by Kendra Leigh
For seconds, no one speaks, until Ethan finally pushes off from the back of the sofa where he’s leaning, his arms folded. “What exactly do you mean, Jackson? When you say you’ve seen that look? What do you know about evil?”
Holding his gaze, I dig deep through the mounds of poisonous memories, the sacks of shit excuses I’d used over the years to keep the wolves at bay. Pounding and screaming, pleading and crying, locked doors and … blood.
“I know plenty. I know what the Devil looks like. And I know what the damage he inflicts looks like too.”
* * *
They’ve been good enough to give me some time to gather my thoughts, to fully digest what the consequences will be if I choose to open the locked box inside my mind. I know now that I pushed Savannah’s folder back under the seat where I found it for my own selfish reasons. Accepting what’s written on those pages means confronting parts of my past that I’ve purposely kept buried for decades. It means facing that I once failed so catastrophically in my role as protector and being terrified that, despite making a career of trying to make up for it, I’m still not up to the job.
Now I sit with that folder in my lap, clasped tightly between my fingers in case it opens by itself before I’m ready, the pages scattering over the floor with their truth and ugliness and no way to turn back. But I know I can’t turn back, not now. One look at my Sparrow tonight was evidence of that. It’s time.
My gaze shifts to meet the eyes of Angel and Ethan waiting patiently for me to start, their coffee cups replaced with tumblers of amber liquid. I guess the mood calls for something stronger—for them, at least. I lean forward and take a sip of my iced water, hoping to cleanse the path I know the words I’m about to speak will sully.
“I told you both I was brought up by my grandmother. Well that’s true, but only from the age of twelve. Prior to that, I lived with my parents. My dad …” Despite the water, the words clog up my mouth like dry sawdust, alien and cumbersome and so very difficult to form. “He was a drunk, handy with his fists, a certified nasty bastard. When he was sober, which was as rare as Christmas, he was a quiet man. Sometimes he’d just stare at me like he was seeing me for the first time, like he wanted to ask me who I was and what I liked, what I’d been doing that day, but he hardly ever did. He used to call me boy, like he didn’t know me well enough to use my name. He didn’t, I guess. The whiskey was his demon—that’s what he’d tell my mum whenever he was sober enough to roll out a few words—like a red mist that blinded him with rage until he didn’t know what he was doing. It didn’t stop him from drinking it, though.” I see their eyes flick to my glass of water as if my words reveal the reason I don’t drink.
“My mum would try to keep me out of his way most of the time, but I was always turning up at school with black eyes and broken bones—they used to turn a blind eye in those days. When he couldn’t get to me, he’d take it out on her instead. As I got older, I realized it was worse—listening to her screaming and crying and pleading with him to stop, listening to her pain—worse than taking the kicking myself. I knew why she did it, of course, to protect me. It’s only when I finally became an adult that I realized all she really needed to do to protect me, to protect all of us, was to leave him. But she wouldn’t. She used to say she wasn’t scared of him and that I shouldn’t be either, but now I think the reason she stayed was because she was too afraid of him to leave. I could see it in her eyes. The fear beneath the mask of bravado. The tremble behind the outwardly steady hand. She used to stand differently, somehow, taller, when he came home staggering through the door—push her chest and chin out like a … like a bird puffing out her feathers to look bigger.” I think of Savannah, her tiny frame and features. My sparrow.
“Looking back, I never met anyone who wasn’t afraid of Vince Dean.” I spit the name out like a bad taste, though it’s easier than referring to him as Dad again. Suddenly, a thought makes me laugh. “I remember once the police were looking for a serial killer who’d murdered thirteen women, up in the North of England, and I was convinced it was him. It couldn’t have been, of course; he never went further than the Stag’s Head pub up the road or the armchair to sleep it off. But I remember thinking that if they were looking for someone capable of being that evil, it must be him.”
