Unveiling Ghosts

by Jeannine Allison

  It was impossible. How was I supposed to go back into a world where the sun didn’t shine as bright or the air didn’t feel as fresh? How did I go back and act like I wasn’t walking around with a hole in my chest?

  I couldn’t.

  So I got good at pretending.

  Every day, I looked in the mirror and said the same two words.

  I’m okay.

  And some days, I even believed it.

  “NOTHING TOO TERRIBLE?” HUNTER exploded. I winced.

  Truthfully, I’d thought about keeping the incident with his father a secret. At this point it would only hurt him, but if I expected one hundred percent honesty from him, I had to return the favor.

  We both made mistakes when we tried to keep secrets from one another. I was wrong. He was wrong. And in trying to protect each other, we destroyed us.

  “What the hell, Sherry? How could you keep something like that from me?” He sounded tortured, whether from the incident or me keeping it from him, I didn’t know.

  “I didn’t want you to freak out. Look at how you’re reacting now, can you imagine what you would have done then?” I tried to keep my tone gentle. He opened his mouth to answer, but I cut him off, bringing my hands up to gently brush over his face. “We were all wrong, Hunter. My parents saw. I saw. But we all wanted to believe differently.” I shook my head. “I guess we forgot that bullies don’t change. They don’t go away or stop. They grow up, get bigger tools, and destroy with more precision. We were fools to think it could have ended any differently.”

  We made the assumption that just because the sun was shining, the rain would never come again. But the right conditions were all people like his father needed. Abuse didn’t need to be all-consuming and ever present to be damning. All it took was one time. One hit. One kick. One broken bone. One bruise. That was enough. And we should’ve reported him.

  Hunter nodded, reluctantly coming around to the idea. “We didn’t take him seriously because he wasn’t constantly beating me anymore, and we thought we had control over it. We thought… wrong. How stupid. How does an inferno start? A tiny flame… a tiny lick of heat… a spark. I was so blind.”

  “We all were,” I repeated. “And the two of us took on the blame for something we had no claim to.”

  “What blame did you take on?” he asked with a frown.

  “Yelling at him the way I did. Sometimes I wonder if that somehow put me more on his radar,” I whispered.

  His face went pale and his breathing stopped. “Sherry…”

  I shook my head. “You blame yourself, and I blame myself.” Leaning back, I sat and faced the headboard, not one part of me touching him. “At what point do we blame him? Why is it so hard for us to blame the monster for his crimes? Why do we make excuses for it and justify his actions based on the victims? Why are girls given grief over how short their skirts are, while the monster who raped them is just expected to rape them? Why do we look at a murderer with a messed-up childhood and blame his parents? There are scores of people who rape and kill, and sometimes it’s a woman bundled up, sometimes their childhood was picture perfect. At what point will we start looking at the monster and blame him? Instead of the victims he terrorized.”

  I paused and watched my finger drawing circles on the mattress. “I guess it’s just in our nature, because even believing all that, I still see my mom’s hand. It haunts me. I don’t see his actions, I hear my words and somehow they feel like the accelerant.” Looking up, I saw Hunter’s eyes bright with unshed tears. “It feels better if we can blame someone else. Maybe it feels like we have a chance to change them, to stop them—it gives us a sense of control we don’t actually have. If some people are just plain bad, then there’s no way to ever stop them. There’s no way to make us safe.”

  I used to believe in a blank slate, but maybe that was a lie. Maybe some people really were bad, no matter what. But that still seemed like a depressing way to view the world.

  He leaned forward and pulled me toward him. Then Hunter set his lips against my ear. “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” My brow furrowed as I tried to place where I’d heard those words before.

  “Alfred said that in The Dark Knight,” Hunter offered by way of explanation. “And he was right, Sherry. My father was a miserable person. He may have had bright moments in his life, my mother specifically, but at the end of the day he always wanted more.” He shrugged. “I suppose that’s just the life of a gambler. And when he didn’t get it, he wanted other people to suffer like he was. I don’t know much about how he grew up, maybe he had a great childhood, maybe he didn’t. Like you said, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, whatever the reason for his actions, we should blame him. Maybe we could have done more, but his actions are still his.”

  I thought on it for a few minutes, but no clear answer came to me. Maybe none ever would. Instead I focused on the first thing Hunter said. “That makes no sense.”

  His hands started rubbing gentle circles down my back. “What doesn’t?”

  “Your father wanting to watch the world burn. My parents were hardly the world,” I pointed out.

  Hunter leaned back and intently gazed between my eyes. “He wanted to destroy my world. And that has always been you. You’re my world, and he knew that.”

  I felt the threat of tears as I looked down at my lap.

  “When I left, I’d thought he won. He didn’t, Sherry. Even when I was a kid, he never won. I was beaten down, but I was never beat. I stood back up every single time, standing taller than before. And that never changed. I still smiled and found reasons to enjoy life, so even though he should have been in jail and we should have done more, he never won. I think the only way he’d win is if we gave up.” I looked up and his eyes were screaming a million apologies. “I gave up. But I promise I will never do that again.”

  “I believe you.”

