I’d been out of the hospital for five days now and I sat in my new bedroom in the apartment I shared with Rose. She’d gotten out two weeks ago and the apartment was completely furnished as if we’d been living there for months. Her mom had done an impeccable job providing us with everything we needed, including paying the rent. It meant I didn’t have to work and could just focus on my schoolwork. I’d be starting my classes again next semester and was really looking forward to it.
I hadn’t seen Rose eat anything except lettuce and she’d already dropped most of the weight she’d gained while she was in the hospital. She spent her evenings locked in her room exercising. I didn’t care that she didn’t eat and had to complete two hundred sit-ups and leg lifts before going to bed because not eating and exercising made her happy. I wanted her to be happy. She deserved it.
Since she was occupied in her room at night, I was left alone to do as I pleased. So far, I’d been spending my nights reading the book I’d picked up at Target on my first day out or talking to Thomas on the phone. We never ran out of things to say to each other. But tonight was going to be different. Earlier in the day, I’d suddenly found myself back at Target in the health and beauty aisle even though I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. I didn’t have any memory of taking the bus or walking into the store, but there I was running my fingers along the fresh packages of razors.
I watched myself as I unwrapped the film and pulled out a shiny new razor blade from the container. My heart began to beat faster and my body started to buzz as I marveled at the way the light caught the blade, making it glimmer. I checked to make sure the bedroom door was locked before I went any further. It was, but I pulled my desk chair over and leaned it up against the doorknob as an extra precaution.
I brought the cold metal to my skin and pressed slightly, then a bit harder, just so I could feel the sting. I felt the familiar bite and hot energy shot through me. I had to have more. I pushed deeper and felt the ecstatic release as it broke through my flesh, revealing the pearly white of my insides before the first red droplets began to form their red trail. Once I saw the blood, I had to go further and bleed the evil out of me. I dragged the razor across my skin and felt the undeniable pleasure of my soul being set free. I could breathe again. As I closed my eyes and felt the familiar rush, I promised myself I’d be careful. I wouldn’t go too deep. This would be the last time—just one last time.
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Lucinda Berry is the author of MISSING PARTS, a gripping psychological thriller that asks how far one woman is willing to go to protect her secrets. Click here for MISSING PARTS.
BOY DISRUPTED a heart-wrenching thriller that promises to change the way you look at teenage sexual offenders forever will be available soon! Please enjoy your sneak peek at the first chapter. To receive an Advanced Review Copy, please click here:
A SNEAK PEEK AT BOY DISRUPTED:
Noah being charged as a sex offender sucker punched our entire suburban community. Child molesters were adults—dirty, old men who lured children into their cars with promises of candy and treats. They weren’t A-honor roll students who ran varsity track and went to mass every Sunday. I still cringe inside every time I say it, but our nightmare is finally about to be over.
Noah is getting out of The Harsh Foundation in three weeks and I’ve counted every day he’s been gone. I pulled two of his boxes out of the garage before my husband Lucas got home, hoping their presence would force him to talk about Noah’s homecoming. I put them in a neat stack next to the couch, but when he walked into the living room, he skirted around them as if they weren’t there just like he dodges anything related to Noah.
After he tucked our youngest Katie into bed, he planted himself in front of the TV with the remote control in one hand and his phone in the other, shifting his attention back and forth between the two screens. I stare at him from the kitchen, trying to muster up the strength to approach him. He isn’t classically handsome but he’s always been attractive to me. The dimples in both cheeks make him look playful despite his khaki pants and buttoned-up shirt. He’s six feet tall with a leanness that passed as athletic years ago, but decades working in an office have taken a toll on his body. His muscles have begun to sag and the bulge hanging over his belt grows more and more pronounced each year. I take a deep breath before heading into the living room to join him.
I plop down on the couch next to him and do my best to appear relaxed. I cross and uncross my legs, rearrange the magazines on the coffee table, and wipe away imaginary crumbs as I work up the nerve to bring up the subject he continually avoids.
“Do you think we could talk?” I ask.
He stares at the screen in his hand without looking up. “Sure.”
“About Noah.”
His body stiffens the same way it does each time I mention his name.
“What’s there to talk about?” he asks.
There’s no way he doesn’t know Noah is getting out soon no matter how hard he tries to remain oblivious to what’s happening with his case.
“Come on, Lucas. Don’t be difficult.”
“I’m not being difficult. What’s there to talk about?”
“Maybe the fact that your son is getting out of treatment in three weeks, and we haven’t discussed what we’re going to do about it?”
“You already know how I feel about it.”
“But that was a year ago. We haven’t talked about it since.”
I ignored him when he said he didn’t want Noah to come home after treatment. It was only two months since he’d been locked up and his discharge date was so far into the future it was the least of my concerns. I was worried about how he’d survive being locked up with criminals and sexual deviants, anxious about how well he’d be supervised around them, how he’d sleep in a strange place, and if they were feeding him food he liked. Wondering what we’d do when he got out was the farthest thing from my mind.
