Page 98 of Release

That he was a drifter.

That he must have ran and jumped aboard one of the many freight trains that frequently passed behind our house, including the one passing about the time of the murder.

The newspapers declared my father a hero.

Our church paid for his funeral, even though I can’t remember him ever setting foot inside the building.

Strangers moved to tears donated money to Momma and me to help us with our expenses.

A nice stranger who managed properties helped us move into a better house closer to Momma’s job, with a better school nearby, too.

One of the local Rotary clubs set up a college scholarship for me when a newspaper interview came out where I said I’d like to be an attorney.

The factory moved Momma to a day shift position.

Our life changed for the better in so many ways, including Momma seemed more relaxed and happier, once she got past the shock and grief of what happened.

She’d honestly had no clue what he was doing to me. I had let him so thoroughly contort my thinking into blaming myself, but that’s what monsters do. I held no blame, except for taking my fate into my own hands.

I never told Momma the truth, either. Never told her what my father did to me over the years.

Again, one of those things that adult me, the experienced attorney, knows is very common. You can hate what your abuser does to you and yet still stay silent about it.

Ironically, my faith in God and the church quickly waned as I learned more about the world. No loving deity would ever allow shit like that to happen to innocent kids.

My life hadn’t improved untilItook an active hand in making it better. That wasn’t divine intervention, that was a valid library card, a desperate girl’s imagination, and a horrible monster she opted to slay on her own rather than waiting for a Prince Charming to materialize.

Oh, and no one was ever arrested for the crime. The cops had me look at books full of mugshots and were very nice to me. They brought me pizza and Cokes, talked to me, told me how brave I was. To this day, it’s still listed as an open investigation, a cold case.

While I didn’t have to lock my door any longer, I still couldn’t sleep most nights. Nightmares and guilt pecked at me.

The night after the day he died, however, I slept better than I had in frickingyears.

* * * *

I was glad for the new school. There, I was the girl whose father died a hero, even though I wasn’t named in the newspaper stories because I was a minor and I’d been the victim of an “attempted” sexual assault.

I made friends, I did well with teachers who took an active part in trying to make sure I fit in and thrived.

Killing him was the best thing that ever happened to me, until the day I met Ellen.

Over the years, I never told people any details of my father’s death, other than he was murdered while protecting me from a home intruder. I never wanted to accidentally slip up.

By the time I met Ellen my freshman year of college, when we were assigned as roommates in the dorm, the true details were already slipping from my mind unless I focused on them. It’d been five years in the past at that point, and I was so used to telling people the basic lie that never implicated my hand in events that it’d become second-nature.

It’s amazing how people won’t ask many questions when they feel uncomfortable.

But then I fell in love.

I fell in love with a girl who stole my heart and made me want to confess and purge the darkness from my soul.

I fell in love with a girl who also had secrets. While not quite as dark as mine on the surface, to her, in her relative experience, they would shatter her world if they escaped into the universe and made it back to her family.

She was terrified to lose her family and their love, absolutely terrified of that possibility. She’d been so brainwashed by her family and her church over the years, told that what she felt was her truth made her evil and bad and damned.

On top of that, I soon discovered, she actually had her own corpse buried in her secret garden.

Within the first week we roomed together, we were sharing a bed every night and soothing each other’s aching souls.

And within that first week together, we also served as confessors to each other.

We forgave.

We absolved.

We were released from the secrets that had weighed us down.

We each finally slept better than we had in years.

Until George Samson Forrester entered my life and stole the very core of my existence from me, I was happy and content and slept well every night, without recriminations or guilt gnawing at my conscience.