I have multiple notes before getting this chapter underway. I prefer to keep extensive ANs throughout this story to a minimum, but here goes, and apologies.
Note 1: The number of chapters has been reduced by one (for now, and may be reduced by another in the later chapters). I'm happy to say that I've been able to condense/combine the contents of some chapters/move some necessary things around and tighten things. Does this make Arc 2 shorter, moving us one chapter closer to Spencer's rescue, or does it make Arc 3 shorter? You'll find out soon.
Note 2: I know this chapter looks long but it's very dialogue heavy, so. Well it is long . . . enjoy.
Note 3: I do find it more and more difficult to update these chapters in a timely manner despite them being complete, because the editing process is intense and ongoing. Deciding what wasn't properly expanded, or what can be left out so you readers can make your own conclusions about what's happening, or coming to the harrowing conclusion that what I've written might need to be scrapped/recrafted; the emotional weight and responsibility of these scenes and making sure that they're worked out satisfactorily—this is a lot.
So I continue to thank you and ask for your patience as I get these chapters to a point where I'm satisfied that what I'm telling is deep and challenging. I continue to thank you for reading, for commenting, kudosing, bookmarking, favoriting, etc. If I delay in updating, it's because I'm constantly agonizing, doing abundant research, and editing—to the very last second—to make sure that what's expressed is what I've meant to express and that it's not disappointing.
So on that note, getting all the right tones for this chapter was a huge hurdle and challenge, but I, um, hope you 'enjoy' it and please know that there is light at the end of this very, very dark tunnel.
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DATE UNKNOWN | LOCATION UNKNOWN
It was by the ritualistic nature of his captivity that he could gauge how long he'd been here, give or take three or four days. The detox Saturdays helped, too.
It was these last seven or so weeks that shifted the pendulum in ways he wished it hadn't.
Over three and a half months, he was sure. Such a short amount of time that changed the landscape of his entire life. About, well, about 2424 hours. Slightly longer than the time spent nurturing a relationship with Maeve.
He had rare days or moments of absolute clarity and hated them, since they reminded him of this conflicting state he was in. They were sharp and crisp enough to tell him that this was wrong. He wasn't always content being like this. Today was such a day of clarity.
In this moment, while he was relieved to be freshened up, it didn't abate the soreness of his knees, the stinging of his cheek, or the tender flesh of his neck. It was hours—hours—past, and the man was still sitting on the bed with his hand wrapped just above his ankle. The thumb curled or twitched every few minutes. He'd wondered on occasion if he'd fallen asleep, had pulled his leg toward himself, but the man tightened his grasp each time without fail before loosening it again.
When the rape had first started, he told the man that he wanted to help him. That had been self-serving at that time, a way to delay what was inevitable. But with time, he wondered if he might understand better, if he might be able to—to help him heal over a wound.
He was sure that he had considerable insight of the woman. She mourned the loss of her son, and it just might have driven her to madness, obsession, and—and a transgressive possessiveness. He wasn't blind. The shifts were not just himself or his male captor. It caused him to wonder if she, too, might have dealt with other trauma in her life aside from the death—or murder—of her son.
These two, it seemed, had drawn to each other like inevitable forces, blazing binary stars that would eventually collide.
The man, though, was a mercurial sort—a man as equally melancholy as his wife, but under a different filter.
He supposed that monsters had parts of them that were human. Or, rather, that the darker side of humans was entirely too complex and mottled.
The hand moved, tapped at his leg above the restraint, and the mattress shifted. Before the man could pull away, Spencer curled his body and grabbed at his captor's sleeve. He could have just tapped the back of his hand to get his attention, and an unhealthy fear of reprimand urged him to pull his hand back.
"I'm sorry." And then, with a groan, he sat up, wincing in discomfort. A hand fell to his shoulder. "Please, wait," he said, hands shaking, not knowing how his request might be met. "Please, stay. I'd"—he paused—"like to—can we have a conversation? Please."
Mere moments later, there was a pressure against his knee, and he knew that the man was sitting in front of him. His leg was tapped twice.
He thought, maybe, that at long last it was time to broach the subject.
"When did you two begin doing this? Why did you risk taking me, knowing what I do?"
The knee was still pressed against his. There was no immediate tap-tap to signal that he should lift his hands to receive an answer. After many seconds passed in this manner, he shrank back, swallowing painfully.
Had he offended him?
"There's no need for any punishment."
Instead, a hand tapped his. Spencer leaned forward again and covered the man's hand with his. "It pleases my wife," he was told. "It makes her . . ."
Spencer waited. And then:
"Better."
"Better," Spencer repeated, to which he was given affirmation with a nodding fist. "How?" Upon waiting for an answer again, he then said, "I would like to know, please."
"Up here—"
And his hand was drawn to his own head. While it didn't truly answer his questions, he moved on. "Because your son died."
The response was a simple Yes.
"Was he actually sick?"
"Yes."
"How? What with?"
"He was just sick."
"Did it make him lose his hearing? His sight?"
There was a pause. "Maybe, maybe not."
Spencer puffed a breath, but he continued anyway. "How old was he? When he died?"
Another pause. "Too young."
"How long was he sick?"
"For too long."
The man wasn't giving him much to work with, and he wasn't sure if the willful vagueness was a mockery or was to evade his own hurt. He suspected it might be the latter. Long was already a subjective length of time. But too long and too young?
"And you and your wife . . . you've turned me into your son. What does —-— mean?"
The switch was immediate. "No," he said emphatically, spelling the word. "You're not my son. He's dead."
Spencer swallowed and tried to bury the unwanted sting of the dismissive words.
"Don't ask any more questions about him. You won't mention him again."
He should back away, lest this become hostile. But there was something there. And he had . . . he was starting to draw conclusions about all of this.
"I understand. I'm sorry about your son." He genuinely meant it. "I'm sorry that he died."
The man just gave his leg a single, gentle clap. But he wasn't ending the conversation, and Spencer wished to continue. He wiped a hand on his thigh, rubbing, nervous.
And then he lifted his hands. "I've lost someone. Not long before . . . before this."
There was no reaction, but the hand remained.
His face heated and his eyes pricked. It was all too quickly that the memory—that of Maeve's dying declaration, of the crack of the gun, the too-quick pierce of the bullet into her skull, of her body falling alongside Diane's—flashed before his eyes.
"I loved her. I . . . would have spent the rest of my life with her."
You would kill yourself for her?
"I would have died for her." The force of the pain that came from within him—clutching his heart and his bowels—was sudden and sharp, and he was doubled over in inexplicable agony in the next moment, chest to thighs.
A calloused hand braced against the back of his neck.
He cried, feeling that loss claw at him, wrench at his ankles and drag him down. Yes, he would rather have taken her place, died for her, let her exist with his loss rather than he exist with hers. He knew it then and was no less convinced of it now. He would have let that bullet pierce his brain and ended it all for her life. She would have been spared. In turn, he wouldn't have to suffer this medley of internal conflict in this place.
A thumb glided across his skin at his neck. It was long before he calmed, but the hand had stayed. Soon, though, he lifted his head and wiped at his nose with his sleeve. He shook his head and barked a mirthless laugh.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—you don't care about this."