“I still feel the same way,” he says, his eyes glued to his phone. I want to slap it out of his hand.
“Are you serious?” I try to keep my voice calm.
He lets out a deep sigh. “I don’t want to get into it with you again. Please, don’t start this.”
“Start this? I’m not trying to start anything. We have to prepare and figure out what we’re going to do. This is happening, whether you want it to or not. I’ve given you time to pretend like he doesn’t exist, but you’re not going to be able to anymore. Not when he’s here. You’re going to have to see him and God forbid, you might even have to talk to him.”
When Noah first got locked up, I forced him to come with me on the weekend visits and family sessions because the treatment staff stressed the critical role families played in the child’s rehabilitation process. Lucas is an affectionate man, but he could barely bring himself to touch Noah during our visits. He shook his hand with the formality of meeting a business acquaintance for the first time. He rarely looked at him, his eyes slid over him before he looked away, unable to hide his contempt and disgust. He only spoke when spoken to during the family sessions and sat mute whenever we met with Noah alone.
I breathed a sigh of relief the first time he pretended to be sick so he wouldn’t have to go. Even though all the experts told us how important family support was for Noah’s recovery, I didn’t think a father who looked at him like he was a pariah qualified. It was better I went alone. The next weekend rolled around, and he said he needed to stay home with Katie to work on her science project, and I happily agreed. He didn’t bother to make up an excuse the next week, and I pretended not to notice. We didn’t speak about it again. I went alone each Sunday, and he never asked about the visit when I got back. It wasn’t long before his silence extended to all things conce
rning Noah.
I try not to be angry about Lucas’s attitude toward him. His response is better than some fathers. He didn’t react like Jamar Pickney’s father who shot his son in the head when he learned he’d been sexually abusing his sister or the father in Detroit who slit his son’s throat for taking naked pictures of his cousins and selling them online.
There are only two fathers who attend the groups at Marsh. Most of the kids didn’t have fathers in their lives before their offenses and the ones that did either disappeared or emotionally detached after their sons’ convictions. The other women I’d met in the groups assured me men processed their emotions about it differently. They were confident Lucas just needed space to deal with things in his own way and would come around eventually, so I’d given him his time, but his period of avoidance is over.
“Okay. Let’s talk about where he’s going to live,” he says. He turns off the TV and lays his phone on the coffee table.
“He’s seventeen, where else is he supposed to live?” I can’t keep the emotion out of my voice no matter how hard I try.
“We could help him become an emancipated minor. I already looked into the process. It’s pretty easy, especially if the parents are on board with it. All you have to do is fill out an application saying all parties agree to the emancipation and go before a judge to put his stamp of approval on it. Then, he’s free to live on his own. It’s that simple.” Unlike me, his voice is devoid of all emotion.
“Really? How’s he supposed to live on his own? What kind of a job is he going to get when he doesn’t have a high school diploma? And did you forget he’ll be a registered sex offender? He’s not even going to be able to use the Internet.”
“He’ll have to figure it out.”
How is he going to do that without any help? How can Lucas consider sending him into the world alone when he doesn’t have any of the basic skills he needs to survive? He’s still a kid.
He takes my hand in his. “I know you love him and how hard this must be for you.”
I jerk my hand away. “I love him? What about you? You act like he’s some stranger. Like he’s not even your son. He’s still your son, Lucas.”
“He stopped being my son when he raped those girls.” His lips are set in a straight line.
“He didn’t rape them, don’t say that,” I snap.
There’s a difference between rape and what he did. He touched the girls, but he didn’t rape them. Rape is different, and I cling to anything separating Noah from being a monster. He made a mistake. That’s all. One mistake. We all make mistakes in adolescence.
“Calm down,” he says.
I don’t want to calm down. I want him to care about his son the way I do—the way he used to. It’s like nothing before matters and he’s erased the memories he used to cherish. How can he forget the way he cried when Noah was born or sat up with him all night in the shower when he had croup? He squealed like a child when he took his first steps and taught him to ride his bike without training wheels when he was only four-years-old. How can he dismiss the way his heart swelled with joy the first time he called him daddy and every other milestone along the way? He’d coached his baseball team every summer since t-ball and never missed a swimming competition even during tax season when he’s the busiest. He used to have an entire wall in his office devoted to his artwork. It traced the lineage of his childhood, from his finger paintings in preschool to the self-portrait he created in junior high art class. Now, those images are gone, torn down, and all that remains is a blank wall with leftover pieces of tape hinting at the story the wall used to tell.
Lucas can’t see past what he’s done, but I can. He is our son and we can’t wash our hands of him. Society is going to throw him away, but we can’t.
“How can you make him live somewhere else? It’s so cruel.”
“I’m protecting my family.” His jaw is set. The same angular line as Noah.
