“No.” I shake my head. “No, that’s not what you need. You need to confront the things that happened to you in your past. All of them, Nick. I think you need to go back to the place it all began.”
The curse that rips from his throat is vicious. “I’m not going back there. I can’t.”
“You can.” I stroke the scarred hand and the knuckles that have gone white from his iron grasp on the gearshift. “You came here to try to forgive your father. If you weren’t able to do that today, then maybe you need to find some way to understand him . . . and what he did.”
“What he did?”
I search for gentle words, even though I know there’s no soft way to bring up the subject of Nick’s abuse. But does he really think I haven’t been able to see the obvious signs? I’ve been there too. I see my broken pieces reflected in him every time I look into his eyes.
“Nick . . . I know you were harmed when you were young. You can tell me. You know I’ll understand. You know it won’t diminish anything I feel for you.”
His head snaps back slightly, as if his mind is just returning to the here and now. “You think my father raped me?” He
glances down, frowning. When he looks back up at me, there is a bleakness in his eyes that breaks my heart. “It wasn’t my father, Avery. It was his father. My grandfather.”
~ ~ ~
I haven’t seen the old house on Key Largo since I was eighteen.
Parked in the overgrown, weed-choked dirt driveway in front of it now, it looks like a nightmarish relic from a swamp monster horror film set. Fitting, I think, as I cut the engine on the rental car and stare out at my childhood home through the windshield.
“Are you ready?” Avery asks from the passenger seat.
I don’t imagine I will ever be ready to reenter the scene of my own nightmares. But I nod at her and open the door. We climb out together and she meets me in front of the vehicle, taking my hand.
I can feel her apprehension as we walk toward the sagging front porch of the waterfront bungalow. It’s still daylight out, so the house is visible in all its neglected glory. In the five years since my father has been at the nursing home, it’s obvious that no one has kept the place up.
The canopy of moss-draped trees are scraggly and brown. The tall swamp grasses in the yard have long gone to seed. The bungalow had been painted crisp white by my mother’s own hands before she got sick. Now the wood and cinderblock structure is peeled and weathered to a dingy gray.
As we approach, I catch Avery straining to see past the modest place I was raised to the other, bigger house that looms behind it on a small incline. If it could be called a house anymore. As bad as my childhood home looks, this other one is completely uninhabitable.
The broad stairs leading to the entrance of the pillared home are caved in, inaccessible. The roof has been crushed by a huge oak, most likely uprooted during an old storm. Windows in front gape like a toothless grin. The house is monstrous and even though it’s obviously vacant, I have a hard time allowing my gaze to linger on it.
“My grandparents lived there,” I tell Avery before she has to ask me. “The old captain’s house and the land it’s built on has been in the Baine family for generations.”
Only now does her gait falter. Her look is grim with comprehension. “He lived right in your backyard?”
I shrug, but the movement feels forced. “He and my father fished together on their boat every day for more than thirty years.”
She doesn’t move, just stares at me for a long, painful moment. “Nick, does your father know what happened to you?”
“He knows.”
As averse as I am to enter the bungalow, now that we’re here I can’t seem to stop my feet from taking me inside. Avery and I climb the two cement steps to the front door. My father never locked it, but even if he had the rotted frame wasn’t going to prevent anyone from breaking in.
Not that there is anyone here to worry.
Silt and sawdust from the termites that have likely infested the place explode in a soft cloud as I push the door open. Inside, the house is musty and dank, abandoned.
“Watch your step,” I tell Avery as we step onto the creaky, dust-covered floor of the vestibule.
A short hallway leads through the center of the house to the kitchen. Off to the left is the living room and a connected formal dining room that we never used after Mom was gone. To the right, a staircase leads to two bedrooms on the second floor and a trapdoor that opens into the attic.
I notice the pale carpet runner is the same as it was when I was a kid. Beneath years of neglect, I can still see the splotch of dark paint I spilled on the third step during the summer after fifth grade. The rusty stain looks like blood. I know that’s what’s on Avery’s mind when I see her glance at it too.
“I was painting in the kitchen while Dad was out fishing. I lost track of time, and when I realized he would be coming in soon, I hurried to put my things away before he saw them.”
She nods, already familiar with the fact that my father disapproved of my love for art. “Did he ever see any of your work? It seems like if he saw your talent—”