I know what she did.
PROLOGUE
LUCILLE
Five Years Ago
“Guilty.” Guilty. Guilty.
The word rings in my ears, over and over again. A deafening thud of a gavel hitting the wooden surface of the judge’s desk makes me jump in surprise. Everything spins as if I’m on a carnival ride and it’s going too fast. He turns to look at me; the man who’s being convicted of murder. The sneer curling his lips has ice crawling up my spine, one icicle at a time. The venom dancing in his eyes threatens to poison me right where I sit.
I did this.
My world tilts on its axis when he lifts his finger to his nose and taps it three times. It used to be our thing, but I no longer want any connection to the stranger before me. My knees wobble as I try to push to my feet. I can feel the bile rising from my stomach, the burn traveling hot and fast up my throat.
I race from the courtroom as the tears stream from my eyes. Thankfully, I make it into a stall in the ladies’ restroom before I puke up my breakfast. I told my mother I didn’t want anything to eat, and yet, she made me have something.
My body continues convulsing as I cry. It’s not sadness overtaking me, it’s the sense of foreboding. He will come for me. I don’t doubt he will find a way out and when he does, I’ll be his next victim. There was no longer a question about it. It’s a given. That’s how my life will end.
“Lucy?” My mother’s voice echoes outside the stalls. "Where are you?”
“I’m here,” I croak, my throat burns from the acid I expelled.
She doesn’t say anything for a long while. We didn’t expect this to happen. I never wanted my family to be broken up by heartbreak or disaster, but here we are. The confusion running through me when my father was arrested is still present.
I haven’t come to terms with it.
I want to; but admitting your father is a killer isn’t the kind of painful truth any child should have to come to terms with—even if he claimed he’d lost his mind; he wasn’t thinking straight. I can’t forgive him for what he did.
“Come, Lucy girl,” Mother calls to me. “We should go.” She’s right. But my strength is gone. My arms shake as I attempt to push myself to my feet. By the time I open the door to the stall, my mother looks at me with tears shining in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” It’s the same thing she tells me every day. Well, since that fateful day. But I don’t believe her. I feel as guilty as he is. My gut churns as I rinse my mouth and splash some cool water on my face.
It’s the silence hanging over us as we make our way home which reminds me of what we lost. The happy memories are all gone, and all we have left in their wake are images of horror.
When we reach the house where my father lived, it feels as if I’m a stranger. Fear laced with darkness hangs in every room, even my bedroom. The memories of what happened in here assault me. I should have run. Perhaps one day I’ll have the courage to walk away from my mother and leave her, but now, after he’s gone, I can’t abandon her.
She knew about what was going on. She knew my father was a criminal, and she didn’t do anything. As much as I want to hate her, I can’t. Fear makes people do things they normally wouldn’t. Knowing your husband is working for criminals, for a dangerous organization which can kill you with a flick of their fingers, it forces you to stay silent.
I thought long and hard about my testimony. They asked me questions I’d rather not answer, but I was under oath.
Did your father ever hurt you?
Did he ever tell you to do anything you didn’t want to?
Did you witness him ever touch or force any of the victims?
All those words, those fucking questions, brought back those dark nights when I thought I would sleep and I couldn’t. When you live with someone who’s an expert at pretending, you can’t fool them.
As I walk into my bedroom, it’s as if he’s still here, waiting for me. I can practically envision him on my bed, holding my teddy bear while asking me to strip. There is one memory I buried so deep I didn’t want to think about it until now.
The mattress has a dent where he used to lay. The chair which overlooks my bed still has an imprint of where he would sit while reading me stories. Most children want their folks to tell them bedtime tales of princesses and heroes, and knights in shining armor.