Page 166 of The Truths We Burn

And one day, when you’re well into your nineties, I’ll be with you again too.

Don’t lose yourself trying to search for the why, especially not after I wrote this entire gaudy thing.

Never lose your fire.

I’ll meet you at the Styx.

- Silas

I reread the letter one more time, grateful that I’ll never have to follow up on anything inside of it.

Flicking my Zippo, I take the orange flame to the paper, watching it grab at the thin material and start to eat the edges away.

It burns quick, even faster when I drop it into the trash can next to my bed.

One week.

That’s how long Silas has been gone. Still alive, but still gone.

I’d refused to let his family send him to Monarch’s facility after what Sage had told me about that place, and they had eagerly agreed to send him somewhere near Portland. Not to get him away from the humiliation of Ponderosa Springs, but to ensure he got the correct care he deserved.

We weren’t sure how long it would take for Silas to come back from his psychosis or how long he’d need to be hospitalized. It could be a few weeks, it could a few months, it could be a year. All we knew was we were prepared to stand by him until he got the help he needed.

The doctors were hopeful that with cognitive therapy and a new set of medications, he would be back to his old self in no time, but there was always a chance that he could lose himself to the hallucinations and delusions that plague his mind.

I try not to think of that too much.

When the fire goes out and there is nothing left of the letter but rubble and ashes, I grab my jacket off my bed and head down the steps.

My father is sitting at the table, with a few papers strewn out in front of him and a whiskey glass to his left.

The sound of my feet brings his attention to my presence.

“Where are you going?” he asks, the gravel in his voice telling me he is in the mood to take out his grief.

“Out,” I grunt.

“If I ask you a question, Rook, I expect a real answer. Not a smartass one.” He pushes the chair out from his place on the table, meeting me in the middle of my walk towards the door.

“I’m going to Frank’s funeral, paying my respects, mourning the dead, doing my Christian duty.”

“Don’t disrespect God in this house, son. Not when I know what you did, what you continue to do.”

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to your self-righteous bullshit,” I mutter, sidestepping his frame so I can leave without a fight, but it seems that’s what he’s in the mood for today.

“You will stand here for as long as I want you to.” He grabs at the front of my shirt, yanking me close to him so I can smell the liquor on his breath.

I could let him hit me. I could let him hurt me for not doing something sooner about Silas. I could stand here and let him take out his pain on my body and continue being the scapegoat for our mother’s death.

For a minute, I want to. The craving to feel the sharp sting of pain still lives just beneath the surface of my skin, waiting to be exposed.

But I don’t. Because she’s waiting on me, and I gave her my word. I fight that urge because I want to be the person she needs. The person that she runs to when the world hurts her, not the other way around.

“I’m done letting you punish me for something that was an accident.” I wrap my hands around his wrist, squeezing painfully as I rip them from the material of my shirt. “You don’t get to play God just because you miss Mom.”

The look on his face could only be described as one of utter shock coupled with fear. He knows I’d kill him in a fight; he knows what he has been doing to me all these years, what I’ve been letting him do with no consequences.

“An accident? If you would have just behaved, just that once, she would still be here!” he sneers. “Even as a child, you couldn’t follow the rules, and so help me, you will learn discipline in this house.”