Page 217 of By A Thread
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
When I was a senior in high school, I had a girlfriend who dated me just to meet my mother in hopes that she’d be discovered as a model. My mother didn’t discover her. But my father did.
I walked in on them in the garage the day before my eighteenth birthday. Dad was “showing her the car they’d bought me.” He had her backed into a corner with his hand up her shirt.
At the time, I thought she was as much to blame as he was. I made it so much worse by blaming her. I know better now. I wanted to reach out to her last year. After my father was forcibly removed. After reading the affidavits of his victims. After I paid for his crimes from the trust fund he’d set up for me that I’d never touched.
I finally understood the damage that he and I had inflicted on a seventeen-year-old girl. But I didn’t reach out. I didn’t think I could handle hearing her story because I was still keeping secrets.
It wasn’t the first time I’d walked in on my father and someone who wasn’t my mother. The first time, I was thirteen. He was with a neighbor’s wife on the brand-new couch my mother had ordered from Milan.
He explained that if I told Mom, I would be ruining our family. That if I kept his secret, we’d all stay together. He promised that he’d make amends and he’d never make that mistake again. At the time, I thought he meant he wouldn’t cheat again. I didn’t realize it then, but he meant he’d never make the mistake of getting caught again.
If I had gone to Mom when it happened the first time, my father wouldn’t have been at Label to harass and assault those women. If I had told his secret, none of this would have happened. I’ve never told anyone that, Ally. You’re the first. I wish it was a happier, healthier secret. But a wise, angry woman told me that sharing the good stuff is worthless if you’re not willing to share the bad.
So here’s the bad: I am the reason my father was in a position to prey on and violate women. And I can’t forgive myself for that.
Love,
Dom
71
Ally
As March gave way to April, as winter mellowed into spring, Dominic’s emails kept coming. Every night there was a new one despite the fact that I’d never once responded. And every night I read them all over again from the couch I’d moved back into my dad’s house from storage.
Call me a glutton for punishment. A masochist. A broken-hearted idiot. Take your pick.
My shattered heart bled for the boy who’d been charged with keeping a family together. But the man he’d grown into had done the aforementioned shattering. And while Dominic didn’t know much about sharing, I didn’t know much about forgiving.
I certainly hadn’t forgiven my mother for abandoning us, not to mention taking away my father’s financial security. I hadn’t forgiven the contractor for stealing my money. I hadn’t forgiven Front Desk Deena for taking joy in threatening me with my father’s eviction.
I didn’t know how to forgive. I knew how to move on. And that’s what I was doing.
The only communication Dominic received from me was a weekly check of whatever I could spare to go toward my debt to him. The bastard never cashed them.
Everything sucked. Every single thing.
In so many ways, I was back to the beginning. Back to BD: Before Dominic. I was back to waitressing and bartending gigs and avoiding Front Desk Deena. The only thing different was now I knew what it felt like to have Dominic Russo smile at me. Fuck me. Hold me.
It was a colossal, cosmic joke.
The nursing home came into view ahead, and I did my best to shove down my negativity. Dad didn’t deserve a visit from Gloomy Gail, spreader of depression and angst.
The side door was open—thank the gods of debt collector avoidance and health care workers who sneak outside for smoke breaks—so I let myself in and headed toward the memory ward.
Braden was on the phone at the desk and buzzed me in.
I waved and made a move for the hallway, but he stopped me with a finger in the air. “Yeah, she just walked in.”
Crap. Had Front Desk Deena spotted my surreptitious building breach?I made a frantic slashing motion over my throat. I didn’t have the money owed or the energy required for the woman.
Braden’s toothy grin confused me. “Yep. No problem,” he said, before hanging up.
“What?” I asked, grimly girding my loins for whatever shoe was about to drop on me.
