Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
“Is it Brian? Did something happen to Brian?” We had just taken my brother off to university the week before, and I had been crying myself to sleep, missing him. I wanted him to come back home, but everyone said he needed to stay here for his future, whatever that meant.
I wish I’d known that whole summer that the reason he was spending so much extra time with me and doing all of my favorite things was because he would be leaving soon. Maybe I would’ve paid closer attention.
Now, something was very wrong, but as usual, no one was saying anything to me because I was the baby. Trey had stayed with me until I fell back asleep while Cam went back to Mom. In the morning, everyone was acting like nothing happened until I started to believe that it had all been a dream, except where was Dad?
Bri had returned home that first weekend and I remember how upset he was but trying hard to hide it. I always know when my brothers are upset, they all get these little tics in their jaws, and it always looks as if they’re biting down on something I can’t see.
He was the one who told me that Dad wasn’t coming back. I can still remember the pain of my heart breaking. I didn’t cry then, didn’t say a word. I just walked into the backyard to the swing set Dad had installed for me a few months before to replace the kiddie one I’d had for years.
I sat on that swing for hours that day, and each time I looked up at the windows, at least one of them was looking out at me. I don’t remember when or how, but I sure as shit know why, but I went into the tool shed and got the ax.
Little eight-year-old me took that ax to that swing set and started hacking away at it. I don’t know about other people, but I always seem to find extra strength from somewhere when I’m good and mad. I didn’t do as much damage as I would have liked by the time the boys ran out to the backyard to take the ax away from me.
I remember screaming until I passed out on the grass and being lifted by Brian, who took me into the house and laid me on the couch. I never saw Mom cry again after that, though I heard her cry at night while I was in my room biting into my pillow, trying to keep my own tears hidden.
And every day, I attacked that swing set piece by piece until one night, I finally lost my shit and added the gas that was kept to refill the lawnmower and ATVs to it and lit that shit on fire. That’s when the first therapist came into the picture. I never said one word to that bitch because I might have been young, but I wasn’t stupid.
Sherry had explained to me what was going on in my home. Everybody knew that my Daddy had left our family to go have one with someone else. I had never been so hurt before or after until last night.
There were court cases and hearings in judges’ chambers because none of us wanted to see Dad on his so-called time, and he cried and begged and pleaded. I didn’t speak to him for at least three months until Mom convinced me and the boys to go. I thought it was all bullshit then, and I still do today.
How was it that I, at eight, knew that the cheater shouldn’t be rewarded when the old-ass judge didn’t? If Daddy wanted his family with him, he should’ve stayed his ass home. As if his leaving Mom wasn’t bad enough, the thing he left her for was a bitch with a little demon that she’d pushed out of her crotch that liked to rub it in my face that my Daddy liked her and her mother better than me and mine and that’s why he’d left.
She showed her ass for months until Brian came home on break and rushed into Dad’s new house and laid down the law. I don’t remember all of what my six-foot-three football-playing brother had said that day, but I do remember the cold way he'd spoken before taking me and leaving.
She still used to make her little comments, but she never took my stuff again and steered clear of me. After that weekend, Cam and Trey, who had been disobeying the court order, started coming again. The three of us would hole up in one room and stay as far away from the rest of the people in that house as we could.
Dad cried he begged, and he made promises, which all fell on deaf ears. That was about the time I stopped calling him Daddy. For the next ten years, I spent weekends and some holidays with them, and one of my brothers was always there until they, too, went off to college