Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,84

given such a hateful child. He’d let her spit her venom, glare at me, and then stomp off. He’d sit me down and ask me why I was doing those things, encouraging me to really look into myself and take stock of who I was. He was the one that made me write it down. All those ugly thoughts. Everything I was embarrassed about, I wondered about, my darkest fantasies, which included my mother dying in a car crash, leaving my father and I in peace.

And that was how I started. How everything started. My father. The straight-laced Republican colonel, telling me to write down about my dreams of my mother dying, was the reason I was the most prominent and depraved horror writers of the generation.

He read every single one of my books, before anyone else. He was my beta reader. As Stephen King would say, my Constant Reader. I’d send him the hard copy of my novel, it would be returned to me within forty-eight hours, red pen notes in the margins. Not much on storyline, content. He was satisfied with my talent, it seemed. He would point out where I’d gotten facts wrong, mostly on weapons or fights. Sometimes on religious history, or lore connected to the occult and supernatural creatures. My father was obsessed with all things supernatural. Witches. Vampires. Demons. My mother had made him stow his books in his office, away from the neighborhood women, to protect her precious image. And my father’s image. He was a straight-laced, God-fearing, gun-owning colonel in the U.S. Army. What would the world think if he read pagan books?

Which was pretty much my mother’s opinions on my books.

My father didn’t fight my mother on much. Or anything. Even when her punishments or her treatments toward me went too far, bordered on abusive, he watched. Carefully, to be sure. But silently. He let her do it all. Because he knew I could handle it all. That she could not handle him trying to fight her on it.

I didn’t resent him for it. He loved my mother. It was an ugly love. But he committed to her. And he was doing his best.

But he fought her on one single thing.

That my books were to be displayed, at eye level, front and center, on the bookshelves that filled their living room. The room where the men took their whisky after dinner. Where Mom’s book club took their tea.

He would not let my mother hide me away like the black sheep of the family. My notes in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, they were all framed, cluttering up the walls.

My father was proud of me and he would not be silent about that.

Until he forgot who he was. Who the author of these books was.

I still sent him my first drafts. I couldn’t know whether my mother even passed them off to him or threw them straight in the trash because I no longer got them back. No more red pen. No more corrections. No more short, stilted, but proud notes at the end.

I had all of those manuscripts. They were at Emily’s. My place. I carried them with me everywhere. The only scrap of sentimentality I had in me was connected to those stacks of paper that contained my father.

I still dedicated every single book I wrote to him. No explanation to my readers. No insight. They got enough from me. They didn’t need that too.

I glanced up to Saint, realizing how long I’d been lost in my head. Long enough for his drink to be finished. He hadn’t moved otherwise. Didn’t seem bored or irritated. He seemed to be sucking it in. Like my quiet, mournful, contemplation was feeding him.

“I don’t see him anymore,” I replied. “I don’t go home. There’s no reason to. Not with a mad father and a painfully sane mother.”

I shuddered at the thought, of what that house would be like now.

Saint didn’t speak. No more questions. Just more waiting.

“Does that make me a bad person?” I asked, never having uttered that question in my life. “Not visiting my dying father, even if he doesn’t know me?”

I wanted to slice right up my own arm with my steak knife just so I could crawl out of my skin. That’s what would be more comfortable than being vulnerable right now, skinning myself.

Saint didn’t give me a respite, kind eyes, or empty placations. He gave me a cold stare and my question silent consideration. “Maybe,” he