Hard Freak

He stopped and took a swig of his wine. A big swig. Then he stared at something over my head.

“I’ve never told anyone this,” he said. “Do you want me to go on?”

“If it helps.” I reached out for his hand, hoping I could give him some strength.

“I knew I should’ve called an ambulance. He was dying, and he couldn’t get up off the floor. I froze. That man had done so many terrible things, and I’d thought about killing him so many times. It seemed that fate had stepped in to do what I couldn’t. I just kept thinking that if he got help, one day he’d destroy us. One day Cindy would get a boyfriend, and then he’d go mental. The terrible things he’d done were just a shadow of what was to come....”

His hand tightened around mine.

“I didn’t help him, Fay. I left that house and didn’t come home for hours.” He gulped. The sound seemed to fill the room. “When I got back, he’d been dead for hours. I rang the ambulance then.”

“You did what you had to,” I said.

“I caused his death. I’ve tried to justify it. I’ve told myself that I could’ve stayed out for a few hours longer and I’d have never had to make that decision, but in the end, I could’ve saved him, and I didn’t.”

Crow looked up then. He looked me straight in the eyes. He wanted to read what I was thinking, searching my face for any sign of rejection.

“I’m not sure what you want from me,” I said. “But I’m not going to walk away. You protect the ones you love.”

I smiled at him. I needed him to know that I’d stand by him.

“She didn’t think like that,” he said.

“She?”

“Cindy. She knew, Fay. She knew I’d been home. That can of Coke sat on the coffee table near his body, and she worked it all out. He was her father, and she loved him in spite of everything. She’s a much better person than I am. She went away, and I never heard from her again.”

Crow kept sipping his wine, and those violins didn’t let up. I wanted to reassure him, to make things better, but I wasn’t even sure where to start. I could only keep holding his hand.

“You’ve never heard from her at all? Maybe, now that she’s older, you should try to get in touch.”

He shook his head and put his glass down. “We should get back to the hotel,” he said.

I guessed that meant the conversation was over, but as we left the bar, I put my arm around him and pulled him tight. Crow might have a darkness within him, but, like I’d always thought, he was a good person.

Chapter 20

WHEN WE GOT BACK TO the hotel, I hoped Crow would invite me back to his room.

He didn’t.

“Are you sure you want to be alone?” I asked him, putting my hand on his arm.

He stroked my cheek. “It’s been a pretty intense day. Don’t tempt me.”

Oh, I wanted to tempt him. I really wanted to tempt him a lot, but he was right. It had been intense. If he needed some alone time, I wouldn’t push him. Not tonight.

Instead, I went into my room and changed into my PJs. I wasn’t ready to sleep, so I grabbed my hairbrush and began brushing my hair. That often helped me to think.

The things he’d told me played with my mind. His sister rejecting him like that had obviously really hurt him, and hurt him still, no matter how much he brushed it off. That had been a long time ago, though. About ten years by my reckoning. Surely, in that time, her feelings had changed.

If she regretted it now, what would she do? If Crow had been a normal guy, she could have picked up the phone and called him or sent him an email but being in the Freaks made him far from normal. He had levels of privacy most people didn’t have. You couldn’t just look up his phone number, and if she wanted to contact him, her message would get lost in the piles of fan mail.

From the sound of it, Crow had severed all connections with his family and his home town. There was no one she could ask for help.

Even though I had no siblings, I couldn’t imagine cutting myself off from family. I messaged my mother every day. Sometimes I even talked to a photo of her, telling her things about my day. I’d always been close to Polly and my other cousins, even when Polly was a pain in the butt. That’s what family was like: you got annoyed with them, but it didn’t stop them being family.