Page 173 of Johnny

“Oh.” She frowns. “Right.”

“But that chess club experience didn’t define me. I read this book a couple years ago about mental

illness.”

Megan sucks in a deep breath, very uncomfortable about where this might lead. And she should be.

It’s dark as fuck inside my mind. But I hold up a hand. One pointed finger. A give-me-a-minute-to-

explain kind of gesture.

“I read this book about mental illness because I had done something that couldn’t be filed away

inside my brain. I didn’t have a place to put it, ya know? I just didn’t understand what happened, or

how it happened, or why it happened, and I was trying my best to make sense of it because up until

this point I’d done a fairly good job at keeping all that shit up in my head sorted out, ya know? I had

done a decent job at staying sane through it all. ”

“Did you kill someone?” she asks. I nod yes. Then shake my head no. And of course, this confuses

her. “I don’t understand.”

“Me either.” I sigh. “Because it didn’t start that day. The whole thing started eight years earlier

when my uncle died. He’d taken some of the money and put it away into a trust for my cousin Zach.

My father did the same thing for us when we were infants. Even Joey. And even now, I make sure

some of the money I collect goes into their accounts every month. It’s the least I can do after I pushed

them away. But my uncle hid Zach’s trust, for some reason. He took the money and then someone came

asking for it, and my uncle refused to tell them where it was.”

“Hmm,” Megan says. “I guess that didn’t look good.”

“No. It didn’t. And even though no one ever told me this or spelled it out, I think my uncle was

trying to get Zach out. The Way killed him for that. And that money is still missing to this day. But

that’s just the setup to what happened eight years later when my father… died.”

“They killed him too?”

I shake my head and close my eyes. Trying to make the memory of that day go away. Doesn’t work,

though.

“This is the day that defines me. I just knew that there would never be another day like that. I

would never have another opportunity to change again. I was on a track now. One way trip only.

Because… because I killed him.”

I pause to look at Megan. Find her squinting her eyes in confusion. “You killed… your father?”