I stared at him in horror. Four years of running, of covering my tracks, of false names and anonymous boardinghouses and sleeping in church vestibules—all of it undone by the ticket clerk who’d leered at me when, destitute and starving, I’d bought my ticket for Newcastle on Tyne. It would have been comical if I hadn’t felt sick.
“And how did you find me from there?” I managed.
“Oh, I asked around again. These are small towns up here, and lots of people remembered you. Someone remembered you hiring a car, and then—”
“The driver.”
“Yes. Surprised, he was. Said he’d thought you were coming to visit a patient.”
I leaned forward, put my elbows on my knees. Syd took the opportunity to pull his chair closer. He took my hands in his, looked in my eyes. “I’m just so glad I’ve found you, Kitty,” he said. “I’m just so glad.”
I looked into his face. He was my brother, and he was alive. Perhaps we could both run. Pool our resources, our talents. It didn’t matter anymore. We could stand strong together. Perhaps, for the first time, I could be safe.
“Kitty,” he said, “I’m living with Father again. He’s very worried about you. He’s been worried since the day you left. I have some bad news, you see.”
I stared at him, uncomprehending.
He squeezed my hands, as if I were weeping. “Father has cancer,” he said. “He’s terribly sick. He won’t last long. He’s a changed man, Kitty. Sometimes I think the worry about you has nearly done him in. I’ve been living with him, nursing him. I’ve gotten to know him as a man now, as a new man. I have a good job with an insurance agent, and I can afford to support him. His fondest wish is to see you before he dies. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Do you see?”
“No,” I said.
“I’m here to take you home.” He smiled at me. “I don’t know how you got to this place, but I’m here to take you back with me. You can see Father and—”
I pulled my hands from his. “You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious. It’s Father’s wish to see his daughter again.”
“I’m not going back there,” I said. “And you know why, Syd. You know why.”
He leaned back in his chair, looking at me. “Well, I have to say it—no, I don’t. We had some rough times growing up—I’ll admit that. It was a bit hairy after Mother left. But you can’t mean that you’ve held a grudge this long.”
My stomach was doing somersaults. I had to remember that he’d been away, that he hadn’t seen how bad it had gotten. That, even before he’d left, he hadn’t been hit as often as I had and my father had done most of his dirty work to me while Syd was in the other room. I closed my eyes and took a breath.
“All right. I’m going to tell you about it this once, Syd. Just once. I can’t repeat it ever again.”
“What are you talking about?”
And I told him, in as few words as I could. I told him about the beatings, the chokings, the cracked and bruised ribs. I even told him, so help me, about the knife in my mouth and the night our father had dragged me from under the bed and given me the scar. And that very last night, when he’d climbed over me on the bed, pinned me down, and laughed in my face.
It was a confession, but not just of my own sins. It was a confession of someone else’s sins, and for a moment it felt freeing, until I looked at my brother’s face.
Syd’s expression had fallen. He stared at me with shock, with horror, and it took me a moment to understand. The shock and horror were not directed at the story I told. They were directed at me.
I stopped, and we were silent. There were no voices in the hall. I heard the breeze blow in the eaves.
He turned away, out the window. Then he sighed, a hopeless sound. “Kitty,” he said.
“Now you see,” I almost pleaded. “You have to see.”
He shook his head. “You’ve made this very difficult.”
“It isn’t difficult. It’s simple.”
“It’s difficult because I don’t believe it.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Are you saying I’m lying?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, and he turned back to me. “Kitty, he’s your father. Your family. A daughter owes her father a debt.”
I pushed my chair back and stood. “I don’t owe him a debt, Syd. And I’m not a liar.”
“Aren’t you?” He looked pointedly at the uniform I wore. “False names, Kitty, false backgrounds—you lied everywhere you went. I don’t know what game you’re up to now but I’m not believing another of your stories.”
“It isn’t—” I blinked, hard. “Syd—you were there. He hit you, too. I saw him.”
“That was years ago.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “You don’t understand. He is a changed man, Kitty. He admits he’s done wrong in the past, and he regrets it. You can’t know how bitterly.”
“Now who’s a liar?” I said. “He punched me in the stomach and called me a whore, Syd. And that was on a good night.”
“You’re foulmouthed, too.” The corner of his mouth twisted down. “Father wants to make amends. He wants you to come back so it can all be straightened out. He’s dying, and I’m his son, and for God’s sake I’m bringing you back.”
I looked in his eyes, and that was the rub of it: He believed it. He believed every word he said, with passionate devotion. My father probably was dying; that likely wasn’t a lie. But my father had convinced Syd of the rest of it, as if he’d found a religion. Syd wanted to believe, and he’d convinced himself I’d made everything up. God knew why—but he did. I felt the hope that had begun to bloom in my chest die sharply, with a quick pain. And then everything I’d taught myself in the past four years came back to me in a rush.
Don’t look back, don’t look down.
This is how I am going to die.
“Leave,” I told him. “Get out. Now.”
The corner of his mouth turned down again. “That’s not polite, not when we’ve just found each other again.”
“I’m not going back, Syd.”
“This is ridiculous. I thought—”
“You thought I’d cringe. He thought I’d cringe. You were both wrong.” My voice was shaking, but I ignored it. “Now, leave.”
He made no move, so I turned and left the room, taking my unsteady steps into the main hall. The circulation in my arms and legs had been cut off but for a painful pinpricking along the backs of my forearms. My knees had been replaced with half-frozen jelly. I hoped I’d get my body parts back when I watched Syd drive away.
If I found my brother and I lost him again, was it better or worse than never finding him at all?
“What is this?” Syd followed me into the hall. “I don’t believe it. You’d rather be in this place—a madhouse—than home, where you belong?”
“Kitty?” It was Martha, approaching tentatively from the corridor. “Is everything all right?” Nina, who had come off night shift that morning, was with her.