Page 341 of Wicked Brutal

Her hand moves, without her permission, to rest over her stomach. She catches herself, but she doesn’t take it away.

“I was fifteen when he told me I was going to marry Victor Tremblay.” Victor’s name lands in the room and just sits there, heavy. This isn’t his hearing. This is Roman’s. But you can feel the whole room recalculate. “He didn’t ask me. He told me. Like he was telling me what we were having for dinner.”

“When did you later learn that discussions about that marriage had begun?”

Ally’s mouth twists. “When I was thirteen.”

“How did you come to understand what had happened?”

She looks straight at her father for the first time. Roman meets it for about half a second before his attorney leans in and murmurs something and Roman looks at the table instead.

“My father sold me.”

Roman’s head comes up. His attorney’s hand lands on his arm.

Arthur doesn’t so much as glance at them. “What do you mean by sold?”

“There wasn’t a piece of paper with a dollar amount on it, if that’s what you’re asking.” Her voice is steady now, and somehow that’s worse than if she were crying. “But he made an agreement about my whole life with a grown man when I was thirteen years old. Then when I was fifteen, he handed me the result of it like a schedule I was supposed to follow.” She swallows. “When I said no — when I told him I didn’t want to marry a man in his fifties — he beat me until I stopped saying it.”

Roman’s face hardens into stone. Mine, I’m sure, does something worse. Mom’s hand finds mine on the bench and I grip it hard enough that it can’t be comfortable. She doesn’t let go.

Arthur gives Ally a moment. Lets the room hold it. “Did the control get worse after that?”

“Yes. Because then everything was about keeping me suitable for Victor. What I wore mattered more. Who I talked to mattered more. He made it very clear I wasn’t allowed to date, wasn’t allowed to be alone with a boy, wasn’t allowed to—“ She stops. Her hand presses flatter against the baby. “He wasn’t raising me anymore. He was preserving me. For somebody else.”

Mom makes a small, wrecked sound. Dad’s arm comes around her.

Arthur lets the silence do its work, then quietly changes direction. “I want to talk about Tobias.” Ally’s whole face changes the instant she hears her brother’s name — softens and breaks at the same time. “How did your father discipline him?”

“He was hard on him. Way too hard, for a little kid.” Her voice tightens with something that isn’t fear. It’s anger, finally. “He’d yell. Grab him. He expected Tobias to behave like an adult. Tobias is six.”

She says it like an accusation, and it is one.

“What happened when Tobias cried?”

“Dad got angry. He said boys don’t cry.” Her jaw sets. “He’d call him a baby. Told me I made him soft, because when Tobias got scared he’d come to me instead of trying to be a little man about it.”

I think about X on the floor of that bedroom three weeks ago — you miss your mommy, you cry, anybody’s got a problem they come talk to me — and I have to look at the floor for a second.

“Did your father ever physically hurt Tobias?”

“Yes.”

I look at Roman. He still won’t look at me. Coward.

“What did you do when that happened?”

“I got between them.”

“Every time?”

“Every time I could.”

Arthur pauses, and I already know the question coming, and I already hate it. “And what usually happened when you put yourself between your father and your little brother?”

Ally gives him the saddest small smile I have ever seen. “Then Dad hit me instead.”

Mom’s grip on my hand goes from tight to painful. I don’t loosen mine either.