Page 167 of Unwrapping Deviance

Stupid fools.

All of them.

Us.

Even me for believing...

There’s a sickness in the Carr blood. I think it came from Dad. There was always something behind his mask that mirrored the look on Wyatt’s face when he’d shove Lucy down the stairs just to see her cry. The same look on Boyd’s face when he’d rip the wings off a butterfly. The same look on Dirk’s face when he’d so happen to find the neighbor’s cat dead, little body broken.

Lucy has always been better at hiding it. She, unlike the others, can almost pass for normal. She knows how to blend and adapt. To mimic normal human behavior.

Like Dad.

But there’s nothing behind their eyes.

No light.

No soul, as Mom had whispered once. Only once. With a tremor in her voice before she’d pressed her lips together.

I don’t think I’m like them. I never liked hurting small creatures. I have never raised my hand to Clem. Never would. But the seed is there, growing and planting roots. It’s why I made damn sure I ended the Carr name with me. A week after Wyatt’s death, I booked my appointment and got it sealed shut. Never told a soul. Not even Clem. Can’t. She wants babies. She’s good with them, too. She’d have made an amazing mama. But I can’t and I can’t tell her just how rotten my seed is ‘cuz she might leave, and I’d die without her.

I pocket my phone and watch the brothers.

The reason everything bad happened in my life.

No. That’s not true. They’d always been bad. Got worse the older we got. Dad got heavy handed with the sermons. With Mom. Started filling Wyatt’s head that it was his job to make sure his sister stayed pure for God, and Wyatt loved his job.

He’d beat Lucy to an inch of her life, but never left a mark. It was almost an art performance to see how far he could torture her before she broke. He thrived on her pain.

And Lucy ... Lucy opened her legs for anyone who would have her. The whole town. Married or not. And every Sunday, she was in the front pew, head bowed, with a bow in her hair and buttoned up to the neck.

The day Dad caught her with those boys, the world tilted a little on its axel. Wyatt lost his mind. Nearly killed Lucy because he beat her so bad. And Dad just stood there with his book foldedagainst his bony chest and his solemn expression and watched. I had to step in. I had to pull Wyatt off her.

“Tell me they forced you! Tell me you didn’t want the vile things they did to you!”he kept screaming over her wails.

Lucy did. She told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and he ran with it.

They forced her. They made her do the things she was caught doing.

By then, the whole town had heard about her disgrace. The widely known secret was hanging on the proverbial clothing line for all to see and Dad had to do God’s work by reminding the town that even the strongest can be led into temptation. Lucy, sweet, pure, adored Lucy was forced by the devil to commit unholy acts.

The devils being the MacAllister brothers.

The boys who lost their mother in a disgraceful and shameful manner. The outcast who did drugs and his brother committing vile acts together under the eyes of God.

Wyatt would not stand for it.

They ruined his little sister.

They had to be stopped.

“James?”

I blink out of my chasm of memories to face my sister’s angelic expression. The perfectly crafted mask.

How did she not suffocate behind there?

“Are you going to help?” she asks, holding out a map of the surrounding forest.

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