Page 205 of Chasing Hope

“Say it.”

Fresh tears fill his eyes as he asks gutturally, “How didn’t I notice?” He sniffles, his voice breaking alongside his heart. “I grew up in the same house as you, Evie. I slept down the hall every night and I never knew. How? How did Mom not notice? How…how did no one notice?”

“Because he’s good at hiding who he really is.” Taking a deep breath, I turn away from him, unable to face his sadness. “Because he wore a mask. The monster that I saw within him, that version, was hidden so well that even I forgot that it existed sometimes.” I pull back my arm, going to throw another rock, but find I don’t have the energy for it. With my shoulders slumping, I take a seat on the ground, Caleb joining me, letting silence fill the air as I gather the words I want to say.

“He would wait until everyone was asleep, and if anyone ever woke up, he’d just say he was checking on me, or say he heard a noise. Whatever excuse fitted him, but honestly, it was rare anyone ever got up.”

A sob breaks out of Caleb’s chest. “I should have known.”

“How?”

“I was just down the hall, Evie.” His voice, so soft and yet broken, makes my heart crack.

“So was Mom. So was Matteo. This isn’t on you, Caleb. It’s onhim.”

Sniffling, he wipes away the tears that begin to fall. “I don’t even know where to start. I have so many questions, and most of them I don’t know if I can handle the answer to. I just…I can’t believe you’ve been carrying this all by yourself. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt, that it doesn’t gut me that you felt you couldn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t wantthis, Caleb. I didn’t want anyone to know…I didn’t want to break us.”

“We were already broken. Our family broke the moment he laid a finger on you.” Caleb pauses, his hesitation thick in the air before he whispers, “How long did it go on for?”

A knife to the heart would be easier to remove than the words on my tongue.

Because when Caleb finds out all the details…

“I was three when he first touched me.” A sound between a sob and a cry of shock escapes his mouth but I’m far too scared to look at the destruction my words will have on him, so like a coward, I keep my gaze forward on the mountain, watching as birds fly through the sky.I wish I could fly away like them.“It stopped when I got my period at thirteen.” My lip curls back in revulsion. “He said I was disgusting, that my body had changed…”

“Because you weren’t a child anymore.”

The heaviness of that truth chokes me, so instead, I nod.

“When did Mom find out?”

This story hurts so much it feels like a physical wound, one where I have to pull the bandage off and let the blood ooze from my body. Picking up a fallen leaf off the ground, I begin to tear it into small pieces to give my hands something to do.

“Please, V, don’t hold back on me. I need to know, as much as you’re willing to share, but I need answers. I just…I feel like our world has been tipped upside down and I’m trying to put the new pieces of the puzzle together but they’re missing.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the desperation in his gaze that I heard in my voice and find I can’t deny him.

After all, it was his father, too.

Parting my lips, I let the story pour from me despite how hard it is to move my tongue and use my vocal cords, despite how much it physically pains me to push past the lump in my throat, despite how much my heart aches within my chest as if it, too, is crying.

I tell my brother everything. Starting at the very beginning.

Our dad used to come into my room late at night and I lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Bedtime stories were my favorite back then, something I looked forward to all day. He’d put on character voices as he read to me, and I thought I was so lucky. One night, I thought he was coming back to continue the story I begged him not to stop reading to me.

How wrong I was.

It was the first time he touched me and the last time I ever had any innocence.

Looking back, it’s like watching another person entirely. I can see him sitting on the edge of my bed, the stale smell of whiskey permeating the air, my smile wide until it dropped completely as he slurred, “Be a good girl and show Daddy how much you love him.”

His hand slid beneath my sheets, and for the first time in my life, I hated the touch of my father. No longer were they the hands of my dad; no longer were his arms safe.

With his threats of killing Caleb, I wept silently in bed, confused as to why my daddy said it was love when his hands hurt me. Why he showed me his private area and why his body did things that no little girl should have ever witnessed.

It was the first time he touched me and the last time I ever had any innocence.