A hand tapped against his leg. It then tapped at his hands.
"Was that it?" he was asked.
There went another pang at the callous disregard for his suffering. Why should he have expected anything else?
So he retrained his focus to where he'd wanted to start. Yes, he'd just been explicitly told not to speak of their son, but . . .
"I know you didn't hurt your son. But I also know your son was an accident."
The hand slapped his hand twice, and the gestures were aborted, jutting. "You seem to have trouble listening."
Spencer splayed his hands in peaceful surrender before he plowed on. "I said I wouldn't speak of your son again, but I understand more now. I do. I'm sorry, but I understand. What I mean is . . . it was a . . ." He thought on what proper language to use, then puffed out a frustrated breath when he realized there just wasn't one. "Isolated event. So I don't think you—the rape. I don't think you did this in the beginning of all this."
The knee shifted, but the man didn't initiate a response apart from replacing his hand.
His hand rubbed again, and he opened another door. "One of your—someone who came before me—you—" He straightened his mouth into a grim line and just aimed to be more direct. "When your wife was taking care of one of your victims, this was also the first time you were able to have an erection again. With him."
The knee shifted.
"Why did you rape him? The first one you did this to?" With nary an answer, he dove deep. "How did it feel to know that you could only become erect again like this? Raping a man? Is that why you strangle us?"
Why is this okay with your wife he wanted to ask. He didn't.
That hand stayed, twitched.
"Dysfunction can be connected to trauma. I'm sure you understand this. You're an intelligent person. I know you must know this. And I think—I know—"
Another twitch.
"—this is what happened to you. Someone—" He stopped. His hands tightened on his pants. Apprehensive, he lifted them again. "Someone hurt you."
'You've been hurt.'
Again, the man didn't answer him, but the fingers, which had been so still upon his right thigh, moved. He knew he was reaching the man, but to what capacity he didn't know. He didn't know if the aim of his mental blows were direct hits, or if he was off by a few degrees. He had his way in, though. He had his attention.
There was no rage to calm.
The man would have lashed out by now if he had antagonized the situation, he was sure. He wasn't an unreasonable person. So he peeled back a little further with a desire to extract.
"Was it your father? Did he hurt you?"
If it weren't for the knee pressed against his or the hand on his thigh, Spencer would believe the man to be gone, for he still wasn't responding.
"Was it your mother?"
There was still no answer. He knew it wasn't the man's mother, but to throw it out as suggestion was to incite. To incite was, again, to extract. The man loved his own wife. He loved her enough that despite everything wrong with her, he stayed with her. There was a valiance in that—a twisted one, he would admit.
But.
Spencer's own father had left, where this man had stayed. Yet, this man was also complicit in illicit abductions, rapes, and murders alongside that sick wife.
Which was the greater evil? The thought alone drudged up an uncomfortable conversation, and uncomfortable ensuing thoughts.
It was this attachment to his wife that slotted other pieces together. It felt like old cogs starting to run more smoothly again. Old cogs and old habits. Old habits like running his mouth, the very thing that often landed him a few times in the boys bathroom with his head dunked in a toilet bowl or with him shoved into a locker or having a teacher put him in timeout because he said honest things to the boys and girls and they tattled on him and called him mean.
In his captivity, in these passing weeks where it meant his life, he learned with more urgency to be silent. But his brain went on autopilot, and he couldn't stop the flow of words from pouring out his mouth in a low whisper while everything frayed around him to nonexistence.
"Mm. An aversion to the suggestion that he hurts children and the disfavor he exhibits if I—if someone even maligns his son. And a paternal desire. He . . . transposes the abuse and self-loathing he suffered into devotion for that child in order to correct wrongs done directly to him from a paternal figure. He ties his identity to that of his son. This is textbook."
As he often did when propelling toward a conclusion, he spoke in a low undertone, words unleashed by a mind lost putting the pieces of a puzzle together. His hand curled over his mouth; his voice cracked and rumbled with disuse. He tilted his head, darted his tongue out to lick his lips.
"No. Is this too obvious? It isn't enough. His mother plays a role in this, too, because his devotion to his wife is unwavering. That has to reflect somehow on how he feels about his own mother. Is this in the face of abandonment? Was the mother also abused? Afraid and so she left the situation?"
Spencer shook his head, trying to resettle the cogs.
"Mm. But she didn't take her son with her. Either there was something undesirable about the son or she couldn't take him or she died? Was killed? Either way, her absence—whether by force, willfully, or through death—leaves the son with feelings of inadequacy, abandonment, and without that proper motherly nurturing."
Spencer swallowed. This was uncanny, some of the similarities. His heart hurt at this understanding. Abandonment was crippling.
"Abandonment, or feelings of abandonment, is the underbelly of this all, whether deliberate or situational. The death of a child—a son—is an abandonment that robs him of his parentage and identity and whatever shred of innocence he perceives he had left despite his trauma. Did he overcompensate in his own role as a father? I suspect it. And then his wife. Beyond the loss of his son—something that ties him to her— that loss robs her of the sole thing that she probably has her own identity tied up with, and it drives her into a psychotic break. He's now emotionally obligated to do what he can to keep her rather than be emotionally abandoned by her, too. And she to him. This is codependency."
It hit him like a light brightening a darkened room.
"Oh, his relationship with his wife just might be Oedipal. She's the mother he craves. A lover and yet a mother he lost. The mother of his son, the very extension and reflection of himself. They must have met during a critical moment before there was a maturation of cognitive development—before a firm sense of identity and emotional stability could be developed. Mm. If there's this mix of codependency and this oedipal complex, the violence could be due to envy."
This was—there were no other words for this. This was—
His lip ticked into a sobering smile. "Huh. Eerie. Trag—"
A hand tightened around the brace, and his head was given a rough shake with the fist tightened at the roots of whatever hairs were gripped. The panic—the immediate regret for having made these reflections in the very face of his captor—lanced through him.
He arched his body to alleviate the ache but was forced to lay on his side. His left hand crossed and was plastered over the man's wrist in a desperate hold, and his right curled around the man's arm. His captor lingered with his hold, and Spencer dared not move, cradling, enveloping. His breaths raced and puffed, jerking as his heart thudded within.
The button was pushed, and he could blame no one but himself for this retaliation.
The hand shifted, though. There was no longer pressure, no tightening; the fingers were loose, but they remained, pillowing. And then they drummed.
Spencer's hand stayed ever still. A retaliation against his vocalization, against his uninhibited observation—this was justified. He waited for it, and every passing second wherein nothing happened coiled tighter and tighter around him.
And so he curled his loose fingers over the man's hand.
If the man wasn't censuring him—if he wasn't hurting him—he wouldn't give him a reason to. And in the face of this—
Oxytocin is self-perpetuating and is a way for the body to reward itself.
Receiving touch fosters empathy, a sense of nurturing. Hugging and other forms of nonsexual touching causes the brain to release oxytocin, which stimulates the release of other hormones, such as dopamine and serotonin, while reducing stress-induced hormones, such as cortisol and norepinephrine.
