Page 71 of Razors & Ruin

“Leave us alone, Currer! Just go. I’ll tell Gerald some lie, but I want you gone.”

“I will never abandon you and our child. It’s you, me, and Johanna, always.”

“You’re insane! Look at her! Her blonde hair, her bright blue eyes! Can’t you see she’s?—”

My eyes fly open again, cutting off the fractured memory.

“Of course she was delighted,” I say. “We were in love, and she was having my baby. Then that bastard husband of hers put his hands around her throat and took everything that mattered to me.”

“You cannot go home to God without accepting the truth of your sins, my son, so I accept my fate in service of your salvation,” Sommers says. “I may die at your hands tonight, but know this.”

He holds my gaze, his foggy eyes calm and still. “Johanna is not yours. She was the dearly beloved daughter of Veronica and her husband.”

No. It can’t be.

And yet, even as I resist, the million shattered fragments of the past come together like a mirror breaking in reverse.

I’m standing there once more, coldly lucid, mercilessly clear, and Veronica is speaking.

“We can go anywhere, Veronica. Anywhere.”

Her expression is glacial, but her wild eyes are steeped in terror. Johanna fusses in her arms, her cornflower blues trained on her mother’s face.

“I don’t want to,” she says. “Dammit, Currer. I told you—Gerald and I, we want to sort things out.”

“He doesn’t love you like I do!” I yell, my hands twitching with fury. Why won’t this bitch love me right?

“No bad thing! You frighten me for crying out loud. I was naive, but not anymore. It’s over.”

No way is she running out on me. I know the child isn’t mine—she’s the image of her mother but with Gerald’s fair hair and fine nose. Not a drop of me sullies her bloodline.

But I don’t fucking care.

“You don’t get to decide, Veronica. Give me the baby.”

“If you so much as touch Johanna, I’ll kill you myself.”

She puts the baby in the bassinet and picks up a razor from the table, warding me off. “Get away from us! She’s not yours; she will never be yours!”

The sheer injustice of it boils over in my heart, and I fly at her, snatching the weapon and tossing it aside.

My hands close around her throat, and I search her face for the love I deserve, but there’s nothing to see. Not anymore.

Her jaw slackens, and the world slows to a crawl, smothered by a red mist of rage.

I hear Gerald’s roar of agony behind me. “Veronica! Sweet Christ, Currer, why?”

I let her go, watching with detached fascination as she folds neatly to the ground, her face a livid purple.

What have I done?

Gerald turns on his heel to run. I snatch up the razor and give chase, the Devil himself powering me.

The room surges back into focus, and the blade in my hand clatters to the ground.

I killed them both.

All these years, my mind protected me from what I’d done, shrouded my memory in falsehoods and half-truths.

---