The Life - Rebirth (The Life 4)

“I didn’t know what was going on. I thought mom was dropping me off to have a sleepover since she said there would be other children there. I was so excited I remember rushing her that day. I didn’t pay attention to the fact that both she and dad seemed off, a little distant even. And when they dropped me off, they did not come in.”

“It started that evening. After she’d bathed me and pampered me the way I’d never been before, playing with my hair and telling me how beautiful I was, I thought nothing of any of it. Then she told me a special guest was arriving. I thought it was the kids finally showing up, but I was wrong. It was him.” She stopped talking and gripped her brother’s hand tighter.

I almost told her to stop, but she went on before I could. She told the story of losing her innocence that night and how, for the next two days, Luna had joined in, and the woman she once called aunt had robbed her of even more of her innocence.

“Do you know him, this man that was there that weekend?”

“I didn’t at first, but then I saw him months later with her; he was her new husband.” The investment banker? Huh! What an incestuous bunch.

“After that, it happened off and on for years until I turned fourteen and was too old for him.”

“I hated mom and dad and had lost all respect for them. Sometimes I’d feel like I’d go insane if I didn’t tell someone what they’d done to me, but then they’d threaten me, threaten to kick me out of the house if I said anything. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I became promiscuous. To me, sex was nothing; I wanted to make it nothing so that the pain would go away. But it never did, no matter how many people I slept with. They fucked me up for life.” She gave a cynical laugh at the end, then looked at me head-on as if daring me to judge.

“As for my father, one day, I went to their room to ask for something. It was the first time I’d seen him naked; he was getting dressed when I just barged in, and I saw it, a tattoo. I’d seen it years ago at one of Luna’s weekend parties. The adults wore masquerade masks, so I couldn’t tell who they were, but I remembered that tattoo.

He must’ve seen the way I stared at it and realized I’d put two and two together. I felt sick and started to run away, but he caught me, and…. Mom knew; she walked in while he was in the middle of it and just sat on the bed and ran her hand over my hair while he finished.”

“Mom got sick not long after that. I begged grandpa to send me away to boarding school once mom was out of the house; I thought I was finally free. After finding this out about them on top of everything else, they’d done, it was the last straw. I just grew numb. It was bad enough that they’d sold me, but for my own father….”

Grandpa finally gave the okay for me to go away to school. I convinced him I needed it for my mental health. But dad followed me up there the very first weekend. I remember the other girls swooning about what a great dad he was, how much he’d missed me that he had to come to see me so soon. They had no idea that when he took me away to the hotel, he spent the weekend telling me that I had to take my mother’s place now that she was no longer able to satisfy him.”

“He came back almost every weekend after that. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Jr. He only found out because he walked in on us when I came home sometime last month for a long holiday weekend. told him everything then, and he wanted to kill our dad, but I wouldn’t let him say or do anything.”

“He just looked at me and laughed. I couldn’t believe that the man I’d idolized so much was capable of such things. I still don’t want to believe it, I told myself that his mind had suffered some kind of damage because of what was happening to mom, but even then, I think I knew. He didn’t make any excuses, didn’t apologize; he just laughed and walked by me after telling me that I should try it. I threw up for days after that.”

They must’ve thought I’d turned to stone since I sat unblinking and not moving a muscle. They looked back and forth between each other and then back at me. “Anything else?”

“No, just that, tonight happened.”