So extend it, yes, but perhaps—maybe—logically—well, no two objects touched without exerting an equal and opposite reaction. To give was to receive, and over time he received much, so to give much—to have an interchange—might perpetuate a continuous cycle of—
A thumb brushed the flesh of his bruised and cheek under the leather in a soft, repetitive motion, and Spencer's stomach pinched at the mild gesture. It wasn't the first time the man touched him in this manner—the neck at times, or his thigh or hip or belly; his jaw, once—but it was the first in which it was his face being touched like this, and it was the sentiment attached to this moment that—
Don't do this.
And yet.
He found that, yes, he was reciprocating the same thumbing gesture on the hand he gripped—that he was tilting his face into the hand. It was the same hand that had earlier gripped around the flesh of the back of his neck while he was raped, slapped him again and again when he was done, burrowed into his side in a fist, slithered around his neck afterwards to strangle him, and the same hand that had just moments before tightened into his hair and shook him without compunction.
But it was the same hand that rested on his neck when he wept over Maeve—the same that indulged his desire for mental stimulation these past few weeks.
It was an imbalance, a lever that pivoted between black and white, mottled in-between with shades of grey.
'Do I contradict myself?'
Letters, words, lines of text glowed before his eyes, accompanied by a fading, gossamer-thin voice that might be his mother's poetic cadences.
'I am large, I contain multitudes.'
Something sweltered behind his eyes and stung the bridge of his nose.
Why am I like this?
Any benign touch from these two was devoured like a starved, abused dog savoring scraps of food to tide him over. Was this what he had become?
The hand shifted lower upon his face to his jaw. His breath hitched when the calloused thumb lingered on his lip. There was a flitting hesitation in it—one that betrayed the severe grips often used to exert the explicit possession this man had over his victim. Soon, warm breath wisped upon his skin like summer's heat: uncomfortably stifling but inviting, invigorating, soured with that hint of beer.
It was a proximity that left no room for doubt—this man in this moment had leaned forward and was now mapping Spencer's face wherever he could with whatever he could: the tip of his nose hovering over and brushing against his cheek, against his jaw; a grazing flicker of dry lips shadowing over him; the thick, woolly down of his skimming brows; eyelids resting against his cheek, lashes fluttering there.
It was that damn tickle. It recalled that displaced tactile sensation Spencer sometimes felt, the one that reminded him of the pleasurable, innocent warmth he felt for them. The somatosensory cortex. The neural processing. The welcome and unwelcomed, liked and unliked sensation.
He whimpered. This—as much as the violence—alarmed him, struck against him in places he hated to peer. His underbelly fluttered.
His lips moved of their own volition to let out a whisper of sound, a soft Please. His right hand uncurled from the man's arm to push against the face near his own. Upon touching it, though, his hand stilled. Bristly, short hairs pressed against his fingertips, and there was heat and a swell of flesh underneath. He didn't know what to make of it, what he was doing. But the man shifted his face underneath his hand, tilted further into it, breathed into it.
No. Don't do this. That voice again.
He pulled away.
His curled left hand had never left the man's, though, and it, too, moved. His fingers brushed over the scarring that he had caused. But then it went to the thumb. He had never noticed it before, but the man's left thumb, near its base, was hardened and fibrous, like he had scarring, both on the outside and on the inside. He explored it, trying to see in his mind's eye what could have possibly caused it. It was distinct and seemed older.
But before he could inspect it much further, the man's hand moved down again, wrapping around the column of his neck, and it tightened; the thumb, again, moved over his skin. The pad of the digit pressed under his chin, and Spencer stretched his neck back, breathing in a tremulous breath.
Oh god. There would be punishment.
The trembling began, full-bodied and overpowering. But the flutter, too, came again, fleeting; he shifted back, curling his knees to quell it, but it sat there and crawled lower. At last, his hands dislodged from the man's person and moved in front of his face upon the bed, shaking.
He whispered. "There doesn't have to be punishment."
The man loosened his hand again and tapped the side of his neck with his thumb twice—that ever-calming micro-gesture of the usual hand-clap of approval. It was—he hadn't expected it.
The hand then wedged palm-up between his face and the mattress to tug him upright.
Tap tap.
He brought his hands up.
"Be careful," the man warned. "I know you're smart. So don't be stupid. Watch what you say," he was instructed.
Spencer nodded. "I understand."
"And shut your mouth."
He nodded again. "I understand."
The man then gave him a solid clap on his thigh—the action, he knew, as good as giving him commendation, that wordless Good job that seemed to lately placate his disquiet. He wasn't in trouble. And it seemed like the man was still indulging him. The lines of communication were still open.
Spencer knew it for what it was. This man was intrigued by it all.
He, on the other hand, felt very touched by the man, and he began rubbing his palms on his thighs, swiping them on the fabric to remove the sensations of his contours and replace them with prickly friction, forgetting with a purposeful stubbornness what just happened and realigning his thinking on what his task had been before.
He wondered if he might angle his vision just a little lower, to the child the man once was. He could do that. This man had a traumatic childhood, and so had he. So. Establish a parallel.
"My father left when I was young, and my mother was sick. When I was in—" Spencer tilted his head, checking his mental catalogue. No, he didn't know the sign for the word. Or he must have forgotten it.
He could have elected to fingerspell what he wanted to say and move on, but, perhaps, to recalibrate that delineation of captor and captive—to set the man as being above him, return his position to that of the dominant one in the face of having just made himself vulnerable in front of his victim—he should show deference.
Avoid that violence.
"I'm unsure of how to say high school."
The man then gave him the word, and he repeated it. The man clapped his leg once in affirmation.
"Thank you."
Another clap to his leg.
He would parse it down: "When I was in high school, some students took my clothes, tied me up, and laughed at me. No one helped me. I had to—to free myself?" He knew that how he expressed it wasn't right, but the man tapped his leg in understanding.
"By the time I arrived home it was late at night. But my mother was—she was sick that night, so she couldn't . . . assist me."
The man's hand twitched upon his leg. There it was. Empathy.
"A student took off my shirt and touched me." He made a deliberate choice to be vague. "And when I was still young in—how do I say university?" He knew how to say it this time.
The man told him, and he thanked him. The hand returned to his knee.
"A student attacked me in university, too." He didn't elaborate, but he was sure that the man got the inference.
He felt the hand curl over his knee. Good. Empathy.
"I understand what it's like to be hurt. I know what it's like. You're not—"
The man tapped his hand, and he raised them.
"Your mother is sick," the man said.
Of all the things—that was what he had taken out of that? Did he not pay attention to the assaults he dealt with?
Despite his frustration, Spencer nodded.
"Diana."
Spencer swallowed, tongue dry, and his breath stopped. Yes, okay. Stay calm. This is derailment.
He already knew that the man was capable of obtaining his background information. He could easily be googled, yes, and there were articles, blurbs, current and old. If one dug enough, his parents' names wouldn't be all too difficult to unravel with the older articles.
And so, the man, he could—he could find her too. At Bennington. He could hurt her. He could—
No. Stop.
