My father had always been an angry person, but he hid it well behind the twenty-five-year-old scotch and fancy suits. It wasn't until I dropped the bomb that I'd be leaving after graduation that his true colors came out. Apparently, “only poor people with no future and no direction go into the military. Not bright young men from affluent families with a reputation and a name to uphold.”
Little did he realize, I fit perfectly into his “poor and directionless” category. I had no money to my name because I would be damned if I took one penny from him. Ever. Even if I wanted to, he made it perfectly clear he wouldn’t support my frivolous dream of “goofing off on a boat and playing with guns.”
The day I got the results from my SATs, my father popped open a seven thousand dollar bottle of Perrier-Jouet Champagne and called up his good friend, the dean of students at Harvard Law, and asked him what kind of a donation would get me early admission. My future and the direction of my life suddenly began to choke me. I thought about going to work every day wearing a three-piece suit and arguing the innocence of people I knew were far from blameless. I thought about kissing the asses of Circuit and Supreme Court judges every single day like my father did and playing eighteen holes with opposing counsel and joking about the sad, underprivileged people who came to us for help.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't live my life like that. I wouldn't.
“You take one step out of that door, don’t you dare think about coming back here.”
The stern words spoken from the top of the stairs didn't even cause me to falter as I continued to the bottom step. He had made those same threats to me every single day for the past sixty days.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I wouldn’t DREAM of coming back here,” I replied as my steel-toed boots clacked across the marble floor in the foyer, refusing to turn around and look at him.
No matter who or what I was leaving behind, I had to leave―before it broke me.
“Brady! Wait!”
The panicked shout from the library stopped me in my tracks, kept me from the freedom just within my grasp. It was the ONLY voice that could stop me at this point. I dropped my duffel on the floor and turned just as my sixteen-year-old sister threw herself into my arms. With her face buried in my shoulder, she choked back tears and I wrapped my arms around her tightly and held her close.
“It’s okay, Gwenny, it’s okay,” I told her softly as I rubbed my hand against her back.
“Please, don’t leave. Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“I’m just going away for a little while. I will never leave you. I promise.”
But I did leave her. I left and I never looked back. She did everything my parents told her, so in my mind, she became the enemy.
I will never forgive myself for leaving her behind, for walking away and letting that monster get his hooks in her and turn her into someone I hardly recognized. Gwen doesn't blame me. She would never blame me. But I know better. She SHOULD blame me. She should scream and yell and curse at me for walking away from the one person who really, truly loved me. She had come back into my life so I could save her, but she's saved me in more ways than she will ever know.
When she found out how I’d been spending my days and nights before she showed up on my doorstep, she took action. The dead, lifeless eyes that looked up into mine and begged for a place for her and my niece to stay, if only for the night were suddenly filled with determination. For someone who had lived in her own private hell for seven years, she wasn’t afraid to call me out on my bullshit. It only took six little words from her one night three months ago to make me pull my head out of my own ass.
When the fuck did I put a tilt-a-whirl in my house? And when did tilt-a-whirl employees start smacking their riders?
“Brady! You son of a bitch! Wake up! God dammit, wake up!”
Gwen’s screams made the room stop spinning so I could finally focus, but too bad the spinning was now replaced with an ear-splitting headache.
“Jesus Christ! I’m up, I’m up. Stop smacking me,” I