Page 94 of Keepsake

Logan talked to her cousin the day after. Sofia was smart, she made sure David wasn’t registered as the kids’ father on their birth certificates. She knew what was happening and even though the news he had no parental rights made Logan breathe in peace, it was just another nail in my coffin.

I hooked a fist into my opponent's face, my bare knuckles ending the fight once and for all as he stumbled back and fell into himself.

The air in my lungs was heavy. It didn’t help.

None of this helped.

I beat him up to a pulp, and the words of Dash saying how Sofia told him to never disagree with David were still there, hammering in my head.

The people cheered for El Toro, their voices loud, but the ones in my head were louder.

I stood there, legs apart, breathing deeply as I dripped sweat from my torso and blood from my knuckles. And still, in the end, Sofia’s life ended tragically because of me.

I couldn’t find any other reason. I couldn’t see anything else but my baby sister enduring years of domestic abuse while all of us ignored the situation.

For days I looked for signs, for reasons, for moments during a Christmas dinner when she looked different or could have asked for help.

By the third day, I started to wonder if he was physically abusing her as well as the kids. I burst in Mamá’s house and took her pictures to check for bruises we might have missed at the time.

Refusing to tell her what I was doing, I could barely look at my mother’s face. Mamá was against Logan, and so ready to make her a villain because of her own ego.

I could see it perfectly now. Logan had everything my parents couldn’t give Sofia. She was so scared of money that she never asked herself if Logan was happy living like that.

Logan wanted a family. She found in Sofia someone to love her, since her own parents were missing. But Mamá denied her when she judged a child by her parent’s wallet.

Once the pictures were insufficient, and my memory didn’t show anything to confirm Sophia was in trouble, when my skin crawled every moment of every day, and I spent nights watching over the city instead of sleeping…

When everything failed, I called Paddy and scheduled a fight.

And now this failed, too.

Paddy’s clammy hand reached my wrist and pulled up for a victory stance. I let him do it to trigger the crowd into a wild frenzy, El Toro being chanted in every corner.

I wasn’t hurt, but I was in my forties, and my muscles were pulled tight with tension. Pulling my wrist out of Paddy’s hand, I stepped away, barely looking at the man I left beaten in the middle of the ring.

Pulling the cords apart, I left them behind, and the crowd parted for me. Maybe it was my blood-shot eyes, my pissed off attitude, or the fact I just destroyed a giant of a man in less than five minutes. None of them dared to talk to me.

They called my name, they celebrated me. They never dared to touch me.

I parted the seas like fucking Moses and entered the locker room at once, slamming the door behind me. My things went straight to a duffle, a T-shirt stretched over my naked torso, and I put on my working boots.

I couldn’t bother to shower at the gym. I was just going straight to my apartment. I would use the time to grab a few things before returning to Logan’s.

Cursing, I looked down at my knuckles, knowing I’d find them tore apart. Stepping to the sink, I washed my hands, watching the blood run down the drain, controlling my breathing for the hundredth time this week.

And now what? I didn’t have in me to ask Dash for details. A fucking coward, that was what I was, trying to understand a mystery I didn’t really want to solve.

I couldn’t hear from Dash’s lips how fucked up their lives were, so I never asked. I just looked for proof that Sofia hid well enough.

That was the worst of my truths. Every time I looked for evidence, I looked for absolution. I wanted someone to tell me it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have helped.

Bile rose as I leaned over the sink, my hands clean but the cuts still open.

Death kept happening. Every day when I opened my eyes, I lost her all over again.

The scene outside was almost the same as I left. But instead of calling my name, they were cheering for whoever was fighting next. I didn’t bother to look at the ring to check, or to find Paddy and ask how much money we had made in this fiasco.

Avoiding everyone once again, I negotiated the crowd. As I approached the exit, my eyes fixed on the prize, something moved.

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