“One day I came home from school and he wasn’t at work like he should’ve been. His car had a dead battery, so he was in the garage working on it. I don’t know why I went out there that day. I should have just gone into my room and hid like I usually did. When I opened the door, it made a loud squeaking noise and startled him. He hit the back of his head on the hood of the car and dropped the car battery he was pulling out. Somehow, it spilled some of the acid on his hand and he started yelling.”
The rest of the day was a sketchy composite of memories and things that people told him. “I remember my father screaming and hitting me. I remember slumping against the wall and sliding to the ground, fighting to stay conscious. I opened my eyes at one point and saw him walking toward me with something in his hand. I tried to shield myself, but it was a pointless effort. After that, I only recall hearing someone screaming and realizing it was me. I blacked out and woke up in the hospital a week later.”
“Oh, my God,” Sam said.
Brody turned to look at her and saw the tears welling in her eyes. “Please don’t cry. I don’t want to upset you. This was twenty years ago. It’s too late to cry now.”
“What was it?” she asked, her voice almost too quiet for him to hear her.
“After he beat me, he poured the acid from his battery into an empty quart-size can we’d recently used to paint the bathroom. Then he threw it at me. The neighbors called the cops when they heard me screaming.”
“Please tell me that he’s in jail.”
“He is, at least for now. If he had stuck with beating me as usual, the maximum sentence in Connecticut is a year, but the prosecutor nailed him with first-degree assault against a minor ten and under and he got twenty years, the maximum sentence. I went into foster care after that.”
“What about your mother?”
For some reason, this was the part of the story that always bothered him the most. His father was a bastard. He’d come to terms with that long before the accident. But her… “She chose him.”
“She what?” Sam’s voice was sharp and angry. He wished his mother had shown half as much emotion for him.
“She blamed me for my father going to prison. I brought the worst out in him, you see. To this day, she goes to every parole hearing and begs them to let him out. That’s the one public place I do go. The judge usually takes one look at me and sends him right back to the prison. She hates me for that, but it’s only fair since I hate her for choosing a man over her child. I might not have gone into foster care, but she never came to the hospital to claim me, so social services had no choice.”
“What a horrible mother.”
“You’d think so, but it turned out to be the best thing she could’ve done for me. I would’ve done nothing with my life if I had stayed with her, but my foster home was amazing. My foster family is my real family now. Wade, Xander and Heath are my brothers. Julianne is my sister. Molly and Ken are my parents. They never looked at me like I was different. They gave me the faith and drive to make something of myself. Without them, I wouldn’t have built my company and I certainly wouldn’t be flying in jets to my private island. My life is so much better because of the Edens. That’s why I took their last name when I turned eighteen. If it weren’t for these damn scars, I might even forget that my biological parents ever existed.”
Sam sat quietly for a moment, absorbing everything he’d told her. “I’m glad you found people who cared about you, Brody. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, especially so young. But thank you for sharing this with me. I know that was hard for you.”
Brody covered Sam’s hand with his own and gave it a gentle squeeze. It was done. He’d put everything out there. And now he wouldn’t have to talk about it again. Ever.
Hopefully, now, they could start to enjoy their vacation. “Now that all that unpleasantness is out of the way, what do you say to putting on our swimsuits and taking a dip in that fantastic ocean?”
Ten
“Where exactly are we going again?” Sam clutched her flashlight and followed Brody down a dim, gravel and sand path.
“I didn’t say.”
Sam would normally say that she liked surprises, but Brody seemed full of them. She never knew what they were doing. But considering his last surprise included a luxury jet and a private island, she needed to just go with it. They’d spent two days on the island being decadently lazy. After dinner, he’d eyed the darkening sky and told her to put on her swimsuit. She couldn’t fathom what she would do in the dark in her swimsuit, especially when he handed her a flashlight.