Page 297 of Unexpected Heroine

Fred Stillman doesn’t deserve to occupy any more of my thoughts.

This ends tonight.

I roll my shoulders back, infusing steel rebar in my spine. “I’ll leave when I’m ready. With pleasure. And when I do, I’ll never look back. But first, I need to get some shit off my chest, and you’re going to listen.”

Before I can hit him with my rehearsed speech, he mocks me, throwing my words back in a nasally taunt. “I need to get some shit off my chest. Look at me. I’m a big bad soldier. So brave I couldn’t even come here on my own. I had to bring my drill sergeant with me to hold my hand.” He waves his hand in front of his face in my direction, dismissing me. “Same pathetic boy you’ve always been.”

The ignorant fuck doesn’t even know the difference between a drill sergeant and a squad leader, even though I introduced Big Al as such. Or he’s too inebriated to remember.

I keep my eyes on my father, watching a puff of smoke rise around him when he lights another cigarette. “Big Al, would you mind waiting in the car?”

Wordlessly, he egresses, closing the front door behind him. He did his part by getting me here. Helped me figure out what I needed to say. Wouldn’t let me cower from this.

Fred Stillman doesn’t deserve to occupy any more of my thoughts.

Big Al made me say that out loud again and again. Until I believed it.

Or until I got as close to believing it as possible.

Casting my fists at my sides, I plant myself in front of the television, giving the monster no choice but to face me. “All my life, I’ve believed your bullshit lies. You made me feel weak, unworthy, and small.” My vision hazes in and out as I try to remember precisely what Big Al suggested I say. “I’m not any of those things. You can hate me all you want. I came to tell you that your lies don’t matter. You don’t matter.”

Although I said the words from behind an unaffected mask, they don’t ring true. Instead, the opposite sentiments resonate far stronger.

No one will love you, boy.

Disgusting creepy maggot.

“Fine. You told me. Now you can fucking go, boy. I didn’t ask you to come here.”

I clamp down on my lower lip, tightening my fists. “What the hell did I do to make you hate me?”

With palpable disregard, he clicks his tongue at me, then dabs his finger at his mouth to remove something. Hair. Dirt. Lint. Tobacco. Who fucking knows?

“You want to know why I hate you? Fine. You were born. ‘Nuff said.”

“That’s illogical. I had no control over that.”

“You were born, and then your bitch of a mother wouldn’t fucking leave because she couldn’t raise you without my paycheck. Then I was stuck with you. A weird little creep I never wanted, draining my wallet.”

Something pricks at the back of my mind as if there are holes in his explanation. Shaking it off, I defend myself. “None of that is my fault. You could have put me up for adoption or forced mom to take me when she left. Why keep me if you detested me so much?”

With a disgruntled sigh, he extinguishes his cigarette in the ashtray, hefts to his feet, and stomps toward me with an unsteady gait. I could blow on him and knock him down right now.

And yet he calls me the pathetic one.

He jabs his finger into my chest, the dirt under his nails catching my focus. “Let me guess. You went off to the Army and tried to grow a pair. So now you think I owe you an explanation or somethin’?” A grin slithers onto his face. “Is that right, boy?”

“I have a name.” My nostrils flare, and I raise my voice at him for the first time since I turned eighteen. The day I left. “I deserve an explanation. You made my life hell. Explaining why is the least you can fucking do.”

Without warning, he smacks me across the face. Hard. My head kicks to the side, and my hand lifts to cup my stinging cheek.

My breath scuffs its way out of my throat.

“Don’t you take that fucking tone with me, boy.”

I stand there, vision fixed on the dingy carpet. My pulse slams so violently I feel it in my wrists, elbows, and neck.

He stumbles back, dumps himself into the recliner, and chugs the rest of his beer.

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