"Doesn't matter, Travis." She shakes her head, "what could you have done anyways?"
"Gone to the police!"
"Oh yeah?" She turns the laptop towards me and points at the list of dirty cops and the chief himself. "Like these ones? The ones that were under your father's pay? Then he'd find out and kill you or worse?"
"There's always worse." I mutter.
"Yeah," she agrees, "there is."
"I think my mother knew about it, too." I whisper. Talking about this is bringing back a lot of repressed memories. "The day I found out about my father from Coach, I went home after hanging out with Adri so that I could have a talk with my mother. As much as she hated me around, I still loved her and didn't want anything to happen to her."
"Of course," Ember wipes a tear from her cheek.
"I had a plan, too. I would run her a bath that evening because that's when she'd be so tired after a whole day of crying and screaming. I learned a few years later that my mother was bi-polar and my father would refuse her the medication she needed." I shake my head, "at that time though, I didn't know that, I just thought she hated being in that house with us. Anyways, I drew her a bath and brought her up a bottle of wine from downstairs. I poured her a glass and set it in front of her and then I asked her if it was true." I scrub my hand down my face, "she laughed at me. Fucking laughed! Then she slapped me so hard, I saw stars. She grabbed my face, pressing my cheeks together, and she said, ‘One day, you will be bringing them to him, too.' That's how I knew she was somehow involved." I take a deep breath, "I was always fearful of my parents, but after that I was downright petrified. So, I minded my own business and stayed out of their way."
"As a kid, you did the right thing." She runs her fingers into my hair, "now we can do a few things differently." The grin that lights her face is the one I like to refer to as her murder face.
"Like what? You already killed my father."
"But look at all these corrupt names, it still looks like people need to be taught a lesson and I need to add another name to this list." She pulls up the list with my father's name and adds my mother's beside it. "I think it's time we paid your mother a visit."
While we’re driving in E’s car to my house, my stomach is a swirl of nerves and nausea. Ember is radiating some intense anger and I can almost taste it. When she's like this, it's not hard to imagine her taking out grown men like they are nothing.
"Look through these," she throws an envelope onto my lap. "I found them in Halbert's office."
I open up the brown envelope and pull out a stack of photos. I slowly go through them, I recognize most of the baseball team as we got older in various stages of dress. There are quite a few of me and Kevin, probably about the same amount and I see the pain so similar to mine in his eyes. I will have to talk to him next week at school. Coach also took pictures of some of the girls that ran on the track team. I knew he had shit like this and I'm sure he had videos as well but Ember probably burned them down with the house.
"They start to get older the farther you get into it." She mutters, "to when he was in high school."
She's right and I start to see Coach as a teenager in a baseball uniform and standing next to a bunch of jocks. One of which really boils my blood, my father. I don't recognize too many others but I do see Adri's dad there too. Then a few photos later it shows a picture of a few girls sitting out on the track and they look to be drinking water. I recognize Debby and Sharla but the third I do not know.
"My mother." Ember says quietly.
I should've known that because even though the photo is a bit blurry and old I can still see the scowl on her face, much like Ember and Emmett's.
"Why did he have these?" I ask.
"Because I think he also farmed girls for your father."
"What?" I look at her shocked.
"Yeah," she nods, "I read that list your coach made of your father’s known victims and my mother along with Sharla are on that list."
"Sharla?" I question, "but they were together and they had Vin. That doesn't make sense." I shake my head.
"You're right, it doesn't but that's why I told Vin everything and he's going to figure out how to talk to her about it." Vin, I didn't even think about how this would be affecting him. He probably didn't see it as much of a surprise considering the man treated him and his mother like dirt.
After I learned about my mother and father the summer going into my grade eight year, Vin came back. He came back with a vengeance and he was out to get me at every corner, and he made sure I found out that he was my half-brother too that year. The beatings I took from him and the way his face looked while he did it, reminded me of my father. The look in his green eyes-an exact match to our father-and the set of his jaw as he punched me repeatedly whenever he felt like it, was too much like our father. I took it every time because I felt like I deserved that punishment for the shit I knew was going on and didn't stop.
We pull into my driveway and again the gates are fucking open. Ember looks at me with her brow raised and
