Page 65 of Dark Room Junkie

“And the person you don’t know what to call lets you fuck them?”

“No, that’s the irony of it all,” I admitted, surprised at how easy it was to talk to Lucien. “When I’m with him, I completely forget myself. I would never have allowed him to fuck me and take control otherwise. It was already a mistake that I allowed it at all.”

I’m not just doing all this for fun. Although ... with Alex ... Damn!

I chuckled with a hint of sorrow. “The guy is my downfall, and yet I can’t seem to let him go.”

“Yeah, that sounds familiar,” Lucien said absentmindedly.

His face held a deep sadness, but that was a story for another time.

19

–––––

Alex

“But ... it was ... just ... I mean ... uh ... love letters? What do you mean ... confiscate?”

“We found a lot more material on his computer. Disturbing material. It’s going to take a while to sift through it all, so ...”

“A while?”

“I didn’t want to worry you, Mrs. Toneatti, but ...”

“What? No—no, no, no. I ... went back to my maiden name shortly after the arrest. We’ll be called Winter from now on.”

“All right, Mrs. Winter. Listen, I want to be frank with you. Your husband’s offense goes much further than just writing love letters to his students. Based on the material we found on his laptop, we have to assume that he has also offended the boys. Your son...”

My mother sobbed. “That ... no!”

I sat at the dining table in front of a plate of pasta and couldn’t finish a bite. Although the policewoman was standing in the living room with my mother, I could hear every word. There was a lump of phlegm in my throat, and all my muscles were cramped with shame.

“No, he didn’t ...”

“We need to talk to your son, Mrs. Winter. The fact that he was the one who found his father is one thing, but who knows what else happened.”

I felt like I was frozen solid. I remained motionless in the chair, wishing I could vanish into thin air. When my mother entered the kitchen with the policewoman, my body shook with fear.

“Alex? Monsieur le photographe?”

I glanced up and took a moment to orient myself. I was standing behind my camera, staring into space, waiting for the okay from the lighting technician. That fleeting moment of not needing to concentrate had catapulted me into other realms—for the fourth time since yesterday.

Corinne’s confession surprised me and made me question things I hadn’t considered before. So many memories were stirred up by it. I was questioning things I hadn’t even had on my radar before. The fact that it was my mother who had alerted the police cast everything in a whole new light. She had given my father time to think. You only do that when you love someone. Moreover, she wouldn’t have done that if she had known how it would all turn out. He could have just left, but instead, he spent his last night with me and then hung himself.

But I was completely detached somehow. My hands were trembling, and I kept running my hands through my hair. My body was like a rumbling volcano that just couldn’t calm down.

Pierre raised his eyebrows in my direction, waiting for my reaction, so I nodded to him and got back to work. I gave instructions to the two models on how to pose and tried to ignore all the nagging memories. But I couldn’t. My heart was racing, and I was sweating as if it were thirty degrees in this unheated hall. The lighting technicians and assistants hadn’t even taken off their winter jackets, and during every break, the two models cuddled up in their coats. But I was drenched. Pierre even asked me if I was sick.

Maybe I was. In some way, definitely. But I brushed off his question with a smile and didn’t even bother to make an excuse. I was too confused for that.

If Corinne hadn’t given my father another night to think, he would never have come into my room and ...

Feeling an abrupt wave of nausea, I abandoned everything and ran out. Next to the entrance, I leaned against the wall and vomited. I felt miserable and didn’t want to be here anymore.

“Are you okay?” Pierre asked with his strong French accent.

I nodded and spat again. “Yeah, maybe it was the tuna sandwich.”

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