The rest of the month passed in relative quiet. Phillip did what he was told and his father mostly left him alone. He kept his windows closed and stayed away from the garden as the lashes on his back slowly turned to scars, scars that would be with him for the rest of his life.
He finished the play his father had made him write and started on another. It was the middle of summer now, and everyone else his age was out of school on vacation, but his father still made him do work. He still hadn't forgiven him for that day in the garden, but slowly gained hope that it would never happen again. Sadly, he was wrong.
In the middle of July, his father was pacing in the library, trying to decide on a date for the party he was hosting to celebrate his and his wife's anniversary, when he heard a hollow thud as his foot hit the floor. He knelt down, inspecting the floor, and found a loose board. He pulled it up and found a neat stack of papers with Phillip's handwriting on them. As he skimmed through the first page, he realized what it was—the first story Phillip had written.
This time, Mr. Carlyle didn't bother yelling for Phillip. He dragged his son into the garden and pulled out the whip from the shed. As Phillip protested, pleading for mercy, his father pulled off his shirt, and the pain started again.
Phillip tried his best to stay silent, but the pain was too much.
He ended up screaming again.
Phillip's father stopped hesitating to beat him for the smallest mistakes. Days, weeks, months, years passed as Phillip grew more and more irritable and antisocial. He wrote plays and sometimes went to see them, but couldn't stand all his parents' snobby rich friends. He started drinking to dull the pain. His parents were angry at him for becoming 'a scandal,' but he didn't care anymore. He mostly stayed home during the day and went with his parents to their parties and things at night. His life was still miserable, although he had his cats to keep him company. He was finally finished with the homeschool courses and had gone to college in the city, but he almost never went anywhere else than home or out with his parents, since he had finished college. And even then, he avoided going out anywhere as much as possible.
Which is why, when P.T. approached him that day after one of his plays, he jumped at the chance to leave, to be somewhere every day where he would be accepted, to have actual friends who appreciated him for who he was and not just how much money his family had. When P.T. finally asked, he wanted to say yes immediately, but stopped, wondering what his parents would think. But when P.T. continued, promising to give him a life that would be better than the life he had, he couldn't say no.