Page 2 of For Love & Torture
Chapter 2
Grant
The train pulls into the station and we get off. All three of us are weary from the long trip but we’re only a little while away from getting on a plane that will take us back home to America. A place my father has already been taken.
He was handed over to the American Embassy and sent to Oregon. He confessed to cutting my mother’s wrist, murdering her. And he won’t say why. He won’t say anything else, as a matter of fact.
I notice everyone stopping and dropping their heads as mother’s black casket is taken off the train and put into a waiting car. The long black car will transport us to the airport. Jenny is making the funeral arrangements.
We’ll bury our mother in the cemetery that’s just a couple of blocks away from where they lived and we all grew up. And our father will spend the rest of his life in an Oregon Penitentiary for murdering her.
Jake climbs into the car first and Aunt Betsy follows. I get in last, sandwiching our aunt between us as Jake asks, “When do you think the trial for Dad will begin?”
“There won’t be one,” I tell him. “He confessed.”
“I know that,” he says. “But there will be something, won’t there?”
Aunt Betsy takes over, “No, a judge will decide how much time he’ll get.”
“He’ll get life,” I say as I rub my temples. “You know he will. And I’m glad for that. If he was out, I’d kill him.”
Jake glares at me. “You don’t know the whole story. Don’t be so quick to judge our father, Grant.”
“And we don’t know the whole story because our usually talkative father refuses to tell us anything more than the fact that he cut her wrist. He didn’t say it was an accident. He didn’t say another damn word about it. He went willingly with the rangers and he went willingly with the officers who took him back to Oregon. He did it, Jake. He killed our mother—his wife! The woman we all thought he loved more than anything. He killed her. He deserves to die for that!”
Aunt Betsy’s hand covers mine, patting it to quiet my shouting. “Grant, hush now. We’ll get nowhere throwing around harsh words about anyone. Your father is in shock, that’s why he’s not talking more about what happened. He’ll come around. He’ll tell someone what happened. I know he will.”
Jake’s eyes, so much like our mother’s, narrow. “What if Mom was having an affair and he found out and he killed her over that?”
“Shut the fuck up, Jake!” My entire body shakes as anger bursts out of every cell in my body. “If you say another bad thing about our mother, I don’t know what I’ll do to you. So just shut the fuck up!”
“Okay, boys.” Aunt Betsy runs her hand over my leg. “Let’s be quiet and just relax on the ride back home. There’s a lot to do when we get back. Put this fighting behind you both. If I have to spend every visitation day with your father to get to the bottom of this, then I will. We will find out the truth. Don’t worry, or fight, or speculate about things.”
Arriving at the airport, we wait in the car as Mother is transported to the bedroom in the private jet I chartered. We were asked to wait for them to secure the coffin before we came in. None of the nice people who’ve helped us with my poor mother’s body want us to see anything we shouldn’t.
At least I was able to secure her a private ride home, instead of coming back in the belly of a plane full of strangers.
Being the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar cellular company and having more money than most didn’t stop tragedy from finding me. All the money in the world can’t change what’s happened.
And I can’t stop thinking that love can’t really exist if my father could do this to the woman he seemed to love more than anything in this world.
Love cannot be real!
We’re given the wave that tells us to come aboard. The walk to the jet is slow and somewhat arduous. It’s as if my feet don’t want to go where I need them to. The plane that holds my dead mother isn’t a thing I really want to get on. But I have to, so I take the seat across from my aunt as Jake takes one in the very back. I see her looking at me and she asks, “What about that nice girl you’ve been seeing, Stacy? Is she going to help you through this?”
“No,” I say as I look out the window as the sun begins to rise. “I’m not going to see her anymore.”
“Why not?” she asks with surprise. “She’s a sweetheart.”
“She is,” I say then look at her. “And I could fall in love with her. And I don’t want that.”
Aunt Betsy’s ponytail moves with her head as she shakes it. “Grant, stop.”
“No, I don’t want to love anyone. Not anymore. Not ever.” Sitting back, I think about nothing more than what I need to do to keep breathing in this moment. Anger is filling me. Hate is taking over. I need to find a constructive outlet for all this pain.
My insides are hot, as if molten lava is pouring through me. My head feels thick as I think about all that’s occurred. What my father has done is turning my brain into something I don’t recognize. It’s shutting out all the good emotions I once had.
What I believed to be real is not. There is no love. There is only pain. Betrayal. Murder.
