Page 149 of Shadowface

He keeps his arms around me as I turn to face him, and I slink back into him. “I always knew what my father was. I lied to myself afterward, and to everyone else, but deep down…I knew.”

I keep my eyes focused on him.

“What do you remember, baby? Tell me all the details of what you can see.”

The memory nearly kills me as it sweeps into my mind, the missing piece of it all. I had it blocked out. For years, I couldn’t recall this moment. This dark memory locked inside my head began to poison my mind.

“It’s a woman…” I say quietly. “She’s lying on a couch, and she’s tied up in my basement. My father is hovering over her, speaking sweetly, like I remember him being. He had a notebook in his hand, and he was talking to her. He was explaining everything he was doing, as if he was making sure the circumstances were perfect. He just kept scribbling things down.”

It’s Lincoln holding me now, or at least, his essence is. I can tell. I relax as he runs his thumb over my cheek. “Where were you?”

“I was hiding underneath the stairs.” My tongue turns thick, like I can’t speak properly.

His fingers begin to caress. “Keep going. Get this memory out of your head, baby. It will make you better.”

The poison. The nausea. My darkness.

“I remember very little of her, but I do remember how scared she was—I’ve never seen anyone so scared. She didn’t scream, and I remember thinking, Why isn’t she screaming? But she didn’t make a peep.”

“Your mother…where was she?”

“My mom was upstairs cooking Sunday dinner. We always had Sunday dinner.”

My hand finds his thigh, and I run my fingers up his muscled leg. He wraps his arms around my midsection when I start shaking.

“I didn’t know what I was watching,” I tell him as the tears sting my eyes. I don’t bother wiping them as I will smear blood all over myself.

“My father cut her eyes out, and I watched him do it. Then he positioned her in a pose and took a photo. She was dead, but she kept looking at me. Even when she didn’t have eyes, she kept looking at me. I just sat there and watched her as my father cleaned up the mess—” My voice cracks. “She just kept staring at me, and I thought… I thought…” I tremble. I can’t finish my sentence, and my voice completely chokes up.

His lips graze the back of my head. “What did you think, Summer?”

I take a shaky breath, then another. Finally, I’m calm enough to formulate my words. “I thought she looked pretty.”

I sense a strange electrical buzz beneath my skin. That sickening, churning sensation returning to my stomach. I take a sharp breath, expelling all the air out of my lungs. Almost like I inhaled that noxious death in my basement and now, years later, I am finally expelling it.

“Was that so hard, pretty girl?” Mikael’s presence is back. He’s rubbing my back as I try not to hurl.

Mikael. Lincoln. Lincoln. Mikael. Their unified movements will take some getting used to. Even if the split is inside him, I’ll find a way to love him, too.

I lift my chin to meet his gaze, and even in the dark of the night, his eyes shine. My lips root for his, and he leans down, giving me a soft, comforting kiss.

Despite Mikael’s desire to kill me, he was the one who provided solace when my mind was lost in those dark places. No matter how hard I tried to block it out, the image of her was seared into my soul. Every nightmare, he was with me. Every time I re-lived what my father did to her, Mikael was there, comforting me. Almost as if he was with me every night, helping me through the pain.

I peer up at him, my eyes wide and blurry. “How can someone stare at you when they don’t have eyes? I’ll never forget it.”

Except I did. I blocked it out for years.

“My father opened a bottle of whiskey and stayed downstairs all night. I waited until he was asleep in his chair before I crept upstairs.”

His body shifts underneath me. “Then you went upstairs and lived your life as if it didn’t happen, didn’t you, baby?”

“My mother was sitting at the dinner table by herself. We had a roast. I can still smell how yummy it tasted. And my mom hummed all night—I’ll never forget her humming. She’s never hummed since.”

Guilt consumed me for so long, I ended up blocking out the emotion entirely. Or did I? Or did I just believe I should feel guilty for watching my father murder someone and didn’t. Perhaps I don’t know what that emotion is actually like.

“I found something out recently. Something I will never be able to forgive myself for.”

He draws a circle on my cheek, running his fingers down to my lips. His eyes flicker. “What’s that?”