Page 36 of Honest Neglect

Frank stepped forward, rolling back his shoulders, and pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt.

“Tony McCarthy, you’re under arrest,” he told Tony, who looked up at him with complete incredulity.

“What the fuck are you talking about, old man?” he demanded, but he was too drunk to resist when Frank slipped the cuffs onto his hands. He tried to shake them off, but Frank clipped them tightly, making sure he wasn’t going to be able to escape.

“You’re coming with me down to the station,” he replied. “I want to talk to you about that girl you buried.”

“You don’t have any proof—”

“We have video,” Barry called back to him, holding up his phone.

“You send that to me the first chance you get,” Frank told Barry as he steered Tony to the front of the house. “Leroy, come with me—I’m going to need some help to keep him under control.”

“On it,” Leroy replied, and he climbed over the fence to join them. I stared after Tony, trying to work out if this was really happening—if he had really just confessed. Was it enough? I didn’t know. He hadn’t been particularly specific, but maybe it wasn’t that important. He had given us something, and Barry had managed to get it on film. It might not be much, but it was something, something we could use to build a case against him.

Warren put his arm around my shoulders.

“You should come inside,” he told me.

“Where’s Marcy?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if she was here, but I wouldn’t be able to relax until I knew one way or the other.

“She’s okay. She’s with some of Leroy’s men,” Warren assured me. “She had a panic attack before they got into Oakville, and they’re giving her some time to get herself together. She’s going to be here soon, but we should deal with Tony now.”

“I know,” I murmured, and I leaned against him. The shock of seeing my abuser like that, out of nowhere, was still spinning around my head, and I wished I could just shut off this panic and gather myself. I wanted to approach this with as much certainty as I could, but I wasn’t at the point yet where I could see him without panicking.

But soon, it was going to be over. He had given us some prime evidence that he had been involved in something he shouldn’t have been, and we could add it to the pile of growing proof we had that he and his father were controlling this town in a way they never should have been allowed to.

And controlling me, too. I felt the emotion rise up in me once again, all the memories of what Tony had done to me flooding my system. I hated this. I hated how much power he still had over me, even after all this time—as though he had shaped my psyche to respond to him. It had been years since I had left him behind, but I hadn’t worked through the harm he had done to me, and I didn’t know if I could face it.

Mom and Barry headed to the living room, and Warren took me upstairs to the bedroom—the room that we were sharing now, the one place in the world I felt safe. But when I looked outside, I saw Tony in the back of Frank’s car, and the sight of him right there on the property made my heart sink once more.

Was I ever going to be free of him? I wasn’t sure I would ever believe I could be. I was starting to believe this nightmare would never end, and that all the work everyone had done just to get us to this point had been for nothing.

“Hey, what happened out there?” Warren asked. But before I could reply, I broke down and sank into his arms, tears coursing down my cheeks.

Chapter Twenty-One

Lily

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“I JUST...I DON’T KNOW,” I confessed. I hated the effect Tony had on me, how easy it was for him to mess up my head with just a few minutes of interaction. Seeing Mark at the diner had been bad enough, but he hadn’t been the one to do all of this to me—he hadn’t been the one to come after me the way Tony had, to spend his life dedicated to making mine hell.

“You don’t know what happened?” Warren asked, frowning. “You didn’t see?”

“No, I saw it,” I replied, inhaling deeply and wiping away some of the tears that had coursed down my cheeks. “He was drunk, he came up to the fence, and Silver started growling at him, that’s how I noticed he was there. And then he just...”

I dissolved again, winding my arms around Warren and hanging on for dear life. He was the one island in the middle of this ocean of suffering, and I didn’t see any way to escape it.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Warren soothed me, stroking my hair back from my face. But how could I believe that? He had told me he loved me, but he hadn’t seen how deep the hurt in my system really went. He hadn’t seen how damaged I really was. And if he did, I knew he would change his mind about me—I was sure he couldn’t take on the enormity of all the healing I still had left to do. I couldn’t ask him to do that. He wanted a partner, not a project, and the way I felt right now, there were too many shattered pieces of my psyche to ask him to put back together.

“No, it’s not,” I sobbed. “I...we’re never going to be free of them, are we? Tony, Mark. They’re always going to be here...”

“No, that’s not true,” he replied firmly. “We’re so close, Lily. I know we are. I can feel it. It might be hard for you to believe, but—”

“It’s not just that.” I cut him off as I shuddered for breath in his arms. “Even after they’re gone, I’m still so...I’m still so damaged, Warren. There’s still so much work I have to do. I don’t think I realized until now just how bad it was, but even if they’re locked away, you’re going to have to deal with everything they left behind...”

“You think I don’t want that?” he asked me, pulling back to look into my eyes. I managed to meet his gaze, though it felt almost painful to do so.