Instead of reacting in a way that the man may have wanted—in fear, as he had done when Henry's well-being was—he could try to use this information to his advantage and appeal to the man's obvious emotional vulnerability.
"She's still sick. I'm the only one who takes care of her properly. Please. She needs me."
The man didn't answer him for a while. And then he did.
"You have a new mother."
Spencer tried to swallow something down, and his mother's visage flickered in front of him, parts of her consumed by the void before him.
"You say that she's my mother."
"Yes."
"Yet I'm not your son. You don't view me as yours."
"No."
"What am I to you, then? Who do I represent?"
He swallowed and waited. He waited and waited.
"Who?"
"Nothing. No one."
He would have been delusional if he expected anything more. But with that dismissal came another sting, and he refused to dwell on it.
"Your wife needs help. She's sick, just like my mother. I can get her that help. I can help her if—"
Tap tap. "I told you to watch what you say."
Spencer's hands clenched around the other man's and he nodded.
"You won't speak about my wife in that manner again. You'll regret it. I'm not telling you again. Do you understand?"
Spencer sucked in a breath and nodded. His hand flicked up. "I understand, I understand."
The man clapped his leg. Spencer was relentless, though, and he knew the next thing he said would be pointless. But it wasn't uncommon for captors to give their victims earned freedoms. Some were able to go outside, get jobs, go to school in different districts due to a trust that had been built between them and their captors. He wouldn't even ask for that much.
"Until you took me, I used to write a letter to my mother every day. If I can write her a letter to let her know I'm well. I won't tell her about you two. You can even write it for me. I . . . I trust that you would write it. Please. I've been very cooperative. She's sick. All I want is to let her know that I'm—"
"No. And don't ask again. Ever. And not to my wife."
Like a struck match, he was suddenly emboldened with a small, flickering flame, and a foreign rage filled him. He expressed the next words with clipped gestures, mouth tightening to a straight and grim line. He'd thought he might have earned some rapport with these people.
"You're going to just kill me here. You'll kill me here like the others before me. Like Noah."
There was no answer.
"Did you threaten him like you did with me? Did you threaten to hurt his mother or Sonja until he was like me?"
Again, there was no answer. He tilted his head, licked his lips, and defiantly tasted the imminence of his own death on his tongue, whispering. "Will you tell me when? Will you tell me when you're going to kill me?"
What irrational, inane part of him thought this would end any differently? What delusion had he entertained? Hadn't the man said it when the rapes started? That the woman wouldn't let him leave? That they would kill him? Why should he have thought otherwise? It should be soon, then. If they were following any timeline similar to Noah's, then it should be days—only days from now. If that was the case, then—
He tucked his thumbs under his chin and steepled his shaking hands, face tucked between his fingers. He breathed and sat straight, hands moving.
"I know how you think. I study people like you and your wife. I know how you think. Once you've both had your fun with me, once you—you tire of me"—again, that sting—"you'll get rid of me just like the others. You just said that I mean nothing to you. I'm no one. So, when? You don't care for someone that's disposable to you."
Tap tap.
Swallowing, Spencer lifted his hands, waited, and the man tucked his hands under.
"You're not the same. We're keeping you."
Oh.
Oh.
Spencer sucked in a thin breath, pulling his hands away. They clenched over his belly at that damned fluttering. Such a statement was dreadful, but at its fringes were . . . so many things. So many.
Faces flashed before his eyes. There were others. If they were still looking—
Could he dare to hope? He had to continue behaving. Be better. He had to. They might still find him. He just had to hold on.
But by killing him, it would mean he wouldn't have to face this—
But that meant not being here and—
No.
Beyond the flash of faces was that curiosity that he just couldn't sate. What gave him the confidence before that he might be set apart from the others?
"How am I not the same? Why?"
There was no answer.
"I would like to know. How am I different? Why?"
This was what he had wanted in the beginning—for them to become fixated on him. Hadn't that been the point? For them to become so attached to him that they didn't want to kill him? For him to manipulate them into keeping him? So why was he questioning it?
But he knew. He knew why he questioned it. He could see it, and he refused to acknowledge it.
"Am I different because you both . . ."
He couldn't continue. He couldn't. His hands curled against his belly.
She said it often enough. But he wanted him to say it. Oh, how he wanted him to say it.
But an answer didn't come directly, no. Instead, the tap tap on his hand. "Lie down," he was told. "On your back."
Oh, no. He'd asked too many questions. He said something wrong.
He was to be punished now. He just knew it. Without delay, he sought out of whatever this would become, hands moving in a flurry.
"There's no need for punishment. I won't ask you anything else. No more questions. I'm sorry. I just wanted to—I just wanted—"
To what?
To what?
His self-loathing compounded. This had been for no other purpose than to fulfill that natural inclination to know more, to dig, to better understand.
To connect.
Tap tap. "On your back." And a hand pushed at his shoulder.
But he reacted, circling his hand on his chest. "I'm sorry. We don't have to talk anymore. Or we can . . . we can play chess—"
He should have known better than to antagonize the man. Something he had done or said had turned the conversation, tipped the scale. He should have known better.
But there was nothing for it. No, instead, the man eased him down onto his back.
He couldn't. He didn't know what—if this was about to happen, then it was an aberration. Where was the beer? The drugs?
He—he needed them.
In a short order, the weight of the man sitting—kneeling—astride his thighs was upon him. Neither of their clothes were removed or eased down. Spencer trembled in dreadful confusion.
It went on in the same manner for seconds into minutes.
The mounting trepidation was torturous. Upon Spencer shifting in discomfort, the man shifted as well, and in the next moment there was a hand planted on his covered groin. His hands and mouth moved faster than the cogs in his brain did. His fingers wrapped around the man's wrist, and the words pushed out:
"You're not like this. You're not—"
The other hand gripped around his neck, but nothing happened. There was no heavy rubbing or fondling below, and the fingers around his neck didn't squeeze, but rather dragged down to his chest. The other hand remained on his groin.
The man had never touched him here. He nearly came to trust that this would never happen to him. Not with him. But perhaps he should have absolutely trusted that this would happen, the escalation. But all this time, it hadn't so, yes—
Trust.
He willed his limbs not to shake, but they did.
He couldn't do this. Drift. He needed to drift into the fog. Escape, yes. Or, where was she?
That barrier lifted, and his mind was filled with blinding white, and he saw her, and she beckoned him to step forward so that she could seal him in and protect him. He did, and he was purged of all sensation and all thought, and there he stayed with her.
He still wouldn't take her hand. Instead, he remembered.
—
It was a conversation Spencer had with Maeve in the very beginning of November. It wasn't a debate centered around something innocuous, like they once had about EE Cummings. It wasn't light and sweet. It was a layered, loaded, complicated conversation. He later came to unfurl it—and regretted his reaction to Maeve. He hadn't followed up with her as he said he would, but within just another two days, they'd erupted into overtures of apologies. And from then on, they did speak more often.
Spencer sighed into the phone. "Hey, Maeve."
"Hi Sp—something's wrong, Spencer," Maeve responded, voice tinged with worry.
