I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even move. The horrific image of Huck as a small traumatized child left me shaking. The acknowledgment of his pain hit me point blank in the heart. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to burn the whole fucking world down.
“How could nobody realize this was happening?” I demanded, though I knew from my own experience that abuse wasn’t that difficult to hide.
“Ed had Huck homeschooled by a member of his congregation for many years,” Lucian explained. “He told her the boy was disturbed and blamed the wounds on self-mutilation. You have to understand… this was a radical group with beliefs far outside the realm of normality. Even if he didn’t attempt to hide it, I’m not entirely certain these actions would have warranted a cry for help from any of his flock. He was a well-respected man in his community. People looked to him for guidance, and they believed what he preached.”
“That’s insane,” I growled. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew firsthand exactly how many people turned a blind eye to disgusting behavior. People in a position of authority were often the scariest. They had power, and they were virtually untouchable.
“The problem only compounded,” Lucian continued. “As Huck grew up, he started to act out. Vandalizing the church. Getting into fights. It all went into his record, creating the image of a problem child. When Ed enrolled him in public high school, there were numerous accounts of behavioral issues. He’d broken desks, destroyed books, and intentionally flunked subjects he knew well. I suppose you could say it was the only way for him to communicate his frustrations, but to everyone else, it just confirmed their beliefs about him.”
Lucian was in an almost trance-like state as he continued to spell out the details of Huck’s childhood. Details I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know about anymore. It was all leading up to the big event. The truth I wasn’t certain I could handle. Lucian painted a picture of unimaginable horrors, and the worst part was that I could relate. Huck was damaged, incredibly so, and it was becoming painfully obvious how that happened. But I still wasn’t sure what to think about the crimes he’d been convicted of.
It would be hypocritical for me to say regardless of what happened in his past, there was no excuse for the crime committed against that girl. Because if I said that, then I’d have to apply the same logic to the worst thing I’d ever done.
“So how did it happen?” I choked out.
Lucian took a moment to contemplate, and I worried he wasn’t going to tell me after all. But I realized before he spoke that this was just as difficult for him to recount. “Mary-Kate was a foster child who’d been shuffled around the system. She’d been abused herself, and she spent a lot of time on the street when she wasn’t couch surfing at any safe haven she could find. During that time, she encountered Ace while he was scavenging the trash for food. They developed what I guess you could call a friendship.”
I couldn’t even imagine what he’d just described. Ace digging around in the trash for his food? It was too awful to consider.
“Did he talk to this girl?” I asked.
“No.” Lucian shook his head. “He still didn’t speak, but she confided in him, and they passed notes if he really had something to say. She told him her foster dad tried to touch her, and that’s how she ended up on the streets. Huck, being Huck, he didn’t have a clue what to do with that type of information. His solution was to sneak her into his bedroom and let her crash there during the night after Ed had gone to sleep. The agreement was, Huck would go to school, and she would leave and keep herself busy until dark. But Huck didn’t realize she was sneaking back into the house during the day. She’d probably done it a handful of times before she finally got caught.”
“By Ed?” I asked.
Lucian nodded. “It was too late. By the time Huck came home that day and walked into his bedroom, she was already dead. Ed had assaulted her and flown into a rage when she tried to fight back.”
I doubled over, repressing the urge to puke. Why those words triggered or surprised me, I would never know. But I felt my body rocking in an attempt to self-soothe as I imagined the sad girl with the dark chocolate eyes.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I croaked. “If Ed did it, why did Ace get locked up?”
“Ed was the local preacher,” Lucian stated with disgust. “And Ace was the troubled mute kid everyone in town already knew was a problem. He was the perfect scapegoat.”