Page 25 of Dangerous Silence
“Dad told me about you, you know,” she said. I didn’t look at her; I took another bite. “Axe, the young man who couldreallymake a career out of a butcher’s life, he’d say. Axe, the only man he thought was better than himself.” She snickered, then looked down at her nails, her head bobbing back and forth in fatigue. “What a fantasy that was.”
A few minutes passed as I worked on the apple. Demi kept moving back and forth, almost as if she couldn’t stay still, or wouldn’t let herself. She stared at her feet, then watched me eat the apple as if I was the one in the cage and she was visiting the zoo. She had a way of unnerving me.
“Before my mom died, Dad was strict with me, but she kept him in balance, you know?” she said. “He’d want to discipline me for getting a B. Would always threaten to take away my pets. But Mom would tell him that my babies were my passion. And all he had to do was look at me hugging those furry and feathered fluffballs close to my chest, and he’d melt too. He’d ask for that same kind of hug, and he’d remind me that I needed to study harder. Even if I was in the third grade and didn’t know what studying was.”
The idea of Shep hugging anyone sounded like bogus. In fact, when I had heard that he had gotten his wife pregnant, I had been surprised that they had sex. Everyone had needs, but Shep had always stressed that you couldn’t hold onto anything. And nine months of making a child sounded like holding onto a hell of a lot.
It wasn’t the Shep that I knew. Something had changed him.
Love had changed him.
Demi ran her fingers through her hair, catching knots. The tendrils were damp with oil and sweat, and she was ripe. Saliva dried up on her face. Cracked skin at the corners of her mouth.
“He didn’t want me to go to PGU,” she said, still talking to me, or to herself, I didn’t know. “He thought the local community college was fine, that I could transfer wherever I wanted. But Ibeggedto go to PGU. It was close enough that I could come home if he got sick, but far enough away that I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to.”
Her voice started drifting at those words, as if she was ruminating over the situation, wondering if it was a mistake. Even though Shep had raised her, her whole view was backward. She was holding onto his death, blaming herself for something that was beyond her control. The disease took his body; there was nothing she could have done to prevent that. Staying home with him wouldn’t have changed his fate.
“If your father didn’t want you to go to PGU, he wouldn’t have let you,” I said.
She perked up, craning her neck to see me.
“I think that’s the most words you’ve ever said to me,” she said. I took another bite of the apple, turning so that my shoulders faced away from her. Just because I was in the room, didn’t mean that I had to pay attention to her. All of that rambling. I should have cut out her damn tongue instead of leaving it there.
So why hadn’t I?
Was it because I wanted to fuck her tongue? Was it because I wanted to feel it on me?
Was it because Ilikedhearing her talk about this side of Shep that I didn’t know?
“I think you’re right,” she said. “Dad never let anything go unless he wanted it to happen.” I let out a breath and she sucked in through her nostrils. “Is that tomato soup?”
“Tomato and basil.” Her stomach grumbled, loud enough to fill the room. “You need to eat.”
She stared at the container, then turned to me.
“What happened to you?”
I flinched.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“There’s always a reason, right? A reason why someone turns out bad. Abuse. Neglect.Something.” She shook her head. “In the criminal justice program, there’s this whole unit on mental health. Behavioral Health. I think that’s what it’s called? Anyway, I haven’t taken it yet, but I have a third-year friend who told me about it. Basically, the whole idea is that if we look more closely at the mental health of ouryouth, then maybe a lot of crimes could be prevented.”
That was an incredibly simplified way of looking at it. No college program could account for being born into a crime family. What did her college say of toddlers who had been told, since they could remember, that one day, they would make people sleep forever, and make their family proud?
“Or, like, you know, putting criminals in behavioral therapy instead of prison.”
And what did you do for the people who tried going to therapy? Whose family would never be arrested, because we had so much blackmail on the local jurisdiction, that any law enforcement ate out of our hands? What happened to them, when they were stuck like that?
Not everything could be solved through textbooks and schooling. But Demi would never understand that. In her world, school was law, and laws were just. A part of me admired that rationality in her. I had never met someone who thought that way; I wished that I had that world view myself.
But I knew that there was no truth. Everyone had their dark secrets.
“You know, like maybe you had some sort of trauma. And if your parents didn’t leave you to kill rabbits, then maybe you wouldn’t be killing people now.”
I stared at her. Killing rabbits? How about helping to kill a grown man when I was seven years old? Sure, he tried to kill me, but giving me that power over a man’s fate was something that shifted my entire world view. Nothing was forever. Life could be taken from you in an instant.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I finally said. “You don’t put someone in therapy and expect that to be the answer.” I stood up, looking down at her. “The person has towantto change things. They have to believe that by following the protocols, everything will be better. But sometimes, even if you do follow the rules, it’s not better.” I leaned down, meeting her almost at eye level. “No matter how much you try.” I shook my head. “You have to want to change.”
