Page 267 of Mangled Memory
Do I? No. Not if I’m being honest. I don’t think my father would ever choose to release power over me, even if my memory fully returned. I think he’d choose complete control over one of his children over voluntary love from all three of us.
“So why haven’t you done it… given me my autonomy back? Don’t I deserve my own agency?”
He looks like I punched him. “I’m not controlling anything, Princess. You have full autonomy regardless of what the documents say. I thought you saw that clearly yesterday morning at the bank. Paperwork shows I have guardianship.” He stares down at his left hand before holding it out to show me his wedding ring glinting off the lights. “I’m protecting you, not controlling you. If we go now and restore everything to you, and your father has any hint that that’s been done, he could apply, and we’re in the exact same situation. You’re asking me to save you from one fire only to risk tossing you into another, one in which I can’t protect you. Seamus and I are not flip sides of the same coin. His intentions and mine are very different.”
My brain is in hyperdrive. My dad sought to own me.
Legally.
Financially.
Under complete control.
One hundred percent at his mercy
“So that’s how and why everything came to be. You need to know. Not because I revel in telling you your dad is a dick, but because I want you to know you can trust me.” He pauses and takes a deep pull of the merlot, staring off to the living room before seeming to come to some recognition. Turning back to me, he adds, “But you already do. Something changed yesterday. What was it?”
32
blind, deaf, and dumb
Christian
She blanches of all color, takes my wine glass, and downs a healthy gulp.
“Uh… Well, something, um, just settled in my gut, and I knew. That’s all.” Her index fingers scratch at her thumbnails the whole time she speaks. It’s a tell. One I’ve never mentioned. Her thumbs reveal a whole story. And this one says she’s lying.
“Princess?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably best not to lie to me when we’re talking about trust. Don’t you think?”
She freezes in place, holding her breath. When her shoulders sag and she looks away, I know she’s working through how to tell me something I won’t like. Thank God, I can read her like a book. I’d hate it if she were a good liar.
I lift a hand and use a finger to turn her chin to me. “You can tell me anything.”
She bites her lip, releasing it only when the words come tumbling out. “You were surprised yesterday. You seemed genuinely confused.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So…” She shuts her eyes and rushes on, “That means you were seeing it for the first time.”
“Right. And?” The penny drops.What the fuck?My face must morph because she looks stricken when I call for her. “Princess?”
“Yeah, Honey?”
“Why wouldn’t I have been seeing it for the first time?”
“Uh. Well, if you’d been there before.” Her eyes are darting, and her face is mottling from the merlot that she grabs another glug of before finding her thumbnails to pick at.
“When would I have been there before?” I’m holding onto my temper because I can see the puzzle she laid out for me. Like her photography, it’s not what’s there, it’s what’s missing. It’s what she’s not saying.
“Then.”
“When, Ayla?”
“When this happened.” The whispered admission is mirrored with a flick of her finger toward her temple.