Spencer didn't know how she did it. In her own words, she could always sense when something was wrong, and in his mere Hey, Maeve greeting, she knew that something was weighing on him.
She had an emotional intelligence he could only hope to have.
"Please tell me, Spence."
He'd just received a new letter from his father earlier this morning when he went to retrieve his mail from his post office box. He'd never told Maeve about them. But today he did, sparing her details of their contents. She listened with sympathy and patience, and she didn't interrupt him.
At the end of it all, though, he concluded with a sarcastic lilt, "So, yeah, my father—he wrote me a note when he left. That's exactly what Gideon did, too, when he left. And he thinks that writing these letters will solve or absolve him of anything."
"Oh, you're not keeping track of disappointments at all." It seemed like Maeve was going for a little levity to lift his spirits.
He didn't answer her, and she cleared her throat.
"May I ask you a question?"
"Of course, Maeve. Ask me anything."
She paused, then seemed to take great care in expressing her next words. "You said that Jason Gideon wrote you a letter."
"Yes."
"Just the one."
"Yes."
"Did he ever try to communicate with you afterwards?"
"No."
"But your father has now written you multiple letters."
"Yes."
"Mm. I . . . I see."
"What do you see?"
"Oh, no, I'm not sure what I see," she countered softly. "I'm just thinking . . ."
"About?"
"Well. Did . . . did your parents get a divorce or separate? Erm, was there ever a termination of parental rights? You—you don't have to answer these if you're not inclined to."
"It's fine," he said. "No—to any of those things."
"Hmm," she hummed. She was walking. Pacing slowly. He could hear it, even on the other end of the line.
"I know when something's on your mind, too, Maeve. What is it?"
"Just thinking is all . . ." And she paused. "Um . . . is it alright if I—may I challenge your perspective, Spencer? Because I find it very difficult to wrap my mind about . . . well, a lot of things regarding your father. You've told me so little, which I can understand. But this letter part is . . . fascinating."
"Fascinating?"
"Only if it's okay for me to do so, Spence."
This was a thing they'd been doing for a couple of months now. I'm going to challenge your perspective, they sometimes said to each other before introducing concepts contrary to the other's own beliefs. Just healthy discourse. A little debate. It was never introduced with a hesitant May I but always with an assured I'm going to. And it was never during these heavier, more personal conversations.
"Mm. Yes," he answered, clearing his throat. "Yeah, you can."
"I'm going to preface this, Spencer, by suggesting again that therapy is a helpful option. I know you don't want me to say this. I know this is something you don't want to hear. But they can offer you neutral support and fresh perspectives. I'd be glad to support that if you wish to take that avenue, okay?"
He gave a dismissive hum.
"Okay, so . . . you said that you began taking care of the finances just weeks after your father left."
"Yes."
"So where exactly did your financial livelihood come from? How does a ten-year-old boy manage to garner enough wage for years to survive that situation before going off to college? And during college, how did that twelve-year old boy manage to continue making enough to ensure that his mother could continue to survive? How exactly?"
Spencer blinked. This had been a point of contention when he was young, and something that he'd had to accept despite his hurt and a wounded pride. There had been a point, yes, very soon after his father left where he began looking into his mother's finances. He had access to her bank cards. But his parents had both separate and shared joint accounts. It seemed that the joint account wasn't ever closed, and it seemed there was no removal of a joint account holder.
He was very watchful of the funds within that joint account.
By this time, his mother hadn't worked for a few years and wasn't tenured. What remained in her three accounts—checking, savings, and joint—would—in making calculations on where he could cut expenses and make more financially sound choices like collecting coupons—last for about eight months before payments would lapse.
People knew his father left. They knew and they found it strange. But days passed into a week, two weeks, and Spencer realized how little people seemed to worry, realized that his father may have downplayed just how sick his wife was to the public. Whether it was because of stigma or for other reasons entirely, people seemed not to have realized the severity of her sickness.
Spencer adopted that same inclination his father had, it seemed, because it wasn't long before he, too, downplayed it. His reasons were more practical, and it was the why he became fearful of the CPS. Unexpected visits often heightened his mother's paranoia, and heightened paranoia led to outbursts. If he gave anyone reason to call CPS on them and they visited unexpectedly, it wouldn't matter if his mother gave them permission to enter the household or not; the check-in would reveal that she was unfit to be taking care of her son.
And if people came to know he was almost exclusively taking care of her and not the other way around, they would have deemed the situation as neglect, and he and his mother would have become separated. He'd seen it happen to a few fellow students over time and learned well how to avoid that same problem.
So avoid it altogether, give people no reason to find this new situation to be a problem. It was a grand ruse that was threatened a couple of times due to his behavior in school after the two extreme bouts of bullying and assault.
He also realized how little his mother left the house before this. When he was much younger, they went to the park or to the bookstores or to museums or to the library together. But as time passed, as she became more ill, these outings dwindled. She often seemed content to be at home.
When his father left, he understood that that contentment was no such thing; it was the lows of her medley of medications or her grand delusions of still having a classroom of students to teach literature.
To people outside, then, Diana Reid was already not often seen.
So in that same vein, he was fine to take on the additional tasks of doing the shopping, mowing the front and back lawn, and taking care of other dire needs of the household. He was responsible before all this and had handled small chores in stride—cleaning his dishes after he ate, taking out the trash, dusting, vacuuming or occasional mopping, doing his own laundry.
He hadn't realized until his father left just the degree of work needed to be done while caring for a mother who often lacked the energy or motivation to do much of anything. It was tiring, but he could accomplish balancing it all. He became diligent about cooking, but it wasn't long before dinners became frozen meals and packed lunches became prepacked lunches—just to devote more time during the day for other things. He wondered if it had always been that way. How had he overlooked this?
And when it all first started, she was cooperative with taking her medication, which led to bouts of malaise, depression, aversions to things such as light, nausea, uncooperativeness, and general disinterest in anything.
His guidance counselor pulled him into his office one day, thinking he needed to talk, but developmentally he wasn't guided by his conscience. He only revealed what his mother and teachers told him was acceptable, what they needed to hear.
We'll be okay, baby was the reassurance that his mother gave him, and he mirrored that response. You're smart and resourceful, Spencer. You'll be fine. You just keep doing well in this class was the reassurance from his teachers, and he mirrored that too.
And so, they thought he was fine. They thought the two were fine.
But financially, he worried. Everyone was convinced that there was something, someway that he was receiving financial assistance. They assumed that his father was paying alimony. He heard the whispers.
He'd weighed his financial options and the avenues he might need to take to supplement the remaining amount. He thought, perhaps, that he might have to start going to casinos and counting cards, but at ten, he wasn't at any passable age to pretend to be 21. It was years until he took that avenue.
So he thought, perhaps, that he might have to find an establishment that wouldn't question him based on his age and offer them his services for bookkeeping, cleaning, or something else under the table. Any such establishment might be mired in illegalities, though, and could potentially be dangerous if he were caught. He couldn't take that kind of risk.