  Hunter’s lips spread into a soft, content smile before he moved in to kiss me. He seemed nervous when he pulled away and looked down at the comforter, all our food abandoned behind him. Gently cupping his cheek, I brought his gaze back to mine.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’d like to go see your parents today. I’ve never been to see them. I’ve never…” He trailed off and closed his eyes. My heart ached for him, because I knew how much they were like parents to him too. I began running my hand through his hair.

  “Of course,” I whispered.

  His eyes slowly opened. “I don’t want to cause you any more pain.”

  “They deserve to have people visiting them. I doubt anyone else does.”

  “Maria does.”

  My hand froze before it dropped to my lap. “What?”

  “On their birthdays and around the holidays she sits with them for an hour or so.”

  “I’ve never seen her. Wait… is that… is she the one who brings them flowers?” I asked. About two years ago I noticed different arrangements being left when I came home for some of the holidays.

  Hunter nodded. “Yeah. I know four hours isn’t that far away, but I just couldn’t bring myself to come back here.” He looked shamefaced. “So when I found out she was going, I sent her some money to do that.”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but my heart melted a little more. “Thank you.”

  “Anything for my girl.” He smiled softly and kissed the smile off my face before he started cleaning up our breakfast. I’d already taken a shower and while I waited for him to take his, I grabbed my phone to call Derek. He answered right away, albeit a little distractedly.

  “Hello? Sherry? Ah, fuck,” he muttered as a loud bang echoed down the line. “Hold on. Rory! Get back here, you little shit.” I laughed as I listened to what sounded like him chasing a puppy around his apartment.

  “Aha! Victory!” he shouted about a minute later before getting back on the phone. “You still there?”

  “Uh… yeah?”

  “Are you okay? Everything going well?”

 
I grinned as I looked into the open door of the bathroom, Hunter’s fine ass on display through the lightly frosted shower door. Turning around and walking toward the window, I answered, “I’m great. I think the more pressing question is are you okay?”

  “Me?” he panted out. “Oh, yeah, I’m great.”

  “So who’s Rory?”

  “You heard all that?”

  “I’m pretty sure I would have heard all that even if we weren’t on the phone right now.”

  “Oh.” He let out a breath of exhaustion before I heard him drop himself down on what sounded like his couch. “Rory is Sam’s new dog. I guess she didn’t ask her father before she adopted him. I offered to let the dog stay here while Sam convinced her dad to let her keep it.”

  “What kind of dog is she?”

  “Annoying,” he grumbled.

  “I meant the breed,” I said with a smile.

  “Yeah, I know. I don’t remember what Sam said. The dog kind of just looks like a giant cotton ball with eyes.”

  I thought about it for a minute. I wasn’t well versed in dog breeds, but I knew the popular ones. “A Pomeranian?”

  “Yes, yes! That one. God, she’s just sitting in her cage and staring at me. It’s creepy.”

  “Oh, grow a sack.”

  I could almost feel his glare through the phone. “Fine, forget the demon. What’s going on there? You said everything’s great?”

  All the memories, good and bad, ranging from four years ago to an hour ago, floated through my mind. And with a smile I said, “Yeah. It is. We’re about to go see my parents.”

  “That’s great, Sherry. I’m really happy for you. And you’re making him work for it?”

  I glanced at the bed and yesterday’s panties still lying on the ground. “Oh, yeah. He definitely worked hard.”

  Derek snorted right as I heard the shower turn off. “Well I’m glad one of us is getting some. But in all seriousness, he explained? He crawled on broken glass and begged for forgiveness?”

  “Look, I know you don’t know him, and I don’t expect you to trust him right away. But if you trust me that should be good enough for now.”

  “I do,” he replied immediately. “And it is.”

  “I gotta go, but I’ll keep you updated?” I turned around and smiled as Hunter walked out with just a towel wrapped around his waist.

  “Okay, sounds good. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. And good luck with that furious beast. She seems deadly.”

  It wasn’t a surprise when he hung up on me.

  We silently stood in front of their graves, our hands linked and our hearts heavy.

  “I always thought it would matter more,” I whispered.

  “What would, babe?”

  “His death, him finally getting what he deserved.”

  Hunter’s hand left mine before he wrapped his arm around me. “It never matters,” he said softly. I looked up at him but he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at them. “Like you said, humans are obsessed with the why of things—even though we know it’ll never take away the pain, we still search for it. But in the end it can’t take away the pain or loss. I was relieved when I got the call, because I knew he could never hurt anyone again. But it didn’t lessen any of this. Nothing could.”

  His arm abruptly dropped from mine and he crouched down in front of them, his shoulders shaking slightly and his hand covering his eyes. I immediately joined him, wrapping my arm around him this time.

  The truth was the world had the good, the bad, and everything in between. Finding Hunter didn’t make those years any less dark, just like turning on all the lights on one side of the house didn’t do anything for the one dark room you were standing in on the opposite end of the house. Light was light, dark was dark, and in the end they really had nothing to do with one another. They didn’t cancel one another out. They just were. All we had to do was make our way from one to the other.

