Page 104 of Hold On

“I’d like to see you when you were young.”

“Put all that lot back and I’ll go and look.”

Dominic carefully slotted everything back into the box. It made him wonder what was in his, what Col had found to keep that he’d imagined Dominic might want to see.

The photo album was one Ren’s parents had made for his twenty-first birthday. Pictures from every year of his life. A wide-eyed baby smiling in his mother’s arms, crying in his wide-eyed brother’s arms, a toddler clutching a Christmas present, a little boy on skis, an older boy jumping from a boat into the sea, a gawky teenager getting a prize at speech day, Ren on a bike, in a plane, in a pilot’s uniform. A proper life. Dominic felt a rush of sadness.

“Okay now?” Ren asked, then frowned. “It wasn’t the right thing to do, was it? I should have put a chair under the door handle and unzipped you. I’ll save that idea for later.”

Dominic exhaled shakily and they went back downstairs.

No one asked him awkward questions. Ren stayed with him, ate with him and Dominic almost let himself relax. He met Ren’s relations, his parents’ friends, he watched Ren play croquet and tried not to flinch when Will dropped down next to him.

“I’m surprised you admitted you’ve just come out of prison.”

“If you hadn’t known, would you have liked me better?”

“Yes.”

Dominic gave a quiet chuckle. “But I did spend almost sixteen years locked up in one place or another. I am what I am. I’m not trying to be something I’m not.”

“They don’t know what you did.”

His heart thumped. “I’m surprised you’ve not told them.”

“I thought about it. I’m still thinking about it.”

“Don’t spoil your father’s birthday.”

“Room for me?” Edward came up and shuffled into the space between Will and Dominic. “Looks like Ren is winning.”

Dominic didn’t understand the game beyond the basics of getting the ball through the hoop.

“Find us a drink please, Will,” Edward asked.

Dominic could almost hear thetake your timethat followed the request.

“Prison,” Edward said quietly.

Dominic wondered if everyone knew, if Greg had spread the word around his guests. Or Will had, despite what he’d said.

“Did you get what you deserved?” Edward asked.

“At first, I did. Then I didn’t.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t waste my time thinking about it.” Not entirely true. He’d thought about it a lot at first. Not now, but sometimes resentment and bitterness crept in for what might have been. They’d reappeared since he’d begun worrying about Kilic and others getting hurt, fear that he’d brought something bad with him from prison. A demon out of hell. “I killed my parents,” he said quietly, somehow wanting to say it before Edward asked or told him.

“Deliberately?”

The old man’s tone told Dominic he’d known. “Yes. It was deliberate.”

“And you killed someone else.”

“A fellow prisoner in self-defence. He came at me with a knife. His death was an accident.” Dominic stared across the lawn at Ren, watched how he concentrated before he took a shot. He was competitive and Dominic wasn’t. “But I wasn’t believed. The lies told by others were.”

“That seems…unfair.”

---