relationships should be. She didn’t really want to stay with me either. You probably don’t know this, but we had an amicable divorce.” He pauses, his voice dropping, sounding scraped. “But you’re right, I should’ve stayed with her. That way, you wouldn’t have gone through what you did.”
“I don’t… It’s not…your fault. I don’t blame you or Mom.”
“You have every right to. We failed you as parents. Val knew that, and she felt it ten times worse because she invited what happened to her onto her son, and she couldn’t live with that.”
“She didn’t know. I’m the one who kept quiet and didn’t fight.” My voice breaks on the last word.
“No, Preston. No.” He clutches my shoulders. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. You were a child. A victim. And victims should never blame themselves for their perpetrators’ actions.”
“But if I’d told you or Mom…”
He shakes his head. “Don’t think like that, okay? Don’t be trapped in a past you can’t change, son.”
Trapped in the past.
Is that what I’ve been doing all this time by refusing to let go or face it properly?
Instead of killing my seven-year-old self, have I actually been confined inside him, refusing to let him go?