FIFTEEN
INTERFERENCE
SERA
Amy was crying, make up streaming down her face when I entered the beautifully lit, luxurious reception room where I was supposed to be having my makeup and hair done. She looked up, blinking like crazy through her tears, and let out a loud, heartbroken sob when she recognized me.
“Sera, oh god…”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I was used to Amy’s fits of hysterics, but her temper tantrums were typically accompanied by screaming and breakable objects being thrown. Today, she was curled in on herself, shoulders rounded, the strap of the nude slip she was wearing falling off her right shoulder. She looked like a broken little girl, like she was physically hurt in some way, and my heart rose up into my throat. She hiccupped as she buried her face in her hands, hiding herself away.
“God, I didn’t know, I swear,” she moaned.
I crouched down in front of her, trying to gently prize her hands away from her face. “Didn’t know what?”
“This—this is such—a mess,” she whispered. “I don’t want to do this now. I just want to go home.”
“You don’t want to get married?” If she really didn’t want to tie the knot today, I’d help her plot a plan of escape out of the hotel without a second thought, but Jesus… After everything I’d been through in order to get here, I had to fight down the urge to slap her.
“No, of course I want to get married. I love Ben. But…”
“But?”
I managed to peel back one of her hands. She allowed the other to fall, revealing bloodshot eyes and smudged lipstick. She was a mess, but I did everything I could to keep my dismay from showing. That wouldn’t help at all. Pulling in a deep breath, she picked at a hanging thread on the hem of her slip, her fingers tugging at it nervously.
“They thought they were doing the right thing, Sera. I swear. They would never have invited him if they knew…”
“Amy, take a deep breath. I can barely understand a word you’re saying. Start from the beginning. Who thought they were doing the right thing? Who did they invite?”
The second Amy exhaled, shivering from cold, and then looked up at me, a sinking, dreadful weight pulled at my insides. No… no, god, no one would have invited him here. They wouldn’t be that cruel. Amy wasn’t shaking from the cold; she was shaking from fear. My hands dropped to my sides. Strangely, I couldn’t feel my body anymore. I was numb from the hairline down. The only way I knew my heart was racing out of control was because of the dizziness that had washed over me.
“Who invited him?” I asked breathlessly.
Amy hiccupped again, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “Ben’s parents. I told them he used to be abusive. I told them about the alcohol and the drugs. I explained how we hadn’t been in contact for many years. I just…couldn’t…tell them about…”
She trailed off as a fresh wave of tears took her over. I kept my face trained into a blank, expressionless mask. If I allowed myself to react, I was going to fall apart. There was no way I’d be able to hold myself together, and, just like always, Amy needed me to be strong for her. So I did my best.
“You don’t understand people like Ben’s parents,” Amy said, sniffing. “Family is so important to them. They couldn’t bear the thought of me getting married without my father present, so they reached out to him. They…god, they went to see him, Sera. They said he’d turned himself around, was doing really well for himself, and that he’d…he’d cried when they told him about me getting married to Ben. They asked him to come. It was meant to be a surprise, but Ben let it slip this morning. Said he didn’t want me to blindsided when I saw him sitting there on the front row.”
Blindsided. That was such an appropriate term. Who the fuck went and invited someone’s father to their wedding without their consent? Amy had planned this whole thing down to the last letter. Her attention to detail was meticulous. Her failure to invite Sixsmith to her wedding hadn’t been an oversight. There was a damn good reason why she’d left him off the guest list, so why in the name of fuck would Ben’s parents have pried and interfered so badly?
I wasn’t surprised Sixsmith had convinced them he was a reformed character. When most people thought of an alcoholic, they imagined a person living in squalor, dirty and unkempt, broke and unemployed. Our father’s addiction wasn’t an obvious thing. He was obsessively clean, managed to get himself to and from work every day, dressed himself nicely for the most part, and always made sure he had a few dollars in his pocket.
When he wasn’t drinking, he was the epitome of charming. The one and only time I ever breathed a word of what was happening at home to an adult, I’d shown my sixth grade teacher the bruises that covered my upper arms, thighs, stomach and buttocks, and she’d stormed over to my house to confront Sixsmith. By the time she left an hour later, Sixsmith had managed to convince her that I’d lied, that I’d been acting out of late, vying for attention because Amy had been sick and taking up everybody’s time, and that he was so, so sorry for the time my teacher had wasted. I’d listened to their conversation from the top step of the stairs, hugging my knees to my chest, eyes screwed tightly shut, and I remembered being so sure that Miss Harriet was going to see straight through Sixsmith’s ruse. It was so clear to me. So easy to detect the subtle edge to his tone that revealed how angry he was that he’d been found out. But it was as though Sixsmith was a blind spot for most people. They’d try and fail to see an entire picture of him. Miss Harriet had believed him, and when I returned to school the next Monday, after a weekend of severe beatings, being locked in Sixsmith’s bedroom and forced to sleep naked under his bed, she’d told me to cover up my bruises, and that if I showed anyone else I would be sent to the principle’s office.
