Chapter 117
Chapter 117
Most people don’t remember much of what happened around them when they were young. Their childhood memories are a blur of loose birthday snapshots, scraped knees, the smell of their mother’s hair, or the jingle of keys at the door. But not me.
I remember being ten and limping home from the training field with blood smeared down my shin after splitting my kneecap one afternoon. I’d been trying to impress one of the older kids with how fast I could sprint across the track, and I ended up tripping over a loose hurdle. The skin on my leg had peeled like cheap wallpaper. I should’ve gone straight to the nurse’s office. Instead, I headed home, limping, hungry, and hoping I could stitch myself up before Mom came back home and made a fuss.
But when I stepped inside, I realized both my parents were home early, which never happened.
My mother’s voice was loud, while my father’s was quieter.
I followed the sound toward the study, creeping along the edge of the wall, trying not to let my weight hit the floorboards too hard.
They were arguing about a girl.
From what I could understand, this girl was the daughter of Dad’s ex. Her mother had just died and named my father as the legal guardian. My mother hated the idea. She was livid–furious he hadn’t consulted her before accepting to keep the child, enraged at the idea of taking in a child that wasn’t hers, that wasn’t theirs. I heard words like “stranger,” and “baggage,” and “why is it your problem?”
And then they noticed me standing there.
They didn’t say anything about this strange girl until two weeks later, when Lydia showed up at our doorstep with a single suitcase and a doll clutched to her chest. Her hair was orange like rust, dry and frizzy, and her knees were so knobby it looked like she’d never had a full meal in her life. She sat on the couch awkwardly, like she was trying to fold herself into a smaller version of herself, hoping no one would notice she was there.
I remember thinking: girls are annoying, so having a sister would probably be worse–another person to get on my nerves, just like my kid brother Finn already did, only louder and with more drama.
But then she smiled at me when our eyes met and waved. I smiled back. There and then, I became an older brother.
She followed me everywhere. Like a puppy. She hovered in the doorways while I did homework, asked me questions I didn’t always have answers to, and tried to make conversation at dinner when the silence was crushing. She seemed to understand instinctively that my mother didn’t like her. That no matter how hard she tried, that coldness was never going to thaw. So she attached herself to me instead.
One afternoon, maybe a month after she arrived, she looked up at me while we sat on the floor and said, “Does your brother hate me?”
Finn had just stormed past us in the hallway, scowling, after finding her playing with his PlayStation controller.
I shrugged. “Don’t worry about him. He hates everyone.”
And back then, it was true. Finn was eight and the worst kind of kid. Sulky, irritable, loud. Always shutting himself in his room, playing games past bedtime, and snapping at everyone. Dinner was always a battlefield. But somehow, he was still the golden child. Mom coddled him. Dad excused him. I was the one who got told to “be more understanding” whenever he acted like a jerk.
Eventually, he outgrew the brat phase. By sixteen, Finn had stopped being the loud, annoying kid and started mirroring me. Down to the haircut, ti. jackets, the way I walked, the things I said. He’d ask where I was going just to show up there. Pick my electives. Borrow my hoodies without asking. I was a senior by then–popular, reckless, the kind of guy teachers warned their daughters about but still smiled at in the hallway. And Finn? He was trying to become me. I couldn’t understand why.
Some of my friends mentioned it. Joked about my “mini–me.” I brushed it off.
Until I found him in bed with Delilah.
That was the first time I punched him so hard I thought I broke something in my hand.
But I lived with it. I watched Delilah date him after she broke up with me, and I learned to live with it, even if the sight of them turned my stomach. 1/3
What I couldn’t forgive was what came next.
Suddenly, Finn became the best brother to Lydia. Always asking how she was doing, offering to drive her places, making her tea, and sitting beside her while she watched dumb shows. It felt staged. Performed. Like he was trying to win a prize. I didn’t say anything at first. I mean, someone else was finally being nice to her in that house: Who was I to interfere?
And then I came home one evening to find her bedroom door open. Lydia never left it open. I went in and met her in the bathtub with her clothes still on. arms wrapped around her knees, crying into the curve of her elbow.
I crouched beside her and asked what happened.
“He…” Her voice broke off.
I waited, thinking she’d continue, but she didn’t.
I touched her shoulder. “Lydia,” I said. “Talk to me.”
No response.
So I asked again. And again. I kept asking until she finally gave a tiny nod.
Her voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it. “He didn’t stop when I said no.
My whole body locked. I felt it in my teeth.
“Who?” I asked, though part of me already knew.
She didn’t say. Just kept shaking her head like the truth would kill her if she said it aloud.
But I knew.
Every part of me knew.
I slid into the tub with her, not caring that my jeans were getting soaked. I pulled her into my chest and wrapped my arms around her. She sobbed harder, clutching my shirt.
That’s how Finn found us. The little shit walked in less than an hour later. The second I saw him, everything inside me went aflame.
I got out of the tub and lunged at him.
He didn’t even get a chance to ask what was going on. One second he was in her bedroom, and the next he was on the floor with my fists raining down on
his face.
He screamed. I didn’t stop.
It took both our parents coming home at that moment to pull me off him. My knuckles were raw and bleeding by the time Dad slammed me into the wall.
When I told them what happened–when I pointed at Lydia, who was still crying in the tub, and said she’d been hurt–Finn cut me off
“I saw him!” he yelled, voice panicked and shaky. “I saw Knox doing it. In the tub. She was crying. She didn’t want him to–he was the one! I tried to save her, and he pounced on me.’
That moment. That lie. It split my life in two.
Our mother, who was eight months pregnant at the time, believed Finn without asking a single question. And if she believed something, then so did our
father.
I saw red.
“You lying piece of shit!” I said. “What the hell is wrong with you? I didn’t do anything!”
“Look at his clothes!” he shouted back. “He’s soaked. She’s crying. Her clothes are torn. She can’t even look at him! I’m telling you what I saw when walked in here, Mom! He was molesting her!”
“You little shit,” I hissed, fists trembling, heart racing so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. “You really want to go there? Ask her, Dad. Ask Lydia who
touched her!”
But Dad wasn’t listening to me.
He was already lifting Lydia out of the tub.
I watched as he brought her into the bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. He stroked her hair with a shaky hand, saying things like, “It’s going to be okay” and “You don’t have to say anything yet. Just rest. We’ll take care of it.”
Mom was on the phone, her voice urgent as she spoke to her doctor friend, asking her to come to the house quickly.
I started to walk to the bed–just to be near Lydia, to tell her to speak up, to please say it wasn’t true–but my father flared at me.
“I don’t want to see either of you right now,” he said coldly. “Get out.”
I stared at him, willing him to look at me and see the truth, but all I got was the slam of the door in my face.
So I went to my room and locked the door.
I didn’t come out for three days.
Not to eat. Not to talk. Not even when Mom knocked and said I needed to explain myself. What was there to explain? Nobody wanted to hear it.
And then came the fourth morning.
The screams woke me.
Frantic, high–pitched, echoing down the hallway. My hand was on the doorknob before my brain caught up, and when I opened the door, I heard someone say Lydia drank bleach.
