Page 39 of No One Can Know

“That’s ridiculous,” Emma says. She knows she should shut up. She knows she’s making it worse for herself, but she can’t stop. “Why can’t I just go to school where I want and come home on the holidays like everyone else?”

“You need to speak to your elders with respect,” her father says.

“Respect? Why should I respect you?” she asks.

“Because I am your father,” he says, and his voice is dangerous, but for once she doesn’t heed the warning.

“Why should I respect a father who cheats on my mother?” she demands.

The slap is hard enough it sets her staggering, lights popping in front of her eyes. It isn’t her father who moved but her mother, hand still out in front of her, fury in her eyes. “Don’t you dare speak to your father that way,” she says.

Emma clutches her face, letting out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re mad atme? What about him? I’m telling the truth. He cheated on you. He cheats on you all the time. He—”

“My business is none of your concern,” her father says, rising from his chair.

She looks between them and realizes her mistake. “You already knew?” she asks.

Her mother’s face is still; there’s the smallest of tremors, starting at the edge of her pinky finger, stealing up the side of her hand. She notices, covers that hand with its opposite, as if to hide it. She takes in a small breath. A flutter of her eyelids, a tremble of her lip—and her voice steady as she says, “We’re done here.”

Emma laughs, because that’s the only thing left to do. The only sane thing in the face of the absurdity of it all. “You’re pathetic,” she says.“This is all so fucking pathetic. I can’t believe you’d just stand there knowing what he did.”

“Irene,” her father says, “Emma and I need to have a conversation in private.”

Irene stalks out of the room without a word, and Emma is alone with her father. Her father, who has been quiet and calm for too long.

“We have let you get away with too much,” her father says. “You think that you can live under our roof and disrespect us. It’s time you learned that actions have consequences.”

Emma stands, righteousness crumbling into dread. Her father remains in his chair. She looks beyond him to the door, a quick flick of the eyes, a brief fantasy of running. She knows it wouldn’t do any good.

He rises out of his chair. She steels herself because she knows what is coming, but it doesn’t hurt less for it. One quick strike to her stomach, doubling her over, and then he wraps her hair around his fist, yanking her up, bending her back. He spins her around as he does so, so her back is to him. Her scalp hurts, hairs at the edges tearing free. He stares straight ahead and holds her against him.

“You need to learn respect. Clearly, your mother hasn’t done enough to instill that in you. I’ve let it slide for far too long, but that’s over.”

She wants to shut her eyes, but she knows better. It will be over quickly, she tells herself. He does not leave marks where they can be seen, he does not lose control. He does not strike them out of anger, he tells them. It is not punishment but a lesson.

Two more blows, at her side below her ribs, carefully calibrated. Pain, not damage. A horrid wheeze in her throat as she tries to take a breath.

He releases her. He leaves her there, still wheezing slightly, and walks out of the room. She collapses onto the ground, hand on her side where the pain throbs, trying to breathe, hating the tears that leak from her eyes. She isn’t crying because she feels sorry for herself, though that’s what he’ll say if he sees it. She isn’t crying out of sadness or fear—it’s a purely physical response. Because she isn’t sad or afraid. She’s angry.

She sits seething on the ground as his footsteps move up the stairs. She doesn’t move until she hears the sound of canvas tearing.

She runs for the stairs.

The utility knife in her mother’s hands has a dull gray handle, wrapped in weathered tape. Emma keeps it in the top drawer of her desk for trimming paper and slicing away dried gobs of paint. Her mother wields it with brusque efficiency, opening a gash across the canvas in front of her, a yawning crescent of nothing splitting Gabriel’s face.

Her mother whirls, face pale, lips clamped together. Her rage is genteel. It is contained. The marks on the canvas, three of them, are made with surgical precision to obliterate the image with the least amount of violence.

Emma screams. She throws herself forward. She’s not sure what she’s saying as she slams her open hands against her mother’s chest, shoving at her. Strong arms wrap around her waist and pull her back. She claws at her father’s arms, twisting in his grip, and manages to turn.

“Emma, calm down,” her mother says, but she won’t, she can’t, she rakes a hand at her father’s face—

The punch comes without warning, a quick pop to her eye. She thuds backward on her ass, stars sparking in her vision. The impact makes her teeth click together and pain jolt through her skull. There is suddenly silence.

Her father shakes his hand. “That’s quite enough of that,” he says. He flexes his fingers. Emma touches a disbelieving hand to her eye and finds her cheekbone exquisitely tender. She looks at her fingertips, as if expecting to find blood, but of course there’s none. “Get up.”

Her mother is breathing heavily, her eyes bright and a look on her face that might be regret or fear. Emma pushes herself to her feet. Her father looks down at her desk. One of the other portfolio pieces is there, a charcoal piece depicting a girl in the park, crouching down with a stick in one hand, which she is using to prod a dead bird. Casually, he picks it up and tears it in half.

This time, Emma doesn’t move. She stands, shaking and silent, ashe bends down to pick up the portfolio that holds the rest of her work. Each one, he neatly tears into four pieces. Then he hands her the pile. Only the painting of Juliette at her piano remains, propped up in the corner. Emma doesn’t cry. Crying always makes things worse.

---