Page 114 of How to Hide in Plain Sight

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“How are you broken?”

I looked down. The tiles swirled. Then, quiet as a whisper: “They aren’t gone.”

“What aren’t gone?”

I shook my head.

“What the hell are you talking about, Eliot?”

“The thoughts. Mythings, as you call them.”

Pause.

“They aren’t gone.”

“They came back?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

I couldn’t respond. I just kept shaking my head, eyes on the tiles.

“Eliot.”

Shake.

“Eliot, look at me.”

I did. I looked up into the aging eyes of my father.

“You can tell me. You can tell me if they came back,” he said.

I swallowed. “Does it count as coming back if they never left in the first place?”

We stared at each other. He looked sooldthen, with his wheelchair and his wisps of blond hair.

“So, can you fix me?” I asked. I could hear the plea in my voice. It sounded pathetic. “Can you? The way you fixed yourself, your addiction? I mean, you did it all yourself, right? No rehab, no nothing. Can you show me how?”

“Eliot, I…”

What the hell am I doing?

“I…” He fiddled with his wheels, pushing them nervously back and forth. “I don’t…”

That man. That poor man. A lifetime flattened beneath the weight of a secret he should never have had to bear. Who, at almost seventy years old, had survived addiction and lost his legs and married three women and fathered six children and escaped death twice. Who probably never wanted me—the last-minute addition to our family, tacked on with fertility’s last breath. It was time to relieve him. It was time.

“No. Dad. Stop.”

“Stop what?”

And then, before I could stop myself: “I know what happened to Henry’s ashes.”

“You…” His face paled. “What?”

“His ashes. You told everyone you scattered them somewhere in the middle of the island. I know that’s not true.”

“You…”

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