Page 21 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 9-12
“I was bleeding once a month, wasn’t I? He said he loved me. He was mine. I gave him a son, didn’t I? Until you turned into a disappointment!”
Angry tears ran down Damian’s face. He stared at his…he didn’t have a word for what Dalia was. She was so far down in the shit of their fucked-up bloodline he couldn’t see a way to save her. “You’ll never have custody of the kids again.”
Dalia’s face twisted into grief and rage. “You’re everything he said you were. Ungrateful. Traitor. F****t.”
Damian opened the door. “Goodbye, Dalia.”
“We’re not done here.”
“We are.” Damian nodded to Émeric. They started for the door.
She shrieked and kicked the chair over. “Bastard!”
Damian stepped out of the way of the officer heading into the room. Émeric followed him out.
“I’m glad I never called myself your mother. Go home and let that filthy rich man fuck you in your arse like the whore you are. I bet you like it, don’t you! Slobbering all over his dick so he’ll buy you fancy clothes. You…you…Uncle Tom!”
Damian turned back. He had both no words and all the words.
She was struggling so hard she was going to hurt herself, eyes wide, spit on her mouth. She stopped long enough to scream again. “You’re destroying this family.” She hung from the officer’s arms, panting.
“No. Thaddeus Hayden Kramer destroyed it. A long time ago. He made us and he wrecked us, but some of us are strong enough to stop this. I’m sorry, Dalia.”
She must have been beautiful, once, like all life is when first conceived. Now she was her father’s crime. The damage in her mind was his work. Fear crawled up his arms. The poison in her was reaching out to him. She was a wraith that wanted him back, wanted to destroy everything he’d become. Guilt and hopelessness wrapped around his heart. He’d escaped, but his worst fears had become real. He’d failed. He’d failed her. He’d failed Armada. Thaddeus Kramer and his cronies—Pastor Doyle and the rest—they’d won. Kramer had dragged his tiny, miserable kingdom into madness and starvation like Scar in the Lion King.
Tears ran down Damian's jaw. He couldn’t move. This wreck of a woman was blood of his blood, his mother, his sister, the victim of the same man who had cut the scars into his skin that he still bore. She should have been closer to him than anyone but a lover. The floor yawned like a chasm between them. His vision was swimming. The back of his head ached. He was watching her from the end of a long, darkening tunnel.
He could forgive her for being broken. He could forgive her for letting their father cut his punishment into his chest with a broken beer bottle. He could forgive her for staying.
He couldn’t forgive her for giving him Armada.
He’d lost. There was no hope here. “Goodbye, sister.”
Blind, he turned. Émeric’s hand on his arm guided him toward the exit.
Damian didn’t see the ground beneath his feet. He barely knew Émeric was helping him inside the SUV. He didn’t hear the individual words Émeric spoke to the driver. The vehicle moved. It made turns. His body swayed back and forth. It stopped.
“What, we’re not…” he looked up. They were parked outside the church. He looked to Émeric.
Émeric opened the door and beckoned him to get out. The driver popped open the back door. Émeric fetched a heavy, long bag and walked toward the church. He still had the key Damian had given him so he could survey the location. He used it. Damian followed him inside. Nothing was real. There was no good reason for them to be here now, but it also didn’t matter. Did Émeric want to work? Was this Émeric’s way of helping him get past what had just happened?
Émeric checked that the door was shut. He locked it from the inside, pocketed the key, then walked into the back of the sanctuary. He laid the heavy canvas bag down on the floor and knelt to unroll it. Inside the canvas were crowbars and sledgehammers. Émeric picked up one of the sledgehammers, hefting it in his hand.
“Coat off. Jacket, too.”
Damian obeyed. He dropped the coat and jacket over the back of the closest pew.
Émeric stepped in front of him. He unbuttoned each of Damian’s shirt sleeves and rolled them up his forearms in precise folds, the same number on each arm. Then he stepped back and picked up the sledgehammer again. “Where did she sit when she was listening to all that tripe about discipline and heads of the household?”
Why did he still know the answer? It was a fucking travesty that he still remembered exactly; he didn’t even need to close his eyes to be able to see himself trailing behind Dalia down this very aisle to the pew ten rows from the back. If he walked too slow, he could feel the sharp pricks of the spine of Thaddeus’s bible digging into his back.
He held out his hand. Émeric gave over the sledgehammer.
The pew taunted him with every step. He stared at it. The red hymnals were still in the pockets on the back of the pew in front. If they’d been so important, their songs so precious, why had they been left behind?
The sledgehammer came up over his head with no effort. He watched—as if he were a man in an entirely different body—the head come down on the seat of the bench. Wood cracked and splintered. It wasn’t enough. He gripped the shaft of the hammer with both hands. Brought it up and let it fall. The pew rocked back, screaming in protest. Screws that held it to the floor screamed. The crack deepened, running down the grain of the wood. He struck again. And again. There was no more cold now. He was burning. There was all the heat he needed running inside his brain.
She knew. She knew. She knew. She let him.
