Page 214 of Haunt Me

“I had never seen him cry; it was more shocking than him threatening to die, which he had done a few times in the past. It was more shocking than threateningmethatIwould die if I committed the sin of lying. He had done that a lot. All my life. But it no longer worked, even though I believed it and was terrified of it. But I still kept you, even though I was scared. Even though I went to bed every single night thinking that I wouldn’t wake up in the morning—that I’d get struck down in my sleep.”

I breathe slowly, through my nose. Trying to keep it together.

“But that day he cried, and said that it had all been for nothing. That he hadn’t protected me after all. That he had let me slip into the hands of the devil—that was you, by the way. I broke down. Seeing him like this… I cried too, and begged him to forgive me. He destroyed all my flimsy defenses within seconds. The guilt… Gosh, I thought I would drown in it. I couldn’t see a single source of light in the middle of that darkness.”

Her voice trails off, and I bring my face down to hers and kiss her until she comes back to me.

“I want to continue,” she says, “I’m fine.”

She’s not fine, but I nod.

“He knew I was repentant, but he wasn’t sure I would give you up,” she says. “He needed to make sure. So, he threatenedyou, this time. It wasn’t death or eternal damnation for you. None of the usual threats he used on me would do. Yours was practical, real. He said he would have you expelled from your school, and accuse you of attacking me. He had the board of the school in the palm of his hand. He donated huge amounts of money to that school—I knew in an instant that he would do it.”

“He did,” I agree and her eyes fly to my face.

“He did it anyway,” she says slowly, “but back then he promised me he wouldn’t. If I said exactly what he wanted me to say to you. He taught me the words one by one, he schooled me. I memorized every word.”

“And you came into the woods and broke me.”

“I nearly told you the truth when I saw you like that, your face bloodless, your eyes empty. Shattered, Isaiah, you looked shattered. If hell exists, it was seeing you like that.” She shudders. “But the fear of you going to prison was greater: I didn’t know how the world worked at all, and Solomon’s brainwashing won.”

I pull her tightly into me. “He never won,” I swear. “Never. Not that day, not ever.” I need her to agree with me, but she doesn’t. I guess we will have to prove it together, then: that he did not win. “You left me then,” I say, my voice thick with the memory of that despair. “I fought for you with everything I had, but it wasn’t enough. I… I lost you. I thought my life was over.”

“Oh, there was still a lot to come,” she says, smiling sadly. Her eyes are red. “Everything was just starting.” Tears are silently dripping down her cheeks as she looks at me. “I am so sorry you got expelled. I thought I had stopped it—I was so naïve. You got accused and you had to go through all that… I didn’t imagine he would still do it, even though I obeyed him.”

I shiver so violently at the word ‘obeyed’, that she looks scared for a second.

“The school dropped the accusations, and I didn’t care enough to find out why,” I tell her. “That’s why my name never popped up in your trial. But the damage had been done.”

I now know why they dropped them: Solomon was dead, and they had no witness, no proof of anything he’d said. He also proved to be a criminal himself soon after they’d expelled me, so that might have made them think they’d made a slight mistake in treating me this way.

I never got an apology, of course. They just buried me with all of Solomon’s sordid secrets and crimes. And that’s not even his fault. He was gone. It’s all down to cowardly, rich people who don’t care if a single life is destroyed, as long as their school stays above water.

They didn’t care about all the other lives that were destroyed along with mine, like a domino effect.

“I am sorry,” Eden sniffles.

“Don’t youdareapologize right now, Eden. Iwilllose it.”

“Right,” she says, gathering her legs against her chest. She is making herself smaller again. Instinctively going back to that girl in the woods.I hate this. “This next part is going to be hard, Isaiah. I need you to stay calm—well, as calm as you can stay.”

“I read about it on the news,” I say, a muscle ticking in my jaw. “I am not completely unprepared.”

Eden sighs. “You are,” she tells me gently. “I will give you the facts calmly, because I have gone over it in my head and with my doctors so many times it’s stripped of emotion—mostly,” she laughs, a wet, ugly sound, “but it is going to sound a bit brutal to you.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“After Solomon got back home from your school board, where he had made his accusations against you and demanded you get expelled, he locked me up in my room for a full day. I had already hidden my phone, so he couldn’t find it, but that meant that I didn’t have access to it either, while I was in my room. The day before, he had installed a camera outside my window, so that I could no longer sneak out. As soon as he got the call from the school that they were going forth with your expulsion, he let me out of my room. We had a meal together, a rarity, and he looked calm, even though he spoke little. I started to apologize again, hoping we could soon go back to normal, well, ‘normal’ for us, back to ignoring me really. Then he suddenly stood and took me in his arms.”

I inhale sharply.

“I remember it as if it was yesterday. We were in the kitchen. I remember the color of the carpet before it was drenched with blood.” Her gaze zones out for a second, but she snaps herself out of it. “He hugged me for the longest time, tightly, which was strange, because he wasn’t affectionate with me, not like that. He barely even touched me, really. The doctors said I was ‘touch-deprived’ or something. Well, not for the last two years, because I had you. But that day, he hugged me as if he was saying goodbye. Then, he grabbed his gun from the spoon drawer.”

I get dizzy.

“I remember just standing there, in shock. I had never seen a gun before, and that one wasn’t small either. I remember wondering what it was going among the spoons, why he had put it there, why… Then he put it to my temple.”

I flinch. If the news stories mentioned that, I must have blocked it out; or maybe it was too horrific for them to write. At any rate, this is the first time I’m hearing of it. I sputter.

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