I glance at Ethan and Angel, only briefly, but I can see how hard it is for them to listen to this. Ethan looks like he’s just about containing his anger. Angel’s tears slide unwaveringly down her cheeks, and the solid knowledge that her childhood was equally as rough increases the guilt I feel for only just divulging this part of me to the two people I hold dearest. What makes it harder is I know the worst is yet to come. I press on.
“One night, after a big loss on the horses and way more whiskey than any man should drink, my mum told me to hide under the bed in my room. She’d put a lock on the door a few weeks earlier because he was getting more vicious the older I got, so after locking it, she hid the key somewhere he’d never think to look and told me she’d let me out once he’d fallen asleep. He was the angriest I’d ever known that night. I can still see the door straining against the frame with every fist he pounded into it, me holding my breath, hoping it wouldn’t give. I remember pushing out from under the bed to slide the chest of drawers behind the door for extra weight, piling everything I could find on top until it was barely visible at all.
“I knew that if he couldn’t get to me he’d usually turn on her, but she was pregnant, heavily, eight months, I think. He’d beaten two pregnancies out of her before, but they were early stages. This time you could see she was pregnant, and I genuinely think that Mum thought this would make a difference. I pleaded with her to hide in my room with me, but she told me not to worry, said she would calm him down, get him to go to bed and sleep it off. She didn’t.
“I remember how helpless I felt when I heard him throw the first punch. Just like she’d taught me in the past, I pressed my pillow around my head to drown out the noise, bearing it for as long as I could until I knew that it was going way past a couple of slaps and slurred insults. I started moving all the stuff mounted up behind the door, screaming at him to stop, to come take it out on me instead, but it went on and on. Eventually, I realized I couldn’t hear anything anymore. I thought he must have passed out as he usually did, so I called out for her to come get me so that I could look after her, but she didn’t. After a while, I wondered if she’d gone out to get help, left me locked up safe in case he woke up, but morning came and went and still nothing. I pounded on the door and the window, screaming at the top of my voice, but our flat was on the corner of the top floor of an eight-storey block in one of the most crime-ridden boroughs of London. Even the police were reluctant to respond to emergencies; you definitely couldn’t rely on your neighbors for help. They did come eventually, though. Two days later. He rang them himself, by all accounts. By then the stench of rotting blood was unmistakable.
“The trauma to her abdomen caused a placental abruption, severe shock causing her organs to fail. She bled to death. And her unborn daughter died with her.”
The shock and disgust on both their faces is palpable, a reflection of what I’ve felt inside all these years. I realize that it’s part of the reason I never shared this with them before, because it’s a look I never wanted to see. I pull my thoughts back around to why I’m doing it now, refocusing on what’s important. Savannah.
“I’m sorry I’ve kept this from you until now, but I need you to know I’m not telling you all this so that we can pick apart the sorry-ass pieces of my childhood. I have no inclination to analyze or to be analyzed. I am the peculiar bastard that I am because I want to be, not because shit happened. And I’m definitely not telling you so you can feel sorry for me—dry your tears, Angel.” She swipes the back of her hand over wet cheeks. “I’m telling you because you asked what I knew about evil and how I know, with one hundred percent certainty, that Savannah is being abused. Well, now you know. But it’s not just me adding two and two to
the bruises Angel saw and coming up with six. There’s this as well …” I toss Savannah’s folder onto the table between us. It’s open at a page with a poem, one of just many that I found concealed between drawings and stories of fictional animal characters—dark, sinister ugliness disguised among purity and innocence. The concept makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.
Standing, I make my way to the glass sliding doors leading to the terrace. They’re open a fraction and the air is a welcome respite, so I step out, heaving in a deep lungful. Beyond is the night skyline of Manhattan, a limitless sea of lights and commotion as the world goes about its business. Strangely, I feel nothing that I’ve just divulged the motherfucker of all secrets. I don’t experience an intense cleansing of my soul or overwhelming cathartic release—it’s all just history raked over for a purpose. It can go back in its box now. I couldn’t help my mother or my sister then, so bleating on about it now sure as shit won’t bring them back. All I care about is the world I live in now and the one person whose life I can make a difference to. Savannah.
