Page 78 of Trapper Road

“Hey there,” I say, coming into the room and flicking on the light. “You doing okay?”

He shrugs. An answer even less helpful than “fine.”

I pull up the covers on Vee’s bed and sit, facing my son. “You were very helpful yesterday with the case.” I tell him. “You really made a difference. Thank you.”

He lifts a shoulder, but doesn’t ask any questions or even ask what happened. He’d been so invested in this case earlier, so gung ho about being involved. I don’t understand why he suddenly seems so uninterested.

A familiar tension coils along my shoulders, causes a throb to begin in my temples. It seems like every interaction with Connor has been like this — pulling teeth to get anything other than one word responses. I kept telling myself it was just a phase, but maybe that’s just what I wanted to believe. The reality is that it became too much effort to push back against him, and I didn’t have the reserves to deal with it when I was recovering from what happened in the lighthouse.

But months of letting his behavior slide — of ignoring it, has only made things worse.

I draw a deep breath. “I know about your files on your father. I know you’re Melvin’s Little Helper.”

It feels strange to actually say the words, like it somehow makes them real. I wish so badly they weren’t. That all of this is some sort of mistake, but I’ve seen the files for myself. There’s no denying any of it.

He appears genuinely shocked. He forgets to school his expression, and I watch as the thoughts dance across his face. What surprises me most is the fear, as if he’s afraid of what I’ll say.

That he could ever be afraid of me hurts. It makes me wonder if our relationship is more broken than I realized.

He’s able to regain his composure quickly, and he looks away. “Whatever.”

I want to curl my hands into frustrated fists, but instead I press them flat against my knees. “You know it’s okay to be interested in your father. It’s okay to have questions, and it’s okay to ask them.”

He keeps his face averted. I give him space, letting the silence stretch.

Finally, he shakes his head. “You say that, but you don’t mean it.”

I start to protest but he cuts me off. “You know it’s true. You hate Dad. You and Lanny both. You think he’s a monster. You think—” He swallows. “You think he didn’t love us. But he did. I know he did.”

He sounds like such a little boy right now, defensive and needy, that it makes my heart physically ache. He’s hurt, and I want to comfort him, but I don’t know if I can. Everything in me rebels at the idea that Melvin Royal loved anyone but himself.

We weren’t his family. We were his front so that he could move through the world looking like a normal human being while doing monstrous things. We were objects to him, to be controlled and paraded about and used.

“See, Mom? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how much you hate him. How I don’t know what I’m talking about. That I was too young, and I didn’t understand. Aren’t you?”

It’s true, all of it. I don’t deny it.

“You never let us make up our minds about him. You never let us talk to him after he was arrested. You shredded his letters before we could read them.”

I shudder, remembering some of the things he wrote in those letters — unspeakable things. “I did, and I don’t regret it. Those letters weren’t for you, they were for me.”

“Except they were for me! He wrote aboutus. Lanny and me. He wrote about how much he loved us. He shared memories of us as kids. He talked about how he used to walk laps around the house with me when I was a baby.”

My heart stops. These are things Connor shouldn’t know. “How do you know what was in his letters?” I ask carefully.

He rolls his eyes. “Because I’m not an idiot, Mom. I knew you had to have made copies before you shredded them. You keep copies ofeverything. I searched your office and found the jump drive.” He says it like it’s no big deal. But he’s wrong, it’s a very,very, big deal.

So many emotions hit at once that I don’t know what to feel. Outraged that my son invaded my privacy like that. Furious at myself for not hiding the jump drive better or even keeping copies of Melvin’s letters at all. Horrified that Connor actually found them — worse than that, he read them.

My stomach lurches. I feel sick at the thought of what he must have seen and learned. Things no one should ever be subjected to. “Why, Connor? Why would you do that to yourself?” I can’t keep the horror from my voice or my expression.

He throws up his hands. “And you wonder why I never came to you about any of this? You wouldn’t have listened or even tried to understand.”

I suck in a breath. The comment cuts unimaginably deep. I had no idea my son felt this way. I’ve always tried to be there for my kids — always. Apparently, I failed.

“Why do you think I post on the Melvin Royal message board?” he continues. “Because they listen to me. They still care about Dad. To you Dad’s a monster, but not to me. Not to them. In the real world I’m a freak — the serial killer’s kid — but not on there. There I’m popular. I’m important. I’msomebody.”

I don’t know how to respond. The very existence of a Melvin Royal message board makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve seen enough posts on similar message boards to know that they don’t simply care about Melvin Royal, they worship him. They’re obsessed with him.

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