Page 31 of Watch Me Burn
“What?” Nathan gasped for air.
I nodded. “Ethan saw it and almost killed the guy.”
“Well, thank god he did!”
“Daddy! Come!” Heather called from downstairs. “The movie!”
Nathan rose. “Ethan was right to beat Will up for forcing himself on you. Men like that should be killed if it were up to me, and he was able to let him off with just a brutal warning.”
I was surprised to hear my brother speaking so bluntly—he was usually the nonconfrontational, family-man type.
“Call Ethan, Anna. Don’t be an idiot.”
Just like that, he walked out of the room while I was left to reflect on his words.
I was the one whose testimony placed Ethan behind bars. And here I was, conflicted as to whether I should lend a hand of support and all butthurt over a phone call when I hardly even believed the verdict that was leveraged because of me.
My legs shook as I stirred from the sofa. It was like my body was forced to stand on two needles of wood, each step pricking my calves.
I couldn’t handle all of this. I couldn’t handle shouldering a guilt I knew would disappear only if I offered my compassion, and I couldn’t bear reminiscing on the eyes of that little boy who was robbed of his childhood . . . by the same woman he saved in that parking lot two weeks ago.
“Anna, the movie is starting!” my mom hollered from downstairs. I wiped my forearm across my forehead, unable to shake Ethan’s pained expression from my mind.
His jailor. The woman who ended his freedom, the reason he lived in conditions I could never even imagine.
I was that low of scum to him. But maybe if I apologized, this time from the bottom of my heart, he would let me help him and also help find my dad’s killer.
“Anna, we’re starting without you!” my mom called out again.
“Coming!” I hollered back. I was making my way to the stairs when my eyes trailed off to my mother’s room. Its door was cracked ajar, the darkness past it shadowing the edges of its entrance.
I dug my fingernails into my slacks. What business did I have in there? Just gazing into the voidness of light chilled my skin. That room was the house’s master bedroom, which used to be shared by my mom and father. As far as I knew, she still slept in the king-sized bed he’d upgraded to as an anniversary gift for their marriage.
Suddenly, my legs lurched ahead of me, a careful tiptoe slinking me into the dark bedroom. I gently switched on the room’s lights. My mother’s fragrances and cosmetics took over much of the armoire’s surfaces and the top of the vanity’s mirror. But the musk of my father’s favorite detergent lingered in the air, as well as the picture frames that cemented his presence in the home in a now distant time.
A scrape downstairs in the kitchen jolted my nerves. I needed to get out of there. But as I turned on my heel to sprint outwards, a notebook in my mom’s closet stood out from the corner of my eye.
My dad’s journal.
I took notice of it one day when we were in his car. He always had it by his side, even when we were going out for chores as simple as groceries. I saw him as someone who liked to keep order, which made sense for someone who spent most of his days as a teacher to unruly high school students.
My mom would notice if his journal suddenly disappeared out of plain sight. So, I dug my hands inside, ripping out yellowed pages erratically like my life counted on bringing these entries to light.
I aimed to mostly collect the stickied pages, but after quickly flipping through the journal, I took a few pages that I felt might be of interest later.
My heart thumped as if adrenaline was being artificially pumped through my veins. I swallowed my sputtered breaths as I tucked the stack of papers beneath my blouse and hurried out of my mother’s room.
“Anna!” my mom called again. She was at the middle of the stairwell, and thankfully, her head wasn’t craned to see what room I was exiting.
Quickly switching off the master bedroom light and closing my mother’s door, I glided to the front of my room as if I were cooped in there the whole time.
“The girls insist we have to restart the movie for you so please don’t make me watch the same movie twice.”
I forced a snicker. “Pause it, then. I’ll just grab something from my room and be there in no time.”
Pouting sympathetically, my mom nodded and went back downstairs.
Now that that was over with, I needed to find a place to hide all of these. I felt bad for stealing the pages, but we needed to shed light on the truth of my father’s untimely death. And as Ethan had put it, we needed to start by analyzing his life with magnifying glasses.