Even at that tender age—and this was before any of his terrible high school experiences—he knew that people used sex for money and dismissed the thought entirely after a bout of thought. The potential pitfalls that he might become involved with—drugs, addiction, disease, pimping, and the possibility of being abducted at his age and trafficked—were too terrifying to imagine from what he knew. At the other end was the possibility of being caught by law enforcement, having the situation at home looked at more carefully, and then, again, that fear of separation.
He tried dog walking and learned very quickly that he and dogs didn't click well. And it wasn't financially practical.
By the first month, he settled on math, English, ESL tutoring, and editing work for a fee.
Despite this, he knew it wouldn't quite be enough.
But three months later when the mail came in and he looked at the bank statements, he saw it. More money in that joint account.
There were still no divorce or legal separation papers. This wasn't alimony.
During the bouts of his mother's lucidity, they discussed it once. Once.
After months of this gone repeated, it was just mutually understood that there was no discussion of it to be had.
It was in the same manner that he feigned ignorance whenever he would pick up his mother's prescriptions at the pharmacy and Oh, hon, this is fully covered by her insurance—already been paid.
It wasn't ever supposed to be fully covered.
Hurt—grief—collided with anger and a wounded pride. Another letter, a call—any of these would be better than covering over his absence by putting money into an account or making such payments.
His digging didn't go very far at all. There was no traceable address attached to these deposits. His mother had said it, hadn't she? That he was weak. Tack on cowardly, too. His father was a damned coward. And he had half a mind to close that joint account, but he wasn't an idiot. He would pretend the source of this money didn't exist and still work his damnedest at tutoring.
It was always enough money for him and his mother—not just to scrape by, but to survive on an additional one or two hundred beyond their needs.
He hated it. He absolutely hated it, and it continued for months and years. And then.
He didn't care to know why this pattern stopped when he was sixteen after he graduated with a baccalaureate. In later retrospection, though, after Penelope revealed to him that his father kept tabs on him, he supposed it made sense—his father must have felt, by this time, that his son was doing just fine without him. This continued to perpetuate those conflicting feelings of anger and grief.
And yet, the joke was on his father; he was earning a decent wage as a tutor and editor by that time. Soon, he would be a research assistant, too.
And due to his frugal nature, he had learned to save and collect interest in his mother's savings account. He and his mother could survive on what was saved and what he made for at least another year or so, and when he turned eighteen, he would . . . he would implement major changes.
So, no, he didn't need him.
"Spencer? Spencer are you there? I can—we can end this conversation if you want and move on to something el—"
"There was a joint account," he gritted out.
"Oh. I . . . I really can't imagine the emotions this brings up, knowing that he didn't write or call, but that somewhere he was doing this. I'm sure it must have caused further emotional conflict."
Spencer cleared his throat.
"Spencer? Are—are you— "
"I'm fine." His voice was tight.
Spencer swallowed.
"But no one—no law—at least not a human law, forced him to do this for you two, right? The financial assistance? There was no legal obligation he was under to continue providing you with any monetary assistance."
Not a human law. She was talking about the law of the heart or the law unto oneself. They had a debate about the concept and the subject of altruism weeks ago.
Her voice was but a whisper, and it was more to herself than him. "Hm. So he didn't take you from your mother by force, but—confoundingly—he didn't remove you from that situation. Yet at this point, he provided financial assistance. Hm. But having you leave your home would have made it the—third time for you to move? And before all this, he protected your mother from being implicated in a crime that—if found out—could've ended disfavorably because there was a personal motivation involved on your mother's end, and honestly the confession from Gary Brendan Michaels was a forced confession."
Maeve knew all of it. She knew of Gary Brendan Michaels and more. Since September, barring a few more harrowing details of his past, there was little of his life that she didn't know at this point. He hadn't intended to unload so much on her, and she didn't push for darker details, but she was a sympathetic listener who mostly ever did just that—listened—and offered support. The only way to look at his life now was with her, prospectively, so, yes, it was only proper that she understood what baggage she was getting involved with so she could back away if she wanted to.
She never did—back away, that was.
"So . . . why would your father do all this?"
He rolled his eyes and gave a dismissive answer. "I wouldn't know, Maeve."
"So he's still not told you these things in his letters. He's not explained himself away or given you excuses. Not even the day he left and wrote you a letter. His only excuse was that he didn't know how to take care of you anymore and that he'd lost confidence, right?"
"Right. Yeah. This is what he told me a few years ago."
"Hm."
"Hm?" he repeated.
"I just—I find that curious is all."
"Him not explaining everything to me in these letters?"
"Um, well, Spencer, endless excuses beget insincerity. It becomes disingenuous. A person who stops making excuses, on the other hand, assumes responsibility for what they've done. The letters aren't dredging up the complexities of the past but are establishing a connection of where things are now. Some people want to address the past for their own healing, and some don't or can't."
Spencer clenched his teeth together.
Maeve sighed. "I don't think your father doesn't love you, Spencer."
"Yeah? My mother told him to at least take me with him if only for a few days. He shouldn't have left in the first place. He didn't need to leave. But for a few days he couldn't take me?"
"He shouldn't have left—you're not wrong. Honestly, I have so many thoughts, but I'm hesitant to share them. I'm not a professional. I just dabble in these things."
"You're not, but you asked if you could challenge my perspective," he responded with nary a quiver in his voice. And then he asserted, "So do it."
"Mm. Alright then. Just. I hate that he left you behind in that environment even though she loves you, Spencer. But I don't think he left you or your mother out of spite. And I don't want to say these words, but I . . . he wouldn't have . . . I just . . . Oh, god. Spence. I don't want to say it."
"Whatever you intend to say, I was still a child, Maeve. He abandoned a ten-year-old child and a sick wife."
"I know, Spencer. I know you were a child, and I know he did these things, and I'm sorry. My heart breaks for you, truly. I'm just—the angles—I'm looking at this—okay. But. Okay. Um."
He could tell that she was having difficulty holding her tongue. She wasn't often short for words. "Say it, Maeve. Continue," Spencer urged.
"Well, I've been given information from someone who's shared sparse details with me. I don't expect you to tell me everything, Spencer, but I draw my own conclusions with the information I'm given and from my own reserve of knowledge. I just can't wrap my mind around why your father felt it was safe or right for you to remain with your sick mother, but my own reserve of knowledge and what you've revealed to me about your childhood with and without him tells me that something robbed him of a sense of being able to be a proper husband or parent, and I think it's . . . I think it's in the same exact manner that something has robbed you of the sense that you're an adequate son.
"It's the letters, Spencer. You write your mother letters. Your father writes you letters. He provided for you financially. You're consumed by guilt for what you did for your mother. It was brave, Spencer, to do that and not run away. But in the situation where you did something difficult but right, guilt still consumes you. Wouldn't you think your father has the same capacity for that guilt if he knows that what he did was wrong?"
He rocked on his toes. "Hm. Well, there's no comparison, Maeve. I called my mother every day after I went to college. And when she was committed to an institution, I wrote her a letter every day. I still do. You know what that tells me, Maeve? Not visiting? Not calling? Not coming back? My father said it himself that he had no confidence in himself anymore." And then his voice shook. "He was a coward, and weak, just like my mother said."
