It probably has.
I am in my mom’s closet, the door opened just a tiny smidge, enough for me to see the horror before me. I’m still not allowed to be in their room, but my mom invited me in, and when she realized my dad was home, there wasn’t enough time for me to leave because he came straight here.
“You stupid cunt,” he says.
I’m livid. I don’t know why he’s saying that, and I don’t care. There’s nothing Mom could’ve done to warrant being called that.
I want to open the door, to stand up for her, to get my father to stop.
But my mom makes eye contact with me.
She’s at peace.
She doesn’t want me to come out.
I can see it in her eyes.
So I don’t move. I don’t do anything.
I’m not sure what they’re talking about, if anything is said.
The gun fires.
My father leaves the room.
The sight before my eyes is something I’ll never forget, and the smells are even worse—the stench of blood, the stank of loosed bowels. Or maybe I just think I smell something that terrible. I don’t know. A strangled cry emits from my lips, and I’m already throwing open the closet door and racing out of the room.
I should’ve gone to her first. Even though I knew she was dead, I should have gone to her body, should’ve whispered something to her.
A part of me wonders if she knew what would happen, if she wanted me to see, if she engineered all of that so I would flee and run away from my father’s long shadow.
Why, though? If I could just run away and be free of him, why couldn't my mom and I run away together?
But I know the answer to that. My father never would have been willing to live with himself if he knew his wife had run away. No, he would have hunted her down, spared no expense.
For me, though, he doesn’t seem to have bothered to. He could have hired the best PIs in the nation. I’ve done everything to cover my tracks, but that doesn’t mean it would be impossible to find me. The very best detectives will be able to.
Maybe I should be happy my father doesn’t care to look for me. I can’t help wonder at times if he realized the closet door had been opened, that someone—namely me—had witnessed what had happened.
If that’s the case, I’m sure my father will hunt me down.
And he will kill me.