“He’s your family and if you’d gone to any of the family meetings you’d know how important it is for us to be there for him. All the statistics say family support is one of the biggest factors in his recovery. It’s the most important thing. We have to help him, offer him encouragement. It’s what—”
“I can’t have him under our roof. I won’t put Katie in danger.”
Anxiety curls in my stomach at the mention of her—our Peanut. She’s never gotten out of the twenty-fifth percentile on the growth charts. She’s dainty and delicate with a small face and piercing blue eyes, constantly studying and taking in the world around her. Unlike most babies of the family, she hides from the limelight, painfully shy, and never likes to be the center of attention.
I roll my eyes, shaking my head. “He’d never hurt Katie. Never.”
“She’s the same age as those girls.”
“Yes, but he’s better now,” I say it with conviction, hoping my words have the power to make it true. “I’m meeting with the treatment team on Tuesday to come up with a safety plan. You should come with me.”
He raises his eyebrows. “If he’s better now, then why do we need a safety plan?”
He doesn’t understand. Part of a safety plan is keeping him out of situations where he might look guilty even if he’ innocent.
“We can put locks on her doors just like we did before. We could even put a lock on his door too. Maybe one that locks from the outside and we can make sure they’re never alone together.”
He scoots down the couch and puts his arm around my shoulders. “Listen to yourself. Do you hear what you’re saying? Locks on doors? Constant supervision? And putting a lock on the outside of his door? So, we’d basically lock him in his room every night and let him out in the morning like a prisoner? What kind of a life is that for him? For any of us?”
I bite my cheek to keep from crying. I hate this. Every part of it. It never gets easier.
We sit in silence, staring at the blank TV screen lost in thought about what life used to be like for us and the family we’d been, all the dreams we had for our kids and each other. The vortex of depression threatens to pull me inside, but I’m not going back. I’ve spiraled there before and crawled my way out. I’m not doing it again.
“I can’t let him live on his own. He’s still just a kid.” The tears I’ve been holding back spill down my cheeks.
“You could live with him.”
I jerk my head up. “What are you talking about?”
“The two of you could get a place together. It could be somewhere nearby so you’d still be able to see Katie whenever you wanted to.” He takes a deep breath.
“Are you kidding me?” I jump up, throwing his arm off me, and pace the living room.
We can’t separate our family. We’ve been apart long enough. I’ve waited eighteen months for this day to come. He knows how excited I am for Noah to come home and all of us to be together again. How can he be so insensitive?
“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s not if you stop to think about it. The other night I watched a documentary about a family who had a daughter with schizophrenia. She was psychotic and violent. She had a younger brother and started attacking him whenever she went into one of her fits. They couldn’t live together anymore because they were afraid she’d hurt him, so they moved into two different apartments in the same complex. One where the girl stayed and one where the boy stayed. The parents went back and forth between them. They still spent time together as a family, but it kept the boy safe.”
I can’t believe we’re talking about keeping Katie safe from Noah. He adored her from the moment we told him he was going to be a big brother. He was ten when she was born and insisted on learning how to do everything to care for her. He changed her diapers like a pro and fed her bottles like he’d been doing it his whole life. We were so grateful for the extra set of hands during those early months because unlike Noah, Katie was a difficult baby who didn’t like to go to sleep without a fight and never slept for more than a few hours.
He spent hours ly
ing next to her, reading her books, and dangling toys over her head. She was mesmerized by him, and he quickly became her favorite person. Her eyes searched for him whenever she heard his voice and toddled after him from room to room after she learned to walk. Her first word was “No-nah” and sometimes she still refers to him by it.
Unlike Lucas, Katie begs to go with me every week to see him, but staff only allows siblings to visit on prearranged monthly outings. She created a calendar with her visiting days circled in pink hearts and tacked it on the bulletin board in her room. Each week she creates care packages for me to take filled with letters she’s written and pictures she’s drawn for him. When she’s able to visit, she gives him a huge hug and cries all the way home when we leave. She’s going to be as devastated as me if he doesn’t come home to live with us. How will we explain it?
She doesn’t know what he’s done. Not in words. At least we tell ourselves that. She knows he made bad decisions and hurt kids because his brain wasn’t working right at the time. We told her he had to go away so he could work with doctors to fix his brain and help him make better choices in the future. What will we tell her now?
How will I function away from her? Noah’s absence sucked the energy out of me, but she breathed new life into me. She was the reason I got out of bed in the morning when all I wanted to do was pull the covers over my head and stay there. Her schedule organized my life and kept me grounded when everything spiraled out of control. I was determined to keep her sheltered from the tragedy as best I could and protect her innocence as long as possible, so I put on a brave face and worked hard to keep up with her routines and maintain the order in her life.
What will I do without fixing her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch or making sure her leotard is clean for ballet? How will I go to sleep without the angel kisses I place on her forehead each night? What will she do when her nightmares startle her awake, and I’m not there to lay with her and rub her back until she falls back to sleep?
Phantom Limb: A Gripping Psychological Thriller Page 23
