Page 29 of Even in the Dark

“Sure.”

It’s almost as bad as Clive. Fancier, but still feels like I’m an in-patient most of the time. Better meals. Better digs. But higher expectations.

I turn off the shower, run my hands through my hair again, and ring the water out. Grab a towel from the closest rack and wrap it around my hips.

“I’ll give you a few minutes,” Phil calls from the other side of the door. “I wanted to talk to you… I left something on your bed. Something I thought you might want.” He pauses. “I’ll come back up in a bit, alright?”

I look up and notice a flash of red in the mirror. I lift my arm.

Shit.It’s bleeding again. And there’s blood on the white towel. I glance around, my gaze halting at the pile of clothes on the marble tiles by the tub. I grab the T-shirt and rip a strip off along the hem.

“Dylan?”

“Uh, yeah…” I wrap the fabric around my forearm, using my teeth to tie it off. Lean down and pick up the ruined T-shirt and toss it in the garbage, then pull on my sweatpants. “I was kinda planning on going to bed now.”

There’s a brief silence on the other side of the door. Then, “It won’t take long… I just want to check in. After you… Once you’ve looked through what I put on the bed for you.”

What the hell did he leave on my bed?

“Sure.”

“Alright, I’ll be back in a bit then.”

I wait until I hear him close the bedroom door behind him before coming out of the bathroom. Last thing I need is him seeing the makeshift bandage around my forearm.

I go over to my dresser and grab a long sleeve tee and pull it on. Tie my hair up as I walk over to the bed. And then halt in my tracks.

It’s a photo album.

My gut twists, and I stand here, frozen. Staring. Not sure what to make of this. Because I know what’s in that album. Photos from my life…before. Of my mother… Me. My dad. Images that might make me remember something. Maybe? Or maybe not. Still, though. It’s… This feels huge.

Glad Phil isn’t here to see me right now. The way I’m practically trembling as I sit on the bed, running my fingers across the worn leather.

I pick it up and it feels heavier than I thought it would. Like there’s actual weight to the memories inside. I glance over towards the closed bedroom door. Make sure I don’t hear sounds of anyone coming up or anything. I want to be totally alone for this.

Shit, I feel almost sick to my stomach.

I open the book to the first page, spread across my lap.

It’s a photo of my mother in a hospital bed holding a baby, and my dad with his arm around her. And the way she’s looking down at that baby—the way she’s smiling… I can tell—my mother loved me. She’s looking at me like I’m her whole entire world. And my dad is looking at me like I’m his world, too. It’s a smile I’ve never seen on him before.

Any time he smiles at me now, there’s sadness in it. When he first came down to California, a couple weeks after I was arrested and they figured out who I was, seems like all he could do was cry. He said he was happy. He smiled through the tears sometimes. Laughed, sometimes. But a lot of the time, it was just tears. Full on bawling even. He’d just wrap his arms around me and wail. Hold me against him so tight I had to push him away, tell him to back off. Because a grown man I didn’t even knowwas breathing against my neck, stroking my back and fucking bawling. Whispering into my skin,“I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry,”over and over, and honestly, it creeped me out. Think he knew it, too… and that made him even sadder.

But the guy in these photos? The younger version of Philip Braun, with the farmer’s tan and windswept hair, he looks like all he ever did was smile.

I flip through the pages, poring over every photo. Pictures of me and my parents like the ones on the wall downstairs and lining the hallways upstairs of Phil and Diane and the girls. A dump truck birthday cake with a candle shaped like the number “one”. Me in a highchair, smearing that same cake all over my face. Photos of us with grandparents, with friends, at some country fair… swimming in a pool, in the ocean, me in a ball pit, jumping in a puddle, eating ice-cream, sitting on a plane, going to freaking Italy.

Holy crap… I’ve been to Italy.

Seeing all this makes me so goddamn happy. I am honest-to-God smiling. Because I was worried there was nothing. That therewereno photos to look through, that those three years were just some PostScript in my dad’s life that I tagged along for and would have to take his word for that they really happened.But it was real.I was there. I had a family, and we went on vacations and visited the aquarium and went on horse-drawn sleigh rides at Christmas.

I’ve done all these things I never even knew about. There’s a piece of my life that was normal.

And I don’t remember one goddamn thing about it.

I don’t even remember my mother’s face.

It makes me suddenly so mad I want to hurl the book at the wall. Throw it out the window and watch the photos wrinkle and curl and float out to sea. Because maybe it’s worse, seeing this perfect life—knowing itwasmine… and then suddenly, it wasn’t.

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