I stand up and the room spins. I haven’t been on my feet in a couple of days. I steady myself and re-open my eyes. When I do, I find my father standing in front of me. He is clean and shaven and dressed in jeans.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him. “Did you just break down my fucking door?”
My father’s jaw clenches. “That’s what happens when you don’t answer it for a week. Your girlfriend called me because she was worried. Get in the shower. We’re going to talk.”
I glare at him. “Fuck you. The time to talk was years ago. In fact, you’ve had any number of chances over the years to talk. But you didn’t. And now I don’t want to talk. Get over it.”
I try to shove past him, to walk through to the kitchen, but he grabs my arm.
His grip is strong and determined.
“Take a shower,” he says slowly and deliberately. “You smell like piss. Get clean clothes on and come back out here. We’re going to talk. Now. Today.”
I stare at him and he stares back. He’s not backing down. And I do smell like piss. Finally, I look away.
“Whatever. I do need a shower.”
I leave the room without looking back. I step into my shower and let the water run over me while my fucking head pounds. I can’t remember if I drank any water this week at all. I actually don’t remember much at all about this week. Every time I woke up, I simply took more pills and drank more whiskey.
I wash, shave and get dressed.
Then I make my way to the kitchen, where I chug two bottles of water. Even after that, my mouth is still dry so I must be pretty dehydrated. I take another bottle of water with me to the living room, where my father is waiting for me.
He’s cleaned the place up while he waited, picking up the empty bottles of whiskey from the floor. He’s sitting in a chair now.
He stares at me as I enter.
He’s grim and sober and I find that I suddenly don’t want to have this conversation.
“Fuck this,” I tell my dad. “We haven’t talked about this in years. I don’t see the reason to talk about it now. The damage is done.”
My father looks at me.
“The damage has been done,” he agrees. “But there’s no reason to make it worse. Let’s talk.”
I sit down and take a swig of water.
“Fine. Why didn’t you force me to talk about what happened?”
If we’re going to talk, we might as well cut to the chase.
My father stares at me, then his gaze drops to the floor.
“Because it was easier that way. I took you to a therapist and you wouldn’t talk. I tried to get you to talk about it myself, you refused. And then I decided that maybe I really didn’t want to know what happened. If it had scarred you so badly, then I wasn’t sure that I could deal with it either. So I stopped trying. And then the therapist told me that he thought you had actually suppressed the memories, so it seemed to be for the best.”
I take another drink. My tongue feels thick from dehydration.
“Did they ever catch him?”
I cringe when my dad shakes his head. “No. They didn’t have a description to go on. None of the neighbors saw anything, they didn’t see anyone coming or going. The police didn’t have anything to work with.”
Fuck. Yet another reason to feel guilty. I could have given them a description.
“What happened that day?” my dad asks. “I need to know. There was gun residue on your hands. And you had that cut. But the police couldn’t determine what happened, except your mother wasn’t sexually violated. She had epithelial cells in her mouth, but no trace of semen. There was no match to the DNA sample in the police database. I know this is hard to think about or talk about. But what did you see?”
I close my eyes, squeezing them hard before I open them again. My dad is still staring at me, still waiting for answers.
“I heard mom crying. I found the guy in your room with a gun held to mom’s side. The guy forced her to give him a blowjob. I tried to help, but when I did, I bumped the gun and it went off. She’s dead because I tried to help. If I hadn’t, she would still be here today.”
My father chokes a little and I try to swallow the fucking lump that keeps forming in my throat. He looks at me.
“Do you really think he would have left her alive?” Dad finally says. “Think about that, Pax. She knew what he looked like. If he told you that he wouldn’t have killed her, he was lying.”
“He left me alive,” I tell him limply. “Maybe he would have left her, too.”
My dad shakes his head, his cheeks flushed. “No. He wouldn’t have. He probably couldn’t bring himself to kill a kid in cold blood and he felt confident enough that he’d scared you into silence. Your mom never stood a chance, Pax. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done about it.”
He turns away now, staring out the window.