Not that I could have gotten to the doors most of the time.
In the center of the room was a heavy wooden timber pushing up against the crossbeams that formed the support for the floor planks above. Around the base of that timber, my father had a heavy iron chain. More than once, that chain had been padlocked tightly around one ankle, keeping me close enough to the post that I couldn’t reach the doors or the stairs.
There were still scars on my right ankle. Not particularly prominent ones—if you didn’t know you were looking for them, you might assume they were from any number of other things. It wasn’t a rope-burn scar, like the one that was gradually fading into the copper skin of Elliot’s throat, or a manacle scar, because it had just been the links of a chain. And I hadn’t bothered struggling because I knew better. The scars hadn’t been caused by trying to free myself. They’d been caused by the repeated pinching of flesh between links, tiny little things, almost like feather-touches, that not even Elliot had noticed or commented on.
I had other scars, from other things. A few faint lines on one hip that blended in with the stretch marks I’d gotten from shooting up in hight too fast for my own skin at age seventeen. Those were from a belt buckle when I’d been small—the only time Momma had stood up to my father. After that, he didn’t used the buckle side, although he didn’t stop using the belt.
There were the usual kid-scars, too—tiny light spots on my hands from falling on the sharp gravel of the driveway tripping over my own too-big-for-me feet. A faint line on one shin from doing pretty much exactly what I’d done with Hart when I was a kid—except as a kid, I managed tonotsprain my knee, just scrape myself up.
I’m sure there were a dozen more, faded into the pale pink of my skin.
You couldn’t see the worst of them, though. Those were the scars pressed into my psyche—the way I hated my own hunger and the body it produced, the way I thought less of myself for wanting expensive things, the way I second-guessed my own judgment of other people, the way I seemed to always choose romantic partners who tried to control me—until Elliot, anyway.
It was maybe weird that the one thing my father and the other Community Elders had worked the hardest to eradicate was the thing I never once questioned.
Or maybe I did, given the fact that I found it hard to believe that anyone I loved could ever actually love me back. Not as much as I loved them, anyway. Or not in the same way I loved them. It haunted me—I knew Elliot loved me, but I also knew that I’d loved him first. That I’d had toconvincehim to love me. And that meant that whatever he felt, while it might be real, it wasn’t the same as what I felt. Wasn’t asstrongas what I felt. It couldn’t be.
“Seth?”
I looked up, the movement suddenly making me aware of the fact that there were tears running down my cheeks.
The man in question crouched down in front of me, his hazel eyes concerned, and I slid sideways to give him room to sit. He climbed up and settled on the steps above me, running one hand through my hair as he gently guided my head to rest on his thigh.
I let out a heavy sigh and let Elliot stroke my head, drawing strength from the sturdy muscle of his quad, the gentle motion of his fingers, the warmth of his body.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked, softly, and while most people would have said it sarcastically, he meant it as a genuine question.DidI want to tell him what was going on?
I didn’t.
But I probably should.
“It’s my father,” I said softly, speaking into the dark brown fabric of Elliot’s cargo shorts.
“We figured that,” he replied.
“Not just… Not just for killing Momma,” I said, the words more difficult than I expected. “I think he’s behind all of it. He and the Community Elders.”
“Did they threaten you?” I could hear the edge in his voice. “Val said it went fine, that he got what he was looking for, but that everybody was polite…”
“Everybodywaspolite. In that vicious Southern way.”
“What does that mean?”
I sighed again, feeling my own breath push back to me as it reflected off his thigh. “It means everybody was polite-but-hostile. They didn’t like us being there, and that was abundantly clear, even though they seemed cooperative.” I swallowed. “Also, my father is an Elder now,” I said. “He’s one of them—he wasn’t at the meeting,” I clarified when I heard Elliot suck in a sharp lungful of air. “But they know where he is.” I sighed. “Not that they’re talking.”
“Okay, so, what? He’s responsible for the direction of the Community, then? The isolation?”
“That’s always been the way the Community works,” I replied. “Long before Father became an Elder.” I sighed. “But that’s not what I meant.”
“What, then?”
“The Elders, maybe even Father, probably placed Mosby in the Sheriff’s Department to have control over it,” I said softly. “And Father is probably why Mosby ran you—because he thought it was me—off the road.”
Elliot drew in a long, slow breath. Thinking, clearly. Considering. Worrying.
“You think he’s going to try again?” His voice was low. Serious.
“I know he is,” I replied, just as serious.
