“It couldn’t have been easy on her. What happened to Uncle Talon.” A lump forms in my throat. Those same things happened to Dale and Donny.
“No, it wasn’t, of course,” Dad says. “But her mental issues started long before then. She was…” He closes his eyes, swallows audibly.
“Dad…?”
His eyes pop open then. “She was raped. Raped by three men when she was sixteen.”
“Oh my God.” I want to throw up. I want to throw up all over my lap. I swallow, swallow, swallow. In some ways, this is worse than the sickeningly sweet smell of decaying human flesh.
“One of them was her half brother, my half uncle.” Dad closes his eyes, inhales, opens his eyes. “So now you see why I use the term half?”
“How could… I don’t understand…”
“I’ve asked myself the same questions over and over,” Dad says. “I don’t have answers, Brock. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s better that I don’t. It’s better not to be able to understand that kind of evil. Much better.”
I gulp again. Swallow back the bile that threatens to slither up my throat. “I suppose you’re right.”
Bam! His fist comes down on the hardwood desk. “You’re damned right I’m right. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, Brock. I admit it. But I stopped trying to understand how people can be so evil long ago.”
“But her brother? Her brother…”
“Her brother. And Uncle Bryce’s father. And Aunt Ruby’s father.”
My jaw drops again.
“Yes. Have you ever noticed that you’ve never heard either Aunt Ruby or Uncle Bryce talk about their fathers?”
“I guess I… I guess I never thought about it. Our family is large, and Uncle Bryce…”
“Uncle Bryce’s father’s name was Tom Simpson, and he was friends with Larry Wade, your grandmother’s half brother. They had another friend as well, whose name was Theodore Matthias—Aunt Ruby’s biological father—but he went by many aliases.”
“And those were the three…”
“Yes. The three who raped your grandmother and sent her into a tailspin when she was only sixteen. They were also the three men who abducted and tortured and abused your uncle Talon.”
I stand then. I grip my hands into fists. “And Dale and Donny?”
“We don’t know. It’s possible, although they all died shortly after Dale and Donny were taken.”
I pace around the office, and then—
“Motherfucker!” My fist goes through the drywall as if it had a mind of its own.
My father doesn’t look even slightly surprised at my outburst. He shouldn’t be. I well remember him spackling up the drywall from his own outbursts when I was a kid. He never laid a hand on Mom, Brad, or me, but the walls took a lot of his rage when he was in one of his red moods.
“Family. Family is always important. That’s what you taught us, Dad. Family over everything. But your uncle, Uncle Bryce’s father, Aunt Ruby’s father. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how people can be so sick.”
“I’ve said it before. It’s better that you don’t understand.”
“Dad, I—”
“Stop. Stop right there. Where you’re going, you have no business going. I’ve seen things. Uncle Talon has seen things in the military. I witnessed a man—Uncle Bryce’s father—shoot himself. I saw his brains spewed all over his kitchen. I can still see it today. That’s something you don’t forget. He did it to avoid being arrested because I found out what he was doing.”
I’m still pacing. Then I look at the hole in the drywall that my fist made. My knuckles are bleeding, but I feel no pain. Not even a slight twinge.
“Why?” I demand. “Why are you laying all of this on me?”
Dad stays calm, though stress is flowing off him in waves. It’s almost visible in its thickness.
“Quid pro quo, Brock,” Dad says. “You asked for this. And if you’re man enough to ask, you’re man enough to hear the answers.”
Man enough to hear the answers.
A grown man.
I told Dad I was a grown man, to stop treating me like a child.
I stay quiet for what seems like an eternity but is only a few minutes. Finally, “Tell me, then. Tell me what all this has to do with our newfound great uncle.” I close my eyes, open them. “Our newfound half great uncle.”
“I don’t know yet, Brock. All I know is that it’s tied together somehow. Uncle Bryce and I have discovered bits and pieces over the years, and we haven’t shared everything with Uncle Talon, Uncle Ryan, and Aunt Marj. Not with your mother or Aunt Jade. Perhaps we were wrong in doing so, but as the two chief officers of the corporation, we just felt…” He sighs, grips his forehead, shoves his hair out of his eyes.
“Damn it, Dad.” I’m ready to put my other fist through his damned skull. “You didn’t want to burden our family because family trumps everything, right? You didn’t want this touching us. Your motives may have been pure, but look at where we are now. All this shit is coming up right now. In the middle of—”