She shrugs, biting her lip.
“Clemmie...” I approach her, and she doesn’t move. “He’s supposed to be your dad. You know it’s wrong, don’t you? What he does to you isn’t normal.”
How is it possible to be within touching distance but still feel like the gap between us is miles apart?
“Daddy loves me, August.” Her eyes widen. “He’ll do anything for me. He only wants the best for me.”
My shoulders shake with rage. I inhale deeply to steady myself before I lose my shit, then say, “He’s a monster.”
“Shh,” she soothes, stroking my forearm. “Did you fix a lot of cars today?”
I blink in disbelief.
How can she go from one subject to another so fast?
“Yeah,” I murmur.
Clemmie slips off her sandals and goes to sit by the edge of the pool. She dangles her feet over the side and into the water, then asks, “How did you learn to fix cars?”
“Where... I used to live... there was a place nearby,” I say. I’m struggling to let go of my anger but focus on answering her question. “A guy taught me.”
“Can you teach me one day?”
“You want to fix cars?” I raise an eyebrow and grin. “Since when?”
“Why not? I’d get to work with you all day,” she says gleefully, “maybe we could start a business together.”
“We could,” I say, kneeling to unlace my sneakers and take my socks off. I sit next to her, dipping my feet into the cool water. “But we can only do that if we leave here. We’re eighteen soon. We can go anywhere we want. Start over.”
“I’m not sure I’d like to go somewhere else,” she says. “This home is all I know. I like it here. It has everything I need.”
From our previous conversations, I know that Clemmie can’t remember leaving the mansion’s grounds. She’s learned everything she knows about the world from reading books or watching television.
“I’ll show you the real world, Clemmie,” I promise. “I’ll show you there’s more to it than this house and these gardens. More than the parties. There’s a whole fucking world waiting for you to discover it. Wouldn’t you like to go to the places you’ve read about?”
“I’ve read about them, August,” she talks like I’m a stupid child who knows nothing. “Why would I need to go there too? Look what happened to your mom when she left.”
I’ve told her about what happened. My mom may have spent most of her life high until a third overdose took her life, but it still beats being here with him.
“You’re not her,” I say. “She was an addict. She had a problem.”
Clemmie scowls. “Did you love her like I love Daddy?”
“No,” I growl. “I hated the bitch.”
Clemmie giggles and covers her mouth, kicking her feet to spray water over us.
“Hey, quit it!”
She ignores me, kicks the surface again, and then says, “You shouldn’t have left earlier. I wanted you to stay.”
“I couldn’t,” I mumble, averting my gaze to the tiles shifting in appearance under the water. “I couldn’t watch.”
“I was thinking about you,” she says. “When I was—”
“I saw what you were doing,” I interrupt. “I don’t need a fucking play-by-play.”
Her small hand creeps onto my lap, and she threads her fingers through mine.