From the room behind me, I’m aware that Angel has begun to read aloud from the page in the folder. But it’s Savannah’s voice I hear. Savannah’s words that settle on my chest like a deadweight stealing the air.
Monster in the Dark
My eyes can see
But my heart
My mind
Exist only in the dark
Blinded by a love
Now so distorted
So unkind
It’s but a stranger
Of unsound mind
Familiar only by the ugliness it bleeds
The anger it seethes
Unpredictable
Unapologetic
It lurks in the shadows
Deciding its shape
Its smell
Its needs
Before determining my fate
Blindness claws at my senses
Ravaging my sanity
Urging me
Surrender
To these hopeless circumstances
Warning me
Give up
Give in
And bear the consequences
So I stumble through my wasted life
Too tired
Too dead
No sight or sound
And the fear of never knowing
When the monster is around
Hearing the words aloud like that gives me a sense that we’ve somehow set them free—but at what cost, I’m not certain. Those pages were hidden for a reason, a secret confined, not meant for anybody’s eyes other than Savannah’s. How would I feel if someone had revealed my secret without my consent or my knowledge? But, on the other hand, knowing her secret is out might be the only way she’ll find her route to freedom.
Just as I’m about to turn to go back inside, I hear the flapping of wings as a bird takes flight, and a single feather drifts on a breeze to land peacefully at my feet.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Savannah
IT’S 9:30 AM AND he still hasn’t left for work. I have a growing fear that he’s intending on working from home and that I’m going to be trapped in my room all day. The idea makes me suddenly claustrophobic, so I push the window open for some air, breathing in the fresh scent of morning. Just for a second, it reminds me of the air at the cabin and the sense of excitement I felt at wondering what the day ahead would entail. I thought, at the time, it was the scent of summer mingling with the rare feeling of freedom that was lifting my spirits, but as I’m essentially imprisoned inside my own house right now, there is only one other common denominator: Jackson.
Seeing him last night and hearing what he had to say has blown a gust of wind under my sails. Like the prospect of a happy future, someday, just may be an actual possibility, not just a pipe dream. Theoretically, my circumstances haven’t changed, but something inside me has. I can’t really put a name to it, only that it feels like there’s fire in my belly and it’s my goal to keep it burning, to stoke and fuel it until it’s a relentless blaze.
Last night, for once, Nick seethed quietly. The driver had cleverly engaged him in conversation the second we pulled up outside the house, affording me time to get inside and up to my room where I instantly locked the door. I watched from the window as he stumbled up the front steps and slammed the door. I heard him climb the stairs and make his way to my room, where he tried the door handle and finding it locked thumped it hard with his fist, only once, before clattering back down the hall to his room. Whatever’s changing inside me, he’s aware of it too. I know he is. I can feel him trying to make sense of it, eyeing me with a wariness that he’s never reserved for me before. Calling him out last night, not just once about the gloves to his friends but twice when I warned him vocally in front of the driver, was totally out of character for me. At one time I would have called it downright foolish, but now … now it empowers me. Maybe that’s what the fire in my belly is. Empowerment.
The knowledge bolsters me with courage to go downstairs and face him. Why should I stay locked up inside my own house? What’s the worst that can happen? Usually, if I have visibly noticeable injuries, he does his best to ignore me until they’ve healed. Denial, I think they call it. Glancing once at my strapped up fingers, bound with more tape than was actually necessary—one, for protection against further trauma and two, for the greatest visual impact—I heave in a deep breath and reach to close the window.
As I do, I notice a figure crossing from the other side of the road from the right, walking toward the house. His gait is unmistakable. Jackson. What the hell is he doing here? I almost bang on the window to shout at him to go away, that Nick is home, but I’m afraid Nick will hear, so I run to my door and unlock it, making my way downstairs.
