Page 33 of Siccitas

Darby’s eyes.

I remember seeing Darby’s bones in the well, and I take a deep breath. “Yes, I want to stay for a while. I want to help Daddy take care of you... if he doesn’t mind.”

Skylar looks at Luke, who gives her a big smile. “When we’re done eating dinner, you guys can go play outside while Jocelyn and I work out the details and see if it can work.”

“Okay, Daddy,” the children chorus.

Luke takes two slices of pizza and puts them on Skylar’s plate, then gives Richter two slices, then me, and then finally takes some for himself.

“Eat, Jocelyn.” Luke smiles at me, as though this was just a family dinner.

As though he didn’t just rape me.

The anger is festering inside of me. The first moment I get, I’m going to take him out, and take over.

The Greene family is going through a revolution.

I just want to protect the kids from it as much as possible.

“So, you’re going to be our mom?” Skylar asks.

“We’ll see. Be quiet and eat your food,” Luke says. “Then you can go play.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she whispers.

I hate that he scolds her, as though he has a right to. She looks kind of like him, from a side angle.Fuck.

He fucked Darby.

He raped her.

He’s just continuing the breeding of the Greene family, as though it isn’t the sickest thing ever.

I think of Levon, nailed to the wall. I wonder if he’s pulled himself free yet. He doesn’t seem tough, probably raised in a softer, nicer part of our family.

Is there such a thing?

A softer, nicer Greene family?

Maybe. I dreamt of one once. Maybe before, when I was younger. When Dalton and I were growing up.

Somewhere we would be loved, cared for, and treated kindly. Not the way he treated us.

“Eat, Jocelyn.”

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