“Yeah. Jade’s boss, the sleazebag district attorney. Larry Wade. Jade did some investigation, and I was able to confirm it. He and my mother had the same father. It was covered up years ago, and I can’t figure out why.”
“That is odd.”
I shook my head. “I’ve been over and over it in my mind, Doc. The only thing I can come up with is that my father and mother somehow managed to cover up our relationship with Larry because they knew what kind of man he was.”
“It’s possible.”
“But if they knew what kind of man he was, maybe they knew…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Had my mother and father actually known the identity of one of my attackers? And had they let him off the hook? No, that couldn’t have happened.
“Are you suggesting that they knew he was one of the men who kidnapped you?”
“I don’t know. But why else would they want to cover up the relationship to him?”
“We can only speculate, Talon. Both of your parents are dead, so we can’t ask them. And unfortunately, you’re going to have to accept the fact that some of these questions may never be answered.”
“I guess. But damn, it sticks in my craw. How could a relative… I mean, I was his nephew.”
Dr. Carmichael leaned forward. “You can’t trouble yourself with those questions. There will never be an answer to satisfy you. It’s highly likely that this man, this Larry, is innocent. There’s no way to know if he indeed was one of the perpetrators. But if he was? These men were psychopaths. It wouldn’t have mattered if you were his nephew or even his son. He didn’t see you as a human being. These men saw you as a toy, a plaything. So don’t try to make sense out of it. It’s senseless.”
“I just want to understand.”
“My point is that you can’t. The only one who can understand a psychopath is another psychopath. It’s better that you don’t understand. Trust me. But you do need to accept that. A normal person with a normal personality can never understand the horrors committed by the criminally insane. They’re not meant to.”
“But why me?”
Dr. Carmichael shook her head. “That’s another question that may never be answered. You were in the right place at the right time. Or rather the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“If only I hadn’t gone looking for Luke.”
“But you did. And you suffered the consequences. ‘What ifs’ don’t do anyone any good, Talon. All you can do is accept the past and move forward.”
I knew that. God, I’d heard it enough—not just from Dr. Carmichael, but from my brothers.
“You say I’ve come a long way. What makes you say that? I don’t feel particularly different.”
“Are you kidding? You’ve come a very long way. You can now talk about this without losing consciousness or sending yourself into a flashback. That’s huge.”
True. The first time I’d come to see Dr. Carmichael, I’d ended up in the ER after a fainting spell. She was right.
“And you’ve opened up. You’ve told Jade you love her. You’ve told your sister about your experiences.”
“And I’ve been able to say I’m sorry.”
“Did that trouble you before?”
I nodded. “It’s not that I wasn’t sorry. And it’s not that I didn’t know when I should be sorry. It’s just that I had to force the words out.”
“And it’s easier now?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why, but it is.”
“I think I know why that is.”
“Why?”
She looked me straight in the eye. “Because you stopped blaming others. You’ve stopped resenting others because this didn’t happen to them. It happened to you.”
I looked down at my hands clenching the armchair. Had I done that? Had I really? I closed my eyes. “That’s a heavy statement to make, Doctor.”