“Hi Daddy,” she says, stopping next to me to lean down and kiss me on the lips.
“Hi baby.” I push my chair back a bit and pull her onto my lap. It’s the perfect opportunity to let Richter see how things work here, to help him understand why we should all be together. Smiling at Richter, I tilt my head toward her. “This is Xoe.”
“Hi Xoe,” he says quietly, and I feel my smile stretch.
“Hi,” she answers, and I can tell she’s curious about him.
We don’t have visitors. Not way out here, so far from town, and even if we did Xoe knows I’d never let anyone near my family. I debate what to tell her but settle on the truth.
No secrets.
“Richter is part of our family, Xoe. We had the same father.”
She looks at me, wide brown eyes on mine for a moment before she looks back at Richter and her smile goes radiant. “That’s wonderful!”
Xoe stands quickly, leaning forward to hug him tight before pressing a kiss to his cheek. Richter barely has time to lift one arm to brush her back, and then she’s back on my lap, bouncing a little from her excitement.
“Everyone is going to be so excited to meet him!” she cheers, turning to hug me too.
“I know, it’s quite the surprising gift,” I reply as I hug her back, keeping my eyes on Richter. He’s got a look of raw need on his face that I know I wore for years—but I won’t shut him out of this family.
I’d never do that.
I’m not Luke, I’m better.
And with our father gone, Richter’s lucky he found me, found our family. We’ll make sure he, and his sister, feel loved. Accepted. Wanted.
That’s just what family does.
Eight
Skylar
Richter’s been gone for longer than he normally is, and while I know I should be more worried than I am, it’s just nice to have the house to myself for once.
He probably thinks he’s some kind of conquering hero—that bringing Cleo back to this hellhole will make her feel better, but she probably doesn’t even know who we are anymore.
I’ve told him this each time he’s brought up locating her, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.
‘She belongs with us, Sky. With people that love and understand her.’
I think he wants to believe it more than anything else because he misses her. He misses the three of us being together in this house, but things are different now.
Mom’s dead.
Dad’s dead.
And in a way, I’m dead too.
I sometimes wonder if how I feel when my brother is on top of me is the way Mom felt when her father—our father—was on top of her too.
Darby was a strong woman.
She tried her best to hide her tears from us. She tried to make sure that we never saw what she endured, and she did her best to make sure that Dad never laid a hand on us the way he did with her.
Oddly enough, even though it broke her heart, I’m sure she was relieved somewhat when he took Cleo away.
My poor baby sister, I think with a shuddering sigh. I loved her with all of my heart, and I still do, but bringing her back to this place of unspeakable horror won’t help her.
She doesn’t need to dwell in the memories that haunt these hallways. She doesn’t deserve to step foot into rooms that will choke her with the hate that lingers in the air.
Richter has done his best to make sure that the memory of Dad isn’t exactly well kept, but there are some things that even he can’t part with.
Dad’s room for instance.
After he died, after the first time my brother touched me, I wanted to break the door down and destroy Dad’s bed. After all, it’s in that fucking bed that all of this hatred started, because for all of his fatherly fodder, I know that man hated us all.
I don’t think he ever told anyone other than Darby that he loved them, and I think she believed him.
That’s why she failed.
She allowed herself to believe the lies, to be sucked into his web of bullshit, and in the end, those same meticulously woven threads of silk were what ultimately consumed her in the end.
But Richter isn’t hateful like Dad.
He’s almost never forced me to do anything I wasn’t somewhat willing to submit to, and he usually stops when I beg him to. The throb on my lip was just him losing his temper, losing that internal battle with the side of him that is Dad, because I can push him just like Mom used to with Dad.
But all the things that Dad never was, Richter has a handle on, and all of the things he tried to be, Richter sees as a lesson.
The conundrum is that I love my brother, even if not in the way he hopes for. Though, truth be told, I don’t think he understands the different ways a person can show love.
He does as he was taught to do—as Dad was taught to do by his own mother—and he thinks it’s okay.
I understand why, even though I can’t forgive him for it.
I pull back the curtain in the room I share with him from time to time and glance toward the side of the house.
The oubliette stares back with no eyes. It watches with no life, and it waits with no hope.
I wonder how many Greene women have found their end at the bottom of that abyss besides Darby. Did her mother succumb to that hell too? Did Dad force her into the darkness and forget about her like he did with Mom?
Am I next? I wonder with a soft sigh. If my end is to come at the bottom of the well, then I hope it comes soon.
I open my eyes with a start.
I didn’t realize how tired I was it seems. I use the palms
