Page 122 of Lethal Weakness

“My parents would have loved you.”

Her surprise is quickly covered by a soft smile as she wipes her cheeks dry. “Will you tell me about them?”

I might not be ready to talk about them, and I don’t know that I ever will, but she deserves to know. A little discomfort on my part is worth it if it means I can continue to see her smile.

I lay us back on the bed, ready to open up about my life, but I’m staring at the plain white ceiling, and my mind is blanketed in nothingness.

Until her fingers thread through mine and I look at our hands linked on my chest.

I see life so much more clearly now. The way my father loved my mother. The way they loved me. It’s exactly how I plan to love her and Avery.

That part feels easy.

“My father was in the shipping trade. He worked in the ports, and from his account, the man who ran everything. He was in D.C. petitioning to open more ports along the East Coast when he ran into my mother. Literally, according to them. She was picketing because of the ecological damage the ships were causing the marine life when my dad got caught up in the crowd and fell into her. She was ready to blow up on him because of who his employer was.”

“Did she?”

“Yeah, she did. But she didn’t need to fight with him. He fell in love with her the moment he knocked into her. She said that she tried to argue with him and he just gave her googly eyes and asked her to go to dinner with him.”

“No way that worked.”

“She said that she would never go to dinner with a man in his line of work. So he quit. Called his boss right on the spot, and then asked her to dinner again.”

“Wow. I see the allure of the O’Connor men is genetic.”

An easy smile stretches across my face. “That was just their version of the story. She said she didn’t mind staying in Boston because he gave up everything for her in the first moment they met, and so they moved in here when I was born. My mom continued in activism, and my dad got a new job.”

“You guys were happy,” she states. Not a question, a fact.

“We were. I was lucky to have them.”

The bigger question is looming over me. She asked me once why we moved to South Dakota, and I wasn’t brave enough to tell her then.

I’m not sure I am now either.

“They worked a lot though, and Kay watched me. On weekends I would go to church with her, and I ended up becoming involved myself. I had joined the youth group. I was an altar boy. I didn’t really pay much attention to all the religious stuff, but my friends were there so I wanted to do what they were doing.

“I was eight the first time I was alone with the deacon.”

Linden’s fingers tighten around mine, and I anchor myself to them.

“He uh, he made me think it was something all of the boys did. And, fuck… Maybe they did. But it wasn’t right. It started with him asking me to sit in his lap. Change my shirt in front of him. Nothing severe enough to run away…

“Weeks went by, and he started offering me wine. Suddenly, it was normal to hang out in his office without a shirt on. I hardly blinked when he asked me to take my pants off in front of him.” My head starts to ache because I’m clenching my eyes shut so tightly.

“It’s okay,” Linden whispers, running the pad of her finger over my brow bone.

“I was standing in his office in my Batman underwear when I turned around, and he was right beside me. Exposing himself from between his robes… It was February, and it was freezing outside, so when I crashed through the front door nearly-naked and bordering hypothermia, it’s like everyone knew what happened before I said a word. I wouldn’t have run home like that unless it was bad…

“My dad was ready to go to the church to confront him, but I had to tell him that it didn’t matter. It was too late.”

“What do you mean? Of course it mattered.” She starts to sit up in agitation, ready to defend the boy I used to be…

“It was too late because I killed him.”

She looks down at me in horror. Shock. “What?”

“I liked baseball, remember? I swung the wine bottle at his head so hard that it cracked his skull open,” I admit sadly. Eight-year-old me shouldn’t have had to make that choice.