by Chloe Walsh
Words.
They were words.
And words couldn’t hurt, right?
So why was I hemorrhaging from the inside out?
"Why?" Head bowed, he pressed the palms of his hands against his forehead and shook his head. Sounding beyond broken, his voice was strained when he said, "Why did you have to do that to her?"
I barked out a laugh of disbelief. "You're lying." When Daryl didn’t agree with me, I rushed straight for him. "He's lying," I repeated, urging him to look at me. "Right, D?"
One look in his eyes and I knew.
I just knew that it was true.
"You knew?"
He didn’t deny it.
My breath hitched and I jerked away from him. "And you didn’t tell me?"
"Molls –" his voice cracked. "I'm so fucking sorry you had to hear it like that."
"Hear it like that?" I shook my head, not bothering to blink away the tears that were streaming down my cheeks. "You knew? All this time? You knew and you didn’t tell me?"
"I couldn’t," he whispered brokenly. "Dolly –"
"Don’t call me that!" I screamed, as I bolted for the front door, desperate to get away from these monsters. "Don’t ever call me that again!"
Daddy!" I cried out when I burst through the front door of my house. "Daddy, where are you?"
"I'm here, Molly," he replied, coming bounding out of the kitchen with a look of concern etched on his face. "I'm right here, sweetheart."
"Dad –" Gasping for air, I staggered into the foyer, barely able to keep my footing. "Dad."
The moment his eyes landed on my tear stained face, his entire expression fell. "He told you, didn’t he?"
He told me?
He told me?
Oh my god…
"You know?" I cried out hoarsely, as the floor stared to spin beneath me.
Holding his hands up, my father moved slowly towards me. "Sweetheart, what did he tell you? I promise that I can explain everything –"
"Everything?" I screamed, shaking violently. "I don’t understand anything!"
"Molly, let's both sit down and we can talk this through…"
"What's to talk about?" Pressing a hand to my forehead, I blinked rapidly, trying to re-train my vision as it blurred in and out. "You knew he knew? He knew, and you knew, and they knew…whoa –"
"Molly –" Closing the space between us, my father caught me just as my legs gave out beneath me. "I've got you, sweetheart."
47 Molly
"Here," Dad said, setting a can of soda down in front of me. "Drink up. The sugar will help with the shock."
My father was a brilliant man, and right about a lot of things in life, but if he thought that a soda was going to help with this particular influx of shock, then he was dead wrong.
When I came around after my fainting episode and told my father what they had said, he didn’t deny it like I desperately needed him to do.
Dad just listened to what I had to say, growing paler with each passing word, until I had nothing left to say and everything left to hear.
"If I had one wish in this life, it would be that we never came back to Ocean Bay." He shook his head in dismay. "I knew better than to come back here, back near those people, and still, I let it happen. I let you talk me into coming back to this hell."
"All you have to do is tell me that they're lying," I begged, my voice no more than a broken whisper. "Just tell me that everything Trish and Wren said back there is a pack of lies and I'll believe you. I swear I'll believe you, Dad." Sniffling, I choked out a sob. "Just… just tell me it's not true."
"I can't tell you that," he whispered, sounding as broken as I felt. "I wish I could, Molly Sue, more than anything in the world, but I can't."
"Oh god." With my elbows on the table, I dropped my head in my hands and whispered, "I need to know everything."
"Are you sure?"
No. "I need to know."
Sighing wearily, my father reclaimed the seat opposite me before continuing to blow my world to smithereens with his version of the facts.
And the facts were that it had all been one big lie.
My life.
My family.
My relationship with Daryl.
All of it.
"…I wasn't ghosting you, Dolly. I would never ghost you. The truth is that I've a lot of shit bottled up inside of my head. Shit that stems back years. Shit that I need to tell you about, but ain't ready to talk about. Shit that will change everything between us..."
I forced the memory out of my mind, feeling like such an idiot for not figuring this out sooner.
"…"I didn't mean it, Dolly. I'm dealing with a lot of pressure right now, and I'm, uh, fuck, I was trying to do the right thing."
"By being unnecessarily cruel back there? By ghosting me all week?"
"No. By keeping my distance."
"What? What does that even mean, Daryl?"
"It means…It means I can't tell you…"
The very foundations upon which I had built my world from birth to this very moment in time were sullied, marred, and filled with more deceit and devastation than I could comprehend.
"You were only a little girl when it started," Dad said, voice thick with emotion. "When your mother and Wren…"
"Began their affair?"
Shoulders slumped, my father nodded. "Yes."
My heart squeezed tight in my chest.
So it was true.
My mother really did have an affair with Daryl's stepfather.
With Wretched!
"Did you know about it?" I forced myself to ask, feeling numb to the bone.
"No." He shook his head. "I didn’t find out until she was six months pregnant with your brother."
"My brother." I mulled the words over in my head. "But not your…"
"No," he confirmed gruffly, eyes red and swollen. "Not my son."
Another heart wrenching truth.
"Do you remember the summer your mother went to help your aunt Kathy with the farm? She was gone for a long time and when she came back, she was heavily pregnant with Bobby?"
"Yes," I wheezed out, feeling faint.
