Page 83 of Irreversible

She ponders this for a few minutes, her inevitable question lurking in shadow. “Why was your mother so cruel to you? What excuse could she possibly have?”

“It’s because of the way I was brought into the world,” I tell her, since there’s no reason not to anymore. “I was the constant, enduring symbol of everything that went wrong for her.”

“Did that have something to do with your father?”

“It had everything to do with him.” The boulder keeps rolling. Picking up speed. Tumbling down the cliffs.

“He wasn’t a good man?”

“He was a rapist, Everly.”

Silence.

Seconds upon seconds of empty air.

And finally, “Isaac… I don’t know what to?—”

“It is what it is, Bee. You don’t have to say anything.” What can be said for a man who made a career out of violently destroying other humans? Who got off on it.

“Did you know him?”

“Only by name. Court reports. Convictions. He took his own life in prison while serving thirty counts of sexual assault. There were more victims, undoubtedly, but that was all they could prove.” I don’t tell her that he was so notorious, if I said his name, she’d likely know it. I refuse to give that name power.

I’ve always imagined him serving eternity being eaten by maggots in the pits of Hell.

His legacy should go with him.

As I stare at the chain anchoring me to the floor, the similarity to my feelings about the man who forced me into this world isn’t lost on me. There’s no response from the other side of the wall, and I don’t expect one.

I’d rather there wasn’t.

My palms are slick, the back of my neck sticky. But the tile is cold, even through my jeans. This place is kept fucking frigid, so I don’t think it’s the air temperature. It’s more like?—

Fuck, I could really use a cigarette.

It’s the first time I’ve said any of this out loud. Tanner found out by digging around, as detectives do, but aside from a brief acknowledgment when the bastard died, he knew to leave the subject alone.

Other than that, there was my mother, my stepfather—who was indifferent toward me as long as I wasn’t causing trouble for the family—and Sara.

Now that it’s out, I feel…empty. As empty as this room.

“I didn’t even know who he was, at first, until my mother felt the need to explain what was inherently wrong with me.”

“That’s horrible. No child should have to go through that.”

“They shouldn’t. But that’s life. It’s a crapshoot, and some people roll a shit hand.”

The day it all finally sank in is burned into my memory like it happened yesterday. It was the first time I got suspended from school for fighting, and my mother was livid. She retaliated by making sure I knew how much I’d ruined her life. What a mistake I was.

In the past, when I’d asked about my father, she’d been evasive.

But not that day.

That day, she led me to her room, opened the very bottom dresser drawer where the evidence was hidden, and spread it all out across the bed. The court reports. The testimonies of women who sat on that stand when he was finally brought to justice.

The pictures…

I look too much like him to ever let her forget.

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