Tara
Ipace around the bed thinking about the look on Goldie’s face right before Kellen yanked me into the hall.
Tears streamed down her face and her expression was utter anguish.
She remembers.
Maybe not everything, maybe not the details, but she remembers. At first, she thought I was having an affair with Orin—clearly her mind is confused and she must’ve mixed me up with some other woman—and my spine shivers at the thought. Nothing could repulse me more than that bastard. I would’ve thrown myself off a cliff before letting that slimy, sick lizard touch me with his dripping paws.
No, I wasn’t sleeping with Kellen’s father, and he never once tried to touch me. Not that way.
I rub my face, tingling with anxiety. Going into his mother’s room was a risk and I knew he’d be upset if he found out. I had to do it though—I needed someone to confirm that what I experienced was real and not some figment of my fractured and ruined mind. In those early years, I was so strung out and so deeply focused on recovery and dealing with my addiction that I barely understood what was happening around me, much less able to process what Orin was doing.
As the years passed and I kept clean, my mind came back, piece by piece. But what I found there when I began to look back was worse than the hole I found myself stuck inside.
I walk to the window and wrap my arms around myself, hugging tight. Outside, the garden is still and quiet, and I think about standing in the heat, sweat drenching my clothes as the fabric clings to my skin, my arms digging into the hard rocky soil, the wind blowing along my hair, and for me, that’s heaven. To stay there, trimming, watering, digging, I could do it forever.
Except when Orin Hayle decided to pay me a visit.
It didn’t happen often at first, but I think he started to like it, and he came out more and more as the years went by. Except for that final year, when he was drinking too much and too sick to do anything more than wallow around the house. That was the best year of my life. The most peace I’d felt in a long time.
There’s a soft knock at the door. I don’t know how long I’ve been in here alone, but I’m guessing about an hour. Kellen steps inside, looking much calmer than he was before. The hallway behind him is empty, and I don’t know if he was bluffing about the guard or if Kellen sent him away.
“We need to talk,” he says.
I nod, already blinking back the tears. “I should’ve told you sooner.”
His jaw works as he steps closer. “It’s true then.”
“What did your mother tell you?”
“I want to hear it from you first.”
I look down at the floor and release a low groan. These memories hurt so fucking much, but he’s right, I need to face them and speak them myself or else Orin Hayle will keep on haunting me forever, despite how hard I worked to make him disappear.
“I don’t remember the first time. He’d show up randomly when I was out working and talk to me like everything was normal, but there’d always be a turn. I never knew what would set him off, but suddenly he’d come at me, telling me how I’m a murderer, how I killed his little girl and took away his child, how I’m a slut and a whore and a piece of fucking trash and he kept me around only because he thought it was funny to watch me suffering out in the heat and laboring for him.”
I close my eyes, tears dripping down my cheeks. I can still hear Orin saying all these things. It wasn’t once, or twice, but dozens of times, twice a week or more if he was in a particularly foul mood. He’d show up, verbally abuse me, and then—
“Mom said he hit you.” Kellen says it with a sharp deadpan, struggling to keep his composure.
I nod once. “He’d shout at me for a while and work himself up into a frenzy. Once he was really mad, then he’d kick me to the ground. Sometimes I’d try to run, but he’d catch me and it would be much, much worse. He’d slap me, punch me, beat me until I cried. He’d only stop once I was crying, but sometimes he kept going until he saw blood. He didn’t scar me the way he scarred you, but he left bruises, dozens and dozens of them. I got good at covering them up.”
“God damn it,” Kellen says, voice low and husky with rage. “That fucking piece of shit.”
“The staff all knew. They saw what he did but nobody ever came to stop it. Most of the people from that era are all gone now. I think they were afraid of him doing it to them, so a lot of them quit and moved on and never said a word, but as far as I know, it was always me. He’d show up, vent his aggression, beat me lifeless, and walk away. On weeks he did it more than once, I’d be so hurt that I’d have to skip work entirely and sit around the cottage. One time he came around when I was too bruised to get out of bed and he broke inside, dragged me into the living room, and kicked me until passed out. I woke up to an empty house and slept on the floor for hours. I don’t know how I’m not dead because he was trying to kill me a little at a time.”
“Tara, I’m so sorry.” He comes toward me slowly, but stops before he gets too close. “I didn’t know. I had no clue.”
“I know you didn’t. You weren’t here, remember? You were out doing your own thing and I stayed behind in that cottage, digging in the dirt, hoping I could put my pieces back together, but every time it felt like I got close, your father would show up and beat the sadness back into me. It was a sick, vicious cycle, and it went on for years.”
He groans and closes the gap between us. I let him take me into his arms and I cry into his chest. I don’t know why I’m crying—the memories are so real still, but Orin’s dead and he’ll never hurt me again—but it’s like I’m breaking all over again. Kellen’s arms wrap around me and I sob for all the time I lost and all the pain I endured, all because I feel like I deserved it.
Because I lost Cait.
It’s my fault Cait is dead. Everyone knows I was the one who lost her and maybe that’s why nobody came to help me when Orin vented his anger. She overdosed while shooting up with me, and I was too high to notice that she passed out and stopped breathing. I was too high to see my best friend dying on her bedroom floor only a couple feet away, too lost in my own little world to see that gorgeous girl disappearing, the only friend I ever had, the only person that cared about me in the entire world. I came back from my high and found her there, cold and lifeless, and I screamed and screamed until Orin rushed in and found his dead daughter, and that was the beginning of the end.
I took the abuse because I hated myself.