Page 27

What came out of my mouth was not the son they raised.

“But you’re not stuck in this life, you know that, right?” I tell her, wanting to know more about that man in her house. “You don’t have to do the things you do. Whenever I think it’s bad or I’m feeling like shit, I remember it can always be worse. Always. There are refugees fleeing wars. People starving. Dying of disease…” I apply some adhesive tape over the glue. “I’m not one to lecture, but my dad is. He came from nothing. He had to fight for his life as a kid. Like you.” I try to meet her eyes again, but she still has her head bowed. “He knew it was all on him to get up and get out, and blaming anyone for his lot wasn’t going to solve anything.” I clean up the rest of the blood on her arm. “And now, he has everything. All on his own. No one helped him.”

She says nothing, and I hate putting my dad’s business out there but I didn’t tell her everything he went through. I’m not sure he even knows how much I know.

But he’s proof that it’s possible to get out.

I take off my gloves, throw them away, and stash the supplies back into the kit.

“It should heal okay,” I tell her, handing her a bottle of Advil. “Some ibuprofen, if you need it.”

But then I notice the left hand resting on her thigh, blood on the side of the pinky. I pick up her hand, and she lets me turn it over, palm side up.

It’s not blood. It almost looks like a birthmark, but it’s not.

The red-pebbled flesh looks like it still blisters in certain areas as it spreads across her palm, over the protruding bone on the outside of her wrist, and up her arm just a little, but the burn is ages old, long healed. Even if the scar will never go away.

What the hell is this? It must’ve been painful.

I dart my eyes up, and when I do, I see she’s looking straight at me. Big, dark eyes, suddenly alert.

“There are refugees fleeing all kinds of wars,” she whispers. “Wars without soldiers. Inside the houses you pass every day.”

I watch her.

“Inside all the prisons around you that you don’t notice,” she murmurs, “because you can’t see the bars.”

I glance down at her hand again just before she takes it back, curling her fist.

“I could never leave them behind,” she tells me.

Them. Her friends?

And then it hits me.

The kids. At the house. I saw them—heard them—through the window. They must be her brother and sister.

She doesn’t want to leave them behind with their parents.

“Thank you,” she says, holding her injured arm to her body and rising out of the chair.

I don’t look at her, because I feel like I just acted as if I know some shit about life again when I really don’t.

“There are rooms to the right,” I tell her. “Food in the kitchen if you want.”

She moves away, walking for the door, but then I hear her voice. “Your father didn’t do it on his own.”

I turn my head, looking at her stopped in the doorway, her back to me.

“Someone helped him,” she tells me. “Ask him.”

She leaves, and I continue staring at the empty doorway and thinking.

I guess it was easier for my dad. His only sibling was my uncle, and my dad was the younger one. He didn’t have it like Aro does. He didn’t feel responsible to take care of anyone else but himself. He could’ve easily been stuck forever in hell with his father, but he was able to escape it.

I don’t have any brothers or sisters, but I have my cousins. If I were Aro, I couldn’t leave them either.

And I know my dad wouldn’t have left his brother if situations had been reversed.

I watch her, disappearing from one monitor and appearing on another as she slips down another hallway and enters a room. One far away from mine.

Once inside, I drop my eyes and move my hand to the button on the side of the monitor, seeing her inside her room out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t install cameras to be a voyeur, per se. After all, I’m not sure how many people I was ever going to invite in here, but…

I glance up just as I’m about to turn it off and stop, watching her struggle to remove her hoodie. Her bomber jacket still lays on the floor at my feet.

Holding her arm close to her, she works her body out and pulls the hoodie over her head, a white tank top underneath.

Her dark hair is longer than I thought, seeing it fall down her back, but her breathing is ragged as she limps over to the bed, and a line of blood stains her shirt from her neck to her waist.