  In the end, it all came down to us. We could make our way to the light. We could choose to walk away from the darkness that had haunted us and start over.

  It would be hard and we’d probably stumble on a few things that had been carelessly left on the floor as we made our way out of the dark room and toward the light. There was always the possibility that the light would burn out along the way, but as long as we had a light to walk toward, we’d be okay.

  After he cried against my shoulder for a few minutes, we settled down on the ground. We were quiet at first, but eventually we started trading our favorite stories about my parents. I knew most of his, and he ended up knowing most of mine, but there were still new things to be learned.

  Hunter’s last story, about one of my father’s talks with him, was still settling around us when Hunter spoke again. “You didn’t say anything before,” he whispered, his sadness coating the words.

  “About?”

  The stare he sent me radiated disbelief. “When I told you I nearly killed my father. You didn’t say anything about it. I read a statistic once, actually I read many statistics. Did you know that children who are abused are seventy-four times as likely to commit a violent crime when they grow up? And that they’re three times as likely to repeat it with their own families?”

  “Are you serious right now?” I raised my voice. “Hunter, you would never do that.”

  “Sherry,” he murmured, heartbroken. “I wanted to kill him. I think I would have, given the chance.” I stayed silent; I wouldn’t offer him meaningless words about how it wasn’t true. The truth was, I believed him. Hunter was not a violent or cruel person, but I believed he might have killed his father. Maybe not before that night, but that night changed him.

  “But you didn’t,” I said after a few moments of silence. “That’s what matters. Not what you wanted to do, not what you think you were capable of doing. Just what you did. That’s what matters.”

  “And what about what I didn’t do?” He looked up at me, misery in his eyes and heartbreak in his smile. “I didn’t report him. I didn’t do anything except ride it out, hoping it would all be okay.” Hunter paused and his eyes flitted across my face. “But it wasn’t. And you were the one to suffer for it.”

  I grabbed his face and shook him until his watery eyes stayed focused on mine. “You suffered, too. We all suffered. I w-won’t…” Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath and tried to calm myself. “I won’t say I don’t miss them. I miss them every single day. But I don’t blame you. They wouldn’t blame you. We were kids, Hunter. Kids who couldn’t have known the extent of your father’s evil.

  “And just like you can’t choose who you love, you can’t choose their problems, either. I’d still go back and choose you. I’d change a lot of other things, but loving you would never be one of them.”

  I couldn’t hold back the tears after that, not that I had been doing a great job before, but those words were a tipping point. Sherry always had a way of saying the right thing, of being exactly who I needed. That was part of the reason I left four years ago without a word.

  Because I wouldn’t have been able to leave her if I was forced to look her in the eyes. One look at her face and I would’ve stayed. I would’ve risked her safety and made her look at me every day, knowing her parents were killed by my father’s hand. I would have done that because I was selfish and I loved her.

  When I was a kid, I was always waiting for a miracle. For someone to save me. I’d gotten one. It didn’t come in the form I was expecting. But ever since I was ten years old, I’d had my miracle. I’d had Sherry.

  Once I’d stopped crying, again, we talked about a few other things we hadn’t discussed yet, such as my mother. It should have hurt when I told Sherry I still had no idea where she was. Saying the words “I don’t know” should’ve torn me apart. They should’ve gutted me—but they didn’t. They never had. In the four years I’d been living alone, I never once thought of my mother with fondness. My mother had checked out on me, abandoned me. And there was no way to forgive
her for her part in this mess.

  It was closing in on four o’clock when the painful parts lessened. We were still at their graves and Sherry was sitting in front of me. I had been watching a few other mourners leave when I looked back at her, finding a sad smile on her face.

  “What?”

  “Our story sounds insane, Hunter. Like a really bad soap opera or a Lifetime movie. I don’t know if my friends will believe me.” Sherry had been trying to lighten the mood, but we both felt the heaviness of ghosts that would never go away.

  Frowning, I pushed a piece of hair behind her ear. “It does sound crazy, but they’ll believe you because they’re your friends.”

  I reached out and intertwined our fingers, squeezing as tight as I could without causing pain. “I feel the same way, ya know.”

  “What way?”

  “I’d choose you. I wish certain things were different—God, do I—but I’d do it all over. That’s how much I love you, Sherry, because I’d do everything again. All the abuse. All the pain. I’d do it all again if it meant I got you.”

  Sherry looked at me like I hung the goddamn moon. It was the greatest feeling in the world.

  We stayed a little while longer, her back against my chest, our hands still linked, as we silently stared at all that was left of her family.

  I thought back on my words to Sherry earlier.

  He never won.

  It was the truth.

  Love didn’t conquer all. It didn’t need to. Because love wasn’t measured in the number of battles won or lost. It was measured in perseverance and loyalty.

  We lost battles, some of them so steep we almost lost ourselves. But in the end, we found our way back to one another. In the end…

  We won.

  TWO AND A HALF months after she found me, we went home. She was starting med school soon and Fletcher held too many memories we’d rather keep in the past.

  I wiped the sweat off my brow.

  Christ. It should be illegal for a place to be this hot.