Page 138 of Swallow Your Sorries

Fear slides across my skin like an icy caress.

“Is that why you want to know more about Jarett? To see who the bigger monster is? Who will win?”

He shakes his head slowly, lifting my leg for another rep. “My father always wins.”

“Then why?”

“I’m trying to understand.”

“Understand what?”

For a second, I don’t think he’ll answer me but then he squeezes my ankle as if he needs something to keep him tethered to reality and says, “When you screamed daddy, it reminded me of the one time I cried for my father. He made sure I never cried for him ever again. The fear…the tone…it was all the same. Wanting to get away from him and pleading for him at the same time to save you. To save us. But they aren’t saviours.”

I keep quiet, trying to follow him carefully.

“I made myself believe that Jarett could be a saviour. Because that’d make sense as to why my mother wanted him. But no, she chose another beast.”

Damn.

“Tell me about the beast, Elle.”

Understanding trickles through my veins that slowly warm again as I lower my leg for a final time. As I finally understand what it is he’s after. Well, in this moment at least.

Why Jarett? Why did Madame risk it all for Jarett if he was no better than her own husband? Gant’s own father?The thought had crossed my mind numerous times too.

But if he’s seeking answers and not vengeance, does this mean his temper’s died down enough to listen to reason? Is he slowly beginning to believe me about the tape? The motive behind why I wanted the video?

“Jarett wanted me dead,” I say. “He’d throw dishes at me. Or beer cans, but the older I got, the more the abuse transferred to being verbal. I guess he thought I could understand him clearly at that point. It isn’t as fun to discuss abortion to an eight-year-old who doesn’t get it. But in the end. He got what he wanted. We both got what we wanted. Him getting the hell away from me and my mum.”

Gant just watches me. His expression is too full and too empty all at once.

Somehow, it encourages me to go on.

“Jarett had a way of doing things indirectly, so he’s not fully at fault. Ways of putting me in danger. Like leaving me alone at the fuel station in the middle of the night after luring me into his truck with the promise of ice cream. Or when I was older, and he’d throw dishes at my head in the hopes that I’d‘get in the way’. Or the rare occasion when he’d insist on picking me up from school so drunk we’d run off the road and into a tree. On the passenger side, of course. I thought it was so he could ease his guilt by pinning the end result on someone or something else, but the more I think about it…”

“The more you realise that can’t be true,” Gant finishes for me. “Because that would mean a piece of his soul is still alive. Or that piece of it is still good.”

I nod. “And there’s nothing good about Jarett. Whatever your mother saw him in, I never did.”

“But there’s something about him. My mother had access to any type of man. I can’t even accept that it was his endowments that she sought.”

“Maybe he was just rougher than she was used to. Different. Exciting.”

Gant shakes his head no. “My mother was a lot of things, but not whimsical and shallow, to be moved by such a thing. If she chose Jarett, there was something about him she couldn’t resist. It goes beyond the physical. With a husband like my father, it has to.”

Or you just want it to.

Sympathy blooms in my chest. I tried to rationalise a lot about Jarett as a kid. It took me until age fourteen to realise that Jarett’s actions had no reasoning. No, things I could understand, digest, or try to help fix and solve so he could feel better. So I could feel better.

“Did he ever fake things with you in front of her? Pretend to be a doting father?”

Would a doting father really endear Madame, because she craved that for her own son so desperately?

“My father’s a terrible actor,” I say slowly, repeating Mum’s words. “I can’t give you what you want, Gant. The answer as to what makes Jarett so special to your mother. I don’t think anyone can.”

“Stop it.”

“What?”

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