"Well, I found out about the affair shortly before she left for your aunt's house," he confirmed grimly. "We separated for that summer."
Another lie.
Another secret.
Another cover-up.
"Mom left us?" I shook my head. "For an entire summer? She wasn't with aunt Kathy?"
Dad shook his head. "No, sweetheart, she wasn’t with your aunt."
"So, she was with Wren?"
He bowed his head. "She was."
"But y'all told me that Wren was away at police training that whole summer," I mumbled and then choked out a humorless laugh when awareness smacked me straight in the face. "That was the summer you guys had that big fight… when y'all decided that Daryl and I shouldn’t hang out anymore." Pain ricocheted through my heart. "Oh my god, I'm such an idiot." Tears trickled down my cheeks. "I thought you and Wren were arguing about business! I didn’t realize you were fighting about my mom!" Another sob tore from my chest. "Why didn’t you tell me?"
"Because you were just a little girl," he soothed. "I didn’t want their ugliness to ruin your innocence or destroy your childhood."
"But Daryl knew?" I demanded, angry and hurt. "We're the same age, but he was allowed to know?"
"It wasn't that he was allowed to know, Molly," Dad interjected softly. "It was more like he figured it out on his own."
"How?" I cried, throwing my hands up.
"That's something you'll have to ask Daryl."
"I don’t want to ask him!" I screamed, delirious with grief. "He was supposed to be my best friend and he didn’t tell me. He lied to me just like y'all lied. I don’t want to speak to him ever again!"
"That's your hurt talking, Molly Sue."
"Maybe that's true," I sniffled, wiping my nose with the sleeve of my over-sized hoodie. "But I can't see or think past the hurt
right now, Dad."
"We can stop at any time, Molly," Dad offered. "This conversation doesn’t have to happen all at once. If you're tired, we can –"
"No." Sniffling, I shook my head. "I need to hear it all now. Tonight. Right here, Dad."
"Wren was the first to come to his senses," he continued, sounding as exhausted as I felt. "And Trish? Well, I don’t know the inner workings of her mind, but she welcomed him back with open arms. Sophie was still little, and I don’t think the woman had the heart to go it alone again – not after Scott walked out a few years before that. You must remember that we all grew up together, and I remember how torn up Trish was when Scott bailed on her for college."
"Scott."
"Scott King," Dad explained. "I don’t think you ever met him, but he was Daryl's father…"
"I know who Scott King is." When we were little, Daryl's absentee father was pretty much football royalty in this town. His star dimmed out when people realized that the son he had forsaken had even more potential for greatness. "Could have made the pros if he hadn't busted out his knee playing college football, right?"
"Right." Dad cleared his throat. "Well, I think his leaving broke something inside of Trish. Maybe it was the thought of another failed relationship on her hands, or maybe it was the fear of the scorn that came from raising another child on her own, but she clung to her marriage with Wren, choosing to forgive him for things that God Almighty himself would have a hard time forgiving."
"And you?" I looked at my father. "Did you forgive my mom?"
He met my stare and held it for a long time before saying, "No. I never truly forgave your mother for what she did, but I tried to help her."
"Tried." I swallowed down the lump in my throat. "What does that mean?"
"When she finally decided to come home, she was penniless and depressed, not to mention heavily pregnant with another man's child." Blinking away the tears that were filling his eyes, Dad rubbed his jaw. "She didn’t come knocking on our door, Molly. She went straight to him."
"Wh-what?"
"Wren," Dad confirmed. "She went begging on his doorstep, but he had no real love for her. Your mother was always a sensitive person, not really made for this world, and Wren preyed on her vulnerability. All your mother ever was to that man was an itch to scratch. He broke her, and then he abandoned her."
"But she came home," I protested shakily. "To us. I remember…"
"Because she didn’t have anywhere else to go," Dad said sadly. "Neither one of us wanted to make it work, Molly. I couldn’t get past the betrayal and she couldn't get over him, but I couldn’t just abandon her to the streets like Wren had. She was almost ready to give birth by then. And I had a little girl at home who needed her mama."
"So you raised him?" Crying hard and ugly, I reached across the table and grabbed my father's hand, "Bobby? You raised him as your own?"
Dad squeezed my hand affectionately. "He was a part of her, which made him a part of you, and I loved you both. That meant I loved him, too. So, I gave him my name and I tried to rebuild our broken home, but your mother?" A deep shudder racked through his body. "Your mother wasn't well after that."
I frowned. "Wasn’t well?"
"Post-partum," he explained. "Along with a lot of other issues, sweetheart. I never told you this, but your mother didn’t have a very good childhood, there was a lot of abuse, both substance and physical, that affected her long into adulthood."
"So, when you say that she was vulnerable…"
"I mean she struggled to fight back her demons until she couldn’t do it anymore," he replied, clearly broken. "And those demons finally got the best of her."
"Don’t say it," I begged, clenching my eyes shut. "Please don’t say it."
"I have to."
"No." I shook my head, refuting his words.
"I want you to remember that she wasn't in a clear frame of mind," he hurried to explain. "The woman who gave birth to you adored you with every fiber of her being."
