Page 291 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
My focus slips from the clown to the wooden door and my parents on the other side—the people who raised and love me.
I’m Dad’s princess.
There is no way they were involved. They couldn’t be. All those appeals. All the books that earned them money to find us—none of it ever worked.
Oh, my god. I stop breathing again, this time, for long and painful seconds, the air stalling in my lungs. The pain I feelinside escapes through my eyes, each tear swiftly racing to my hands. I shake my head, sinking to the ground.
My blood stains the carpet.
This can’t be happening.
A quick glance behind me, and the clown smiles, gnarly teeth on a hideous face, standing at the bottom of the stairs.
With stiff movements, I crawl back to the door, away from him and his vicious expression. I clutch the blade tighter.
“I will hurt you if you come up here,” I whisper.
I place my ear to the wood again.
A trembling hand claws at the carpet, bleeding all over it. I can’t worry about the argument it’ll cause right now. I need something soft and comforting.
“I wish we could go back in time. Make it all right.”
“But we can’t, Gen.”
“They are old enough now. We can come clean, and that bastard can finally get what he deserves.” The voice sounds something like Mom, and yet it’s morphing into something else.
The clown on the stairs is two steps closer. My eyes shift his way, my ear still on the door.
“Prison isn’t easy.” A masculine voice comes from behind the wood.
What happened to Dad?
Why doesn’t he sound like Dad?
The clown moves over the midway point.
“I know, but this guilt is killing me. Seeing Ambrose, everything has come back.”
The clown continues his way up, his smile growing, his body growing.
“We thought they’d be safe. I thought he was a good man. He had a great reputation.”
“What good man makes offers like he did? We fucked up. And I can’t live like this anymore.”
The clown stands at the top of the stairs, towering above the gargoyle to his side. The image before me looks like something from a horror movie as I sit in his shadow.
A bloody glove points to the door. “Listen,” he hisses through bloody teeth.
I nod, agreeing with the monster.
“We sent our kids to live in that hellhole just to have money to decorate this place. We ruined their lives.”
My uninjured hand wraps around the doorknob, suffocating cherubs to match the feeling inside me.
Tears fall down my cheeks as I climb to my feet.
The door swings open, with me in the center, ready to confront my parents, but their familiar faces aren’t the ones I see on the bed beneath frilly sheets and half a dozen pillows.
