“What are you not telling me?”
His eyes search mine for a long moment. “I’m number three-fifty-two.”
I swallow, my hands growing clammy. That burned patch of skin on the back of my neck feels as fresh of a wound as it did years ago when I had the tattoo burned off.
I don’t say a word as I stand and walk away, the number three-fifty-eight on repeat in my mind.
Chapter 30
Lauren
No matter how hard I wring my hands together, the trembling just won’t stop. It travels up my arms and settles in my chest before making its way through my torso and legs.
It’s as if I’m standing in a frozen wasteland, frigid, frozen to the bone instead of the living room.
“Don’t touch him,” Liana insists when I reach toward my father’s face.
“What did you do?” My voice is broken, sobs making my question come out in syllables rather than words.
“I had to,” she whispers, her hand strong and steady on my back when she offers a comforting touch.
“You didn’t,” I argue.
“You don’t understand.”
I look up at her, trying to see her through my tears but finding it impossible. She swims in my vision until I swipe at my eyes. “He’s dead.”
“He had to die.” She glances away from me, her eyes locking on our father.
“Because of a couple bruises?” I point to the handprint he left behind when he grabbed her.
They’d been arguing all morning. I hid in my room, curled in as small of a ball as I could manage in my closet.
“What did he want you to keep?” That’s the only part of the argument I can recall, and now with the knife sticking out of his neck, blood pooling around his body, those memories are already fading.
“Nothing,” she says, and it angers me as much as it always does.
My older sister is the queen of secrets. She never answers my questions, responding instead with don’t worry about it, or you’re too young to understand.
“I’m not a fucking baby!” I scream, the bad words foreign in my mouth.
I look back at my father, wondering if breaking one of his rules will bring him back to life just so he can punish me.
“It’s none of your business,” she spits back, just another familiar response when I demand answers.
“We have to call the cops.” My voice is pleading. “You’re going to be in so much trouble.”
“We’ll be in trouble,” she clarifies. “You watched it happen and didn’t try to stop it.”
I shake my head, immediately rejecting her words. “I didn’t do this!”
She frowns at me like I’m the disappointment here when she’s the one that stabbed our father. She’s the one that stood back while he gasped for breath, blood spilling from his neck as he begged for help.
She stood back, arms crossed over her chest, much the way she is now. She let him die, and it was nothing like I’ve seen in the movies where someone is stabbed and they fall dead to the ground. He rattled, his hands clawing at his throat. He twitched after falling to the floor.
I squeeze my eyes closed, wanting this day to have never happened.
“They’ll take me away. Do you want that? Do you want to go live with our grandmother?”