"Please don’t –"
"Your mom set the fire, sweetheart."
No.
No.
No…
"No!" I screamed, releasing the pain building up inside that felt like it was going to kill me.
48 Daryl
The front door slammed shut behind Molly, and I swung around to glare at my so-called family. ""Are you happy now? Did breaking that poor, innocent girl make y'all feel better?" I narrowed my eyes in disgust. "Y'all are sick. Fucking sick!"
"Daryl," Mom sobbed, covering her mouth. "I'm so –"
"Don’t say it!" I roared. "Don’t ever fucking say those words to me."
"Don’t talk to your mother like that, boy –" Wren began to say but quickly let his words trail off when I stalked right up to him. "Settle down, Daryl."
"Oh, I'm Daryl now, am I?" I goaded, beyond done with this man and his shit. "And you want me to settle down? Huh? Well then, why don’t you make me, prick," I seethed, before rearing my fist back and slamming it into his face.
"Daryl!"
The sound of bone crunching filled my ears and blood sprayed from his nose like a fountain.
"Just because I never hit you back didn’t mean that I couldn't," I hissed, towering above his hunched frame. "It just meant that I had something to lose. But now?" Sneering in disgust, I glowered at him. "You just took the one thing in life that I care about. So, you go right ahead and do your worst, asshole. Because you can't break me anymore than you just did."
"Pack your shit, boy," Wren growled, cupping his nose as it continued to bleed. "I want you out of my house."
"No fucking problem," I sneered, shaking with temper. "I wouldn't spend another night in this house if my life depended on it."
"Daryl, just wait a second," Mom began to coax, stepping between me and her husband for the millionth time since she brought him into our lives. "Wren doesn’t mean it. You're both hot. Just cool down and we can talk this out –"
"Like hell I don’t mean it, Trish," Wren spat, stepping around my mother and then roughly shoving past me as he moved for the sink. " Grabbing a towel off the draining board, he pressed it to his nose and roared, "I mean it this time. I don't give two shits how much you bitch and cry at me. I want him out!"
"But he's my son," Mom cried, frantically looking between us. "I can't just –"
"And I'm your husband," Wren snarled, slamming his fist down on the counter. "And Sophie is our daughter. We don’t need his shit, Trish. Look at him. He's all grown now. I've done my bit. I want him gone. "
"But…" Mom sobbed, clutching her chest. "They're both my children."
"Don’t you worry, Mama. I ain't about to stand around and ask you to choose," I sneered. "You're welcome to him."
Having got that off my chest, I stalked out of the kitchen, passing my mother in the process.
Taking the staircase two steps at a time, I stormed into my bedroom and yanked open my closet doors.
Grabbing the duffel bag that I kept under my bed, I started to pack my shit up, and I didn’t stop until the bag was full.
"D?" Sniffling in my bedroom doorway, Sophie looked at me guiltily. "I'm sorry –"
"I don’t know what your motive was for letting Molly inside to hear all that, or what I ever did to you that was so fucking terrible that you would do me dirty like that, but I'm not ready to talk to you about it," I warned her, shaking with anger.
"If you just let me explain –"
"I'm not ready to hear your side and I don’t know if I ever will be. So, you need to walk away, Soph."
"Daryl, put your clothes away." That was mom. "I mean it." Frantic, she burst into my room, hands flailing and tears streaming. "Stop packing your stuff –"
"I ain't staying in this house another night," I snapped, cutting her off. "I ain't staying with you people another damn second."
"You people?" She sucked in a sharp breath. "I'm your mother."
"Yeah, some mother," I sneered with a shake of my head.
"Save it." Closing the zipper on my duffel bag, I tossed it over my shoulder before moving for the door. "We're done."
"No." Sobbing loudly, she chased me down the staircase and tried blocking the front door when I went to leave.
"Let me go, Mama," I instructed, jaw ticking.
"No," she continued to sob.
"Let the little bastard go, Trish," Wren called out from the kitchen. "Don’t worry. He ain't going far."
"Why don’t you do us both a favor and go fuck yourself with a nine iron," I roared back before turning my attention back to Mom. "Let me go."
"B-but where will you go?"
"It ain't your concern anymore," I bit out, stepping around her and yanking the front door open.
"Daryl –"
"Goodbye, Mama. Have a nice life."
49 Molly
Slumped at the kitchen table, I held my head in my hands as my whole world fell down around me.
Mom had an affair with Wren.
She did my father dirty.
Bobby was a product of infidelity.
And Mom was the reason they were both in the ground.
She was the reason I looked like I did.
And they all knew.
Everyone knew except for me.
Even Daryl.
After all that I'd heard tonight, and everything I had learned, only two words managed to escape my lips.
"I'm pregnant."
My father didn’t respond at first, too confused by my confession to make sense of what it meant for the future.
"I just found out today," I decided to offer up, voice raspy and torn from the sheer height of screaming and crying. "I've got a picture," I continued, numb to the bone, as I slid a hand inside my pocket and retrieved the folded sonogram inside. "I'm due in May."
Deathly pale, my father leaned back in his seat and blew out a shaky breath before reaching for the sonogram I had placed in the middle of the table.
