Page 13 of Sweet Doe
Not since I was sixteen and my parents decided I was defective. They called it a breakdown. Sent me away. An “inpatient treatment center for troubled youth.” That’s what the glossy brochure said. In reality? A fucking prison. Padded walls. Screaming down the halls. Needles in my arm. Silence drilled into my skull until I stopped asking for help.
Alex never visited.
No one did.
When I got out at nineteen, the house didn’t look any different, yet everything about it had changed. The porch steps still creaked under my weight. The rust stain under the gutter was still there, bleeding down the siding like the house was crying. I stood there with nothing but a hospital-issued duffel bag slung over one shoulder, unsure whether I wanted to scream, knock, or run. The cold bit through my sleeves, but I didn’t feel it. I just stared at the front door and waited. Waited for someone to notice me. For something to click behind the curtain. For someone inside to recognize me as theirs.
But nothing came.
No porch light flicked on. No door creaked open. No voice called my name with the kind of tremble that sayswe thought you were gone.
Instead, I saw the curtain twitch. A glimpse of my mother’s shadow moving just out of view. But they didn’t come to the door. Didn’t open the damn window.
They just peeked through the curtain, and then went about their day like I was something from a dream they didn’t want to remember.
Theyturned away.
I stood there for what felt like hours, ice crusting over my boots, watching the place I used to call home and the family I was born into pretend I didn’t exist.
That’s when I understood; they hadn’t mourned me. They didn’t actually want me to get better.
No. Sending me there was their way of erasing me.
Like I was a smudge on their family portrait. A fucking glitch they could delete without consequence.
It wasn’t like they told people there was an accident, or that I was dead. No, that would’ve required acknowledging I everlived.No, what they did was worse. They made me vanish from their narrative entirely. My name never came up in their smiling social media posts. Not even by accident. There were no “prayers for Asher,” no quiet tributes or framed photos left on dusty mantels. It was as if I had never drawn breath under that roof. Not once.
I found their accounts, studied the faces of the people who gave up on me like it was easy, like it was necessary. I memorized every filtered selfie, every brunch post, every glass of champagne raised to the life they got to live without the burden of a son who didn't fit their version of perfect, and I cursed them for every goddamn second of it. For laughing. For smiling. For moving the fuck on.
But it wasn’t until I sawhimthat it really started to burn. The twin who found it so easy to forget me.
I started tracking everything I could. I watched Alex’s uploads first—self-obsessed, predictable, lazy with his security. His passwords were weak. His cloud backups weren’t encrypted. He hadn’t even changed his recovery questions since highschool.Pathetic. I didn’t even have to try. I found hundreds of pictures. Some of her alone. Some with him. A few where she didn’t even know she was being captured—through mirrors, through windows, asleep beside him. There were even videos, ones he took during sex, like trophies of his own arrogance. But even those told me everything I needed to know.
He never looked at her. Not once. Not in the way someoneshould. Not in the way she deserved. The sex was selfish, rushed, and impersonal. Every thrust about his own release, not hers. She could’ve been anyone. A shadow. A doll. A background prop in the movie of his ego. He didn’t care about her pleasure. He didn’t care abouther.
But I do.
Even in those stolen, blurry frames, I saw her. I watched the tension in her jaw. The way she tried to keep her eyes open. The way she flinched when he touched her like she wasn’t something delicate. I memorized the shape of her mouth when she wasn’t smiling. The way she curled slightly inward, always protecting herself, like she never fully relaxed around him. Like she didn’t trust him. And that’s what hooked me.
Because trust is sacred, and she was trying to give it to someone who didn’t deserve it.
Someone who didn’tseeher.
I watched her at work, too. The salon had a basic camera system, easily breachable through an old backdoor exploit on a server no one had updated in years. It was almost insulting how easy it was. She had a routine. Always opened at 7:58 a.m., two minutes early like she was trying to prove something. She brewed the coffee even when no one came in. Did inventory like it mattered. She stocked lemon balm and rosemary shampoo because she said it calmed the elderly clients—and she said it with this little smile, like maybe it calmed her too.
She was kind.
Exhausted, but kind.
Burnt out, but still trying.
Alone in ways most people didn’t notice. Except me.
I watched her forget to lock the back door twice. I watched her walk home with her headphones in—too trusting. I watched her smile at customers who didn’t tip, and clean up after coworkers who left their stations a mess.
She had no idea someone was watching.
Someone who had already decided she was his.
