Page 107 of Falling Too Late

A loud ringing started in my ears, and I felt the room teeter. I turned away from Alex. I could hear the shutter in my head. The whirl of the polaroid’s printing.

The boxes were Kevin’s.

“Oh god,” I whispered. Horrified that anything from those years still existed. I thought they had been destroyed in the fire. I never imagined he had kept them elsewhere. I hadn’t said anything about them to anyone because I didn’t want anyone to find them.

I thought I was done with this. I thought that there wasn’t any more evidence of what he had done to me.

I felt Alex’s hand on my back, and I shoved him away.

“NO!” My voice echoed in the warehouse. I put my hand up. “Just. . .give me a minute.”

I tried to push the invading images away. The memory of the pain ripping through my body. The smell of his sweat on me, the feel of his hot breath in my ear.

Relax, baby girl.

I swallowed hard. “Have you. . .opened them?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see. . .everything?” My voice shook.

“Yes.”

I raised my face to the ceiling, taking in a deep breath. I could feel the angry tears welling up.

“Tell me what you want me to do, Wren, and I’ll do it.” His voice was soft.

I walked up to him and took the pocket knife on his hip. I grabbed a box and opened it up. I recognized the dress immediately. It was orange with black ribbon detail. It had been one of my father’s favorites; he had called mepumpkinwhenever I wore it. I pushed the box to the side and opened another one. There were the Polaroids. I couldn’t look at them. I could still feel everything that Kevin did to my body—I didn’t need to see it in my nightmares too.

I moved to another box, and then another, until my entire childhood was splayed out in front of me. I had moved on from this part of my life. I went to therapy, and I got through this. I didn’t want any of this to ever show up in my path again.

“Is this everything?”

Alex was at my side then. “Yeah. This was everything. The only reason it was found was because no one closed out his bank account and it was on auto payments.”

I nodded, moving to the last box. I pulled out child drawings, not looking them over. I already knew what they were. The images depicted my dead father and my mom with her new boyfriend. I crumpled the pages, tossing them one by one on the pile I created.

Without even looking at me, Alex moved closer to the mess, pulling out a small bottle and squirting it on everything till it ran out. He tossed the empty tin down.

He knew what I wanted to do.

I thought he might stop me. Tell me this wasn’t the place for it, but he reached into his pocket, pulled out a Zippo, and ignited it.

I took the lighter and tossed it on the pile. The flames ate away at the path he’d created with the lighter fluid. Slowly, the fire engulfed everything. Alex tenderly wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me farther from the flames.

There was something cathartic about watching my worst memories turn to ash. Disintegrating into nothing.

No longer existing anywhere but inside my head.

I used to pretend it’d never happened, but not anymore. It happened. I was raped. I was raped hundreds of times, and it was done violently. Sometimes, I could still feel the phantom pains from it. The flames danced and licked higher, the smoke billowed up and threatened to choke me before it funneled out of the building from the roof vents.

It was cleansing.

We stayed until it was only smoldering. Before leaving, Alex walked over to the burned mess and stomped the remaining embers out. I watched as his foot dragged the soot along the darkened concrete.

It would probably stain this spot forever.

We left the warehouse unaware that it had been storming. The wind whipped through the ash trees and pushed my car all over the road. Alex held my hand on the center console the whole way back to my place.

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