“Oh, it lives and breathes.” Nick’s voice is sarcastic as he makes his way from the kitchen with a cup of coffee. He’s headed for his study, and I wonder if he’ll continue on so that I might get to the door before the doorbell rings and therefore get the chance to warn Jackson to leave without Nick being any the wiser. Nick may have been drunk last night, but he’s bound to recognize him. My heart clatters against my chest as he pauses at the foot of the stairs, my gaze oscillating between him and the door in anticipation.
“You embarrassed the hell out of me last night. You dressed like a slut and acted like a spoiled kid. You’ll give Helen a call today, tell her you were wrong about the gloves, that you overreacted about the death of your stupid cat. Apologize for making me look like a total asshole. I told her you’ve been suffering from psychosis.” He pauses to laugh. “Not too far off the mark. When you’ve done that, you can ring the driver we used, tell him the—” The doorbell chimes. “Who the fuck is that?” He glances at me accusingly before moving toward the door and releasing the latch.
A familiar husky British tone fills my ears, and my heart feels like it actually stops beating. “Morning, Mr. Harper.”
“Do I know you? Oh, wait. You’re Wilde’s guy, aren’t you? You were there last night.” I hear the excitement in his voice as I cautiously move into Jackson’s view behind him, watching in horror as Nick’s hand stretches out to Jackson in offer of a formal greeting.
Jackson glares at it, the distaste on his expression almost palpable. When he looks up, he sees me and his face softens. “Good morning.”
The diversion is enough for Nick to drop his hand and turn in my direction. “Oh, it’s just my wife, Savannah.”
“Pleased to meet you, Savannah.” I see his eyes scanning me as if it’s genuinely the first time he’s laid eyes on me.
I nod.
“So what is it I can do for you, Mr. …?
“Dean. Jackson Dean.”
“Right.”
“Mr. Wilde was hoping you could meet this morning at his offices. He has a business proposition for you.”
“Really? Well, yes, of course.” He glances down at his casual attire. “I just need to change. Did you want me to ride with yo
u?”
“Oh, no, no. I’m not heading back to the city just yet. I have another meeting not far from here.” He nods in the direction of the park, a momentary glance my way telling me it was for my benefit. “I just thought I’d save Mr. Wilde a call as I was in the area. He’s a busy man.”
“Oh, yes, I can imagine. No, don’t worry. I’ll get right over there.”
“Good. I’ll tell him you’ll be with him by eleven, then.”
“Right.” Nick checks his watch.
“Hope to see you again soon.” Jackson’s gaze fixes with mine for what feels like an eternity before he turns and heads off out of sight.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jackson
HOPING IT WILL PROVIDE A little privacy, I opt for a park bench tucked away in a sunny corner surrounded by trees and shrubs. I’m not even sure she’ll come, but if she doesn’t, I’ll go back to the house because I need to see her. At least I know he’ll be safely out of the way. It was a risk going to the house while he was there, but when he hadn’t left by 9:30 am, I began to worry that he had no plans to leave at all. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, standing there on the doorstep, with him, playing nice, when all I wanted to do was end him. All in good time.
It’s almost an hour later when I see her turn on to the path and head my way, blond tresses blowing behind her in the breeze, a transcendent celestial nimbus of peaches and cream. She’s wearing jeans and a pale blue T-shirt that brings out the sparkling ice blue of her eyes, a complete contrast to last night, but she’s almost more beautiful for it. Mingled with the immense relief I feel at the sight of her in one piece is a weird, unfamiliar emotion. A sort of giddiness, like crazy butterflies fluttering in my stomach—fucking juvenile, whatever it is.
She doesn’t make eye contact with me at first, and she doesn’t sit. Instead, she paces up and down in front of me, lips pouting in annoyance as if she’s deciding where to start listing my misdemeanors. She looks outrageously fucking hot when she’s angry, this much I know.