"Oh, yes, I remember you saying your mother said that to him."
"Yep."
"When you were young."
"Yeah."
"In front of you."
"Yes, Maeve."
"I see."
"You see?"
"Out of curiosity, was that an isolated incident or . . ."
"No. She'd said it a few times."
"In front of you."
"Yes."
"And his response was?"
He shrugged. "Nothing. The you're right that one time was pretty standard across the board."
"Ah."
"You seem to have something you want to say Maeve. You can say it."
Maeve sighed again. "Spencer, I think this might be upsetting you and I think it might be—I regret having said anything at all."
"I value your opinion Maeve. I don't have to agree. But I promise you, I can handle it."
Maeve paused. And then: "I'm pulling myself from taking any sides. I'm going to remove the lens for a moment, then—that of you being a child. You were forced to become an adult at ten years old, but before then you were a child. The same way in which you imagined that a real boy that was murdered was just an imaginary friend, your recollection of your childhood is probably riddled with memories that were improperly interpreted. For example, the day your father left, he wanted to dismiss you from the room when your mother was trying to keep him from leaving. Your mother wanted you to stay. Who was right in that situation?"
He wrinkled his nose. "I would've been able to handle it. I was able to."
There was a pause. "You may have thought you were mature enough at that age to handle the conversation, but there's a correct approach when discussing threats to a child's emotional stability and sense of security. There are certain times when a young adolescent shouldn't be a part of certain discussions, no matter how mature or intelligent they are. Discretion needs to be used, and when it's the right time, the parent discusses the situation with the child. He wasn't treating you like a child. He was handling a situation as it should have been handled—between him and your mother and not in front of you."
Spencer swallowed.
"You said that when you went to your room later, that's when you found the letter. It would have been better that you and he talked, yes, but he gave you something that allowed him to choose his words carefully to you."
Emily had essentially said the same words to him years ago about the letter Jason wrote to him and drew that parallel of how his father had done the same thing.
"Again, I'm not condoning his actions. What I'm trying to highlight is that everything you remember was ultimately through the lens of a child despite your intelligence. Recollections in adulthood or after such life-altering events always highlight things that you may not have understood the full scope of or had full details on when you were a child. Is this making sense?"
Things such as the difficulty in juggling his mother's sickness and trying to abate the days when his own patience ran thin with her, major household chores, and cooking, none of which he ever had to worry over before his father left because someone handled all of it when his mother wasn't doing well.
Someone handled it.
"From what I've come to understand, being in a prolonged environment with someone who's mentally ill inevitably causes mental decline for partners, children, other family members, and caretakers. This is fact. Coping with a spouse or family member with a mental disorder means that you may need to make difficult decisions about what you're willing to tolerate and how to set boundaries on their destructive behavior. Otherwise, you become an enabler or even fall into a cycle of unintentional emotional abuse.
"Without her medication, which she often refused to take when it was just the two of you, your mother had some bouts where she could be verbally and physically abrasive. Before your father left, she hit you once, didn't she? Then as time passed after your father left, it happened a couple more times again, right? If she did that to her own child, is it a stretch to say that she did it to her husband, too?"
He blinked, and in the next moment he was seeing that spin of his mother, feeling the sting of that first slap upon his sounds of excitement. And then nothing. He couldn't remember what happened after.
What he wouldn't deny was things he remembered in the ensuing days and years. Things he just . . . refused to remember because of his anger.
'Your mother's just not doing so great today, Spencer. You know she loves you. When she's sick, she doesn't forget that she loves you, no matter what she does or what she says. She has to go away for a few days, but she'll be back, and she'll be thinking about you every day.'
'She doesn't stop loving you, Spence. Her love is bigger than a disease of the mind.'
'Her love for you is a world of its own, Spence. It's in her heart, and not in her head. She tells you this all the time.'
Damn it. Damn it.
In the face of his father's departure and in the ensuing years, he recrafted his memories of the man to make him unpleasant. In time, Spencer himself took those flinging hands or pummeling fists—not often, but they came on a handful of occasions. He felt the brunt of her hateful words, of her scorn, of her claims of hate and found them painful but, well, normal.
Ah.
He wasn't enjoying this challenge of his perspective. He didn't like how light was further being cast on this man that he forgot he knew and remembered for more years than he knew Jason—
'He gave you ten years before he left, and yet you've erased all those memories.'
—and he didn't like how the revealing of events regarding Riley Jenkins being one of the reasons why his father left began shedding light on things that hadn't been illuminated in his youth. He didn't know if he wanted to leave that light on or turn it off and let his father remain in the shadows.
Memories, he knew, could be fickle. Memories like how he'd forgotten that his father used to write him hand-written notes and he only remembered this when the letters started arriving to his PO Box. It wasn't wrong that Maeve suggested that he was filtering his memories through the lens of a child. And he didn't like having his anger on this invalidated.
"Your father tells your mother that if she refuses to take her medicine, he can't help her. Whether or not it's wrong of him to have said that is up to you. Whether or not it's wrong for him to have pointed out to her that it's gotten to the point where she can't keep track of the days is up to you. But children imitate what they see and hear. Your mother calls your father weak, and that undermines him as a parent and that pits you against him; he becomes weak in your eyes. It changes your perspective on him. It makes you make comparisons against yourself and him."
'I'm not weak.'
'I know, honey.'
"If she's said this to him multiple times in front of you—and probably a slew of other things besides because unfortunately these things happen when one is sick—it devalues that person. It doesn't matter how much you love someone, Spencer, or how much you understand that a person is sick. Hearing these things—these eventually wear on a person."
Spencer swallowed around a dry tongue.
"I've said it before, Spencer, but love isn't always easy for us to wrap our minds around. It isn't fickle, but it's nuanced. And I don't think he ever stopped loving you or your mother. But when a person stops loving himself or doesn't value himself, the people he loves become collateral damage in his own feelings of inadequacy, and it becomes toxic. Some people can't face that, Spencer. They become burdened and disempowered by these feelings."
'I didn't know how to take care of you anymore. When I lost that confidence, there was no going back.'
He didn't know what to feel about it all.
"Spencer? Are you—"
When Spencer spoke, his mouth was dry. "Keep going."
"You told me that according to what Penelope unearthed, which only went back ten years, your father's a workaholic who makes decent money without spending a lot of it, lives in a modest home, doesn't travel much, and is apparently solitary, frequenting movies and reading a lot. What kind of life is that, Spencer? He didn't move on. He didn't remarry and replace you or your mother. He didn't seek to find his own happiness."
"That's"—he swallowed, trying to gain a footing on this, wiping a hand over his face—"That's not my responsibility. His happiness doesn't depend on me, especially when he leaves his own family. He only ever kept tabs on me for his own emotional fulfillment."
"Mm. You're not wrong about keeping tabs on you for an emotional fulfillment."
Spencer found it difficult to stem the venom in his tone. "Maeve, as someone who apparently comes from an unbroken and stable family unit, I think your perspective is biased."
There was a pause. A nasal breath. And then: "I am biased, Spencer, because I don't have the same experience you've had. I know this. But each family has its flaws. I don't condone what your father did, Spencer; I think I've emphasized this a few times now in so few minutes. But it happened—"
'What's done is done.'
"—and I'm not trying to be calloused. But your father has a slew of information about you spanning your whole life—all of your accomplishments, articles written about you, your dissertations, articles you've written—but what do you know about him that you didn't find out about until you were accusing him of being a pedophile and then a murderer based off skewed memories? Since that case a few years ago, since that culpability has been shifted from him, what do you know about him four years later that you didn't know or willfully forget about him twenty-one years ago or that he's written in his letters to you?"
Spencer was silent.
"Out of curiosity, when you found out the truth those years ago, did your parents show any animosity towards each other?"
"They didn't."
"Hm. So, I think you're at an age now, Spencer—you're beyond the age now—where you can take action about this. You have autonomy, Spencer, at 31 years old now—probably not much older or younger than your father was when he left. Have you thought about responding to the letters?"
He straightened his lips. "Don't you think, Maeve, that it's a bit insincere and disingenuous for him to write me letters only after we had our reunion? I'm waiting for him to stop sending them."
There was silence on the other end. And then: "Mm. To be fair, he may never have started writing those letters to you if he wasn't forced to confront you when you began digging into that Riley Jenkins case. It's the reality of how some of these things go. But you've studied psychology. You probably know better than anyone else in your studies what the burden of guilt can do to a person. That besides, you know how much more difficult it becomes for a person to revisit a painful or regretful situation the more they distance themselves from it instead of dealing with it. And now this is reciprocal. He hurt you. He did. I know it. He knows it. I'm not saying that he didn't. It doesn't make it okay what he did to you, Spencer. There were other options. I wish he took those other options. But after so many years, some people aren't able to see beyond themselves to weigh those alternatives."
He scoffed.
"Either way, it's in your own power to have a more frank conversation with your mother when she's lucid about what might have been going over your head when you were younger, or—better yet—seeing about this with some counseling, where there's no one to color your memories. And from either of these, you decide how to proceed with your father. I think you've missed some things, which is truly a disservice to yourself if you want to be free of these negative emotions. Holding on to that negativity is damaging. You're the one who hasn't at least written back to your father and told him to stop sending you these letters if you're so averse to them. You're the one who takes the time to even open the letters in the first place. So you're the one putting yourself through torture and harboring this negativity. I hope you don't think you're punishing him or giving him the what-for in this situation, because you're punishing yourself."
His nose flared as he took the brunt of her words. "Mm."
"If what you fear is crafting a proper response to him, I'm here to support you. Either to close this chapter—which I'm unsure of being a good idea—or actually responding and being open to conversation. If—if something good comes of it, what could it hurt? I'll be so happy for you, you'll have me to celebrate with you and help you to continue nurturing that goodness. I-If you let me, that is. If you would like me to—to support you on the sidelines. But if—if something bad comes of it, you're not alone, Spencer. You still have me. You have your friends—the family you've made."
The words cooled the rising heat in him for a just moment, and she was just soft all over again.
"You'll always have me," she affirmed. "So. You're angry, yes. And you're hurt, too. This is a very poorly broken and set bone. And some broken bones need to be broken further in order to fix them. But they have to be fixed, otherwise it leaves you crippled. Your anger and resentment is septic, because you're avoiding this instead of confronting it. And yet we often feel anger and frustration and hurt for those we love. If you weren't so angry and hurt about this, Spencer, if your life were more complete, I would suggest not to open a door that doesn't need opening. But you're emotionally conflicted. So this needs addressing with someone who's properly trained to dig deep into this and help you."
Her voice was gentle, but her tone was firm.
"You can keep saying it, Maeve, but I'm pretty fixed on my stance on the therapy. Shelve that. And for now, I'll do like I said I'll wait on the letters to stop. They will, I assure you. But if I come to a point where I want that to change—where I want to respond to him—we can pick up on this conversation again. Until then, let's shelve this, too."
She breathed out a puff of air. "Right. Okay. Um." Her voice shook. "I just find it interesting that you're sooner and more willing to understand, empathize with, connect to, and or absolve an unsub, criminal—at one point a man who was purportedly a pedophile—than you are to do any of those things with and to your own father, whom you're holding to a higher standard."
Spencer sucked in a breath.
'You're just determined to nail him, aren't you? Doesn't even matter what for.'
"I have to go," he said, voice trembling.
"Oh, god," she gasped out. "I'm sorry, Spencer, please; don't hang up. I've upset you. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said what I said. I speak too much sometimes. I play the devil's advocate to look at all angles and it makes me hurt the people I lo—"
"No, it's—I've gotten a text from the team," he lied, mouth dry. "And it's fine; you were just challenging my perspective."
"Oh, Spence. I'm sorry. We'll . . ." she drawled. She cleared her throat, and when her voice came out again, it was strained and thin. "Can we talk tomorrow if possible? Please."
"Yeah, we'll talk tomorrow if I can, Maeve. Gotta go."
"Bye. Um, I lo—"
He hung up. His hand—still clenched around the phone—vibrated. He picked it up, slammed it down; picked it up and heard the aborted sound of a line ending with a successive beep beep beep tap tap tap tap —
—
—tap tap tap tap.
He pulled away from the memory and was recalled to his horrifying situation. One hand was tapping at his jaw. The other was as it was before he'd drifted. He didn't know how long he'd dissociated. But upon the taps against his face, he whimpered, and his hands moved down again to catch his captor's hand.
The body above him shifted and then lifted away from him. When his legs could move, when he was free from being caged, Spencer curled to his side and his legs tucked toward his chest.
Had something happened? Had anything been done to him? There was—he couldn't remember registering any sensation and there was no renewed pain.
The man then patted the side of his neck and sat at the bed again, hand on above his ankle, and there he remained.
Spencer tried to process the purpose of what this was. It must have—it must have served as a demonstration for something.
The man could have raped him, but he didn't. He could have tried to stimulate him, but as far as he knew—hoped—this hadn't happened.
Oh, god. It's because I don't—because I can't—
He asked, didn't he? What made him different from the others. And so this—this was the answer. It was his having a dysfunction—the very thing this man suffered.
Oh, god. I'm different—special—because I'm broken like my own rapist. It's our commonality. He didn't care for the others. And if she sees that her husband is more invested, then she is, too, and—
God, it was too nebulous. It was a lot.
He didn't have the capacity to be enraged or disgusted, no. He barked in another mirthless laugh. "Son of a bitch," he whispered. And when that hand near his leg twitched, he laughed again.
And yet.
He could still remember that hand upon his neck when he'd mourned Maeve.
Something confusing and terrifying thrummed in understanding.
'I just find it interesting that you're sooner and more willing to understand, empathize with, connect to, and or absolve an unsub, criminal . . .'
He didn't want to face this. He didn't.
—
He must have done or said something right or landed a significant blow somewhere, though. The man stopped raping him for weeks after this.
.
.
.
I'm so sorry. But. I promise . . . there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. There will be.