“Please, Sera. Don’t…don’t cause a scene. I just…I don’t know what to do.” Amy was rocking back and forth; she grabbed my hands in her own, alternating between squeezing way too hard and shaking like a leaf. “I didn’t even tell Ben,” she said sorrowfully. “The man I love. The man I’m meant to be marrying in less than three hours. I couldn’t bring myself to face the truth, and telling Ben about Sixsmith just…just made it all seem so real. If I hadn’t been such a coward, he would have known that bringing him here was a terrible idea. He could have stopped his parents from ever going to see him.”
“Has he arrived yet?” I asked stiffly.
Amy shook her head, fresh waves tumbling into her face. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“All right. It’s okay. I’ll deal with it.”
Amy stopped shaking. A moment later, she stopped crying. “How?”
“I’ll find him. I’ll make sure he doesn’t stay. Don’t worry. Just get into your dress and have them fix your makeup. Everything will be fine. I promise.”
******
Everything was not fine. I didn’t think I was going to make it to the bathroom before I threw up, but I proved myself wrong. I slung the door closed, dropped to my knees and leaned forward just in time to get most of my vomit in the toilet bowl.
My mind was spinning as I sagged back against the door, legs tangled up beneath me, my throat burning. Ben’s parents were meddling assholes. When I figured out what they looked like and tracked them down, they were going to wish they’d never stuck their noses into Lafferty business.
My father.
My father, here, in the same place as Amy and me.
After eight years…
I bowed over the toilet and puked again, so hard and so violently that it felt like I was tearing muscle. I’d suffered through all those nightmares, year after year. I’d told myself they were nothing, just bad dreams, and I could handle them, because I’d never have to see Sixsmith again in the flesh. The version of him that lived inside my subconscious could taunt and harass me until the end of time, because I’d never have to stand in front of him and allow him to harm me in real life ever again. Except now here we were…
I could do it. When Amy and I had finally escaped Montmorenci, I’d told Sixsmith I’d gut him like a fish if I ever saw or heard from him again. For my troubles, he’d punched me so hard I thought my eye socket had caved in, but we’d still gotten up and walked out of that place. If I’d been able to do that back then, I could tell the piece of shit to get the fuck out of our lives a second time around. He couldn’t be allowed to ruin this for Amy. Ben was about as engaging as a wet paper bag, and as far as his physique went, he had just about as much chance of fighting his way out of one, but he made my sister smile. He made her forget her past, and that was the most important thing in the world. I wasn’t going to let that sick fuck stroll back into her life and screw everything up for her. It just wasn’t going to happen. I’d do anything in my power to prevent that. It didn’t matter that seeing Sixsmith would be traumatic for me. I could reinforce the Band-Aids that were currently holding me together later, when all was said and done. But, in between now and then, I had to face the man the demon who stalked my sleep, and I had to be fucking brave.
******
I found Fix, still in his t-shirt and ripped jeans, talking to an old man outside a door labeled, ‘Reading Room.’ On either side of the old man’s head, perched just above his ears, were two tufts of thin white hair, like little puffy clouds of smoke. His face was a riot of wrinkles, a roadmap of years that seemed to have taken a harsh toll on him. His eyes were alert, sharp and bright, though. When he spotted me over Fix’s shoulder, he broke into a smile.
“Well, there’s no mistaking you, then,” he said. “You’re Sera, Amy’s sister. I’d recognize that chin anywhere.”
“Haha, yeah. The old Lafferty chin. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” I had no idea who I was meeting, since the old guy failed to supply me with his name. Fix rocked uncomfortably on his heels, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Even with everything that was going on, my insides reeled whenever I looked at him. He was so…Fix. A creature made out of shadows and light. A dream, and a nightmare rolled into one. He was both sides of a coin toss, consequence and reward. I wanted to kiss him so badly right then that my lips ached. I wanted to run away from him, screaming, just as badly. It was my duty to warn everyone that a wolf had snuck in amongst the flock of sheep, and was likely to start feeding any second, but I found myself standing there, pretending like nothing was wrong.
“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a second?” I said. Then to the old man, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt your conversation. This will only take a second.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right. Felix and I were just going reminiscing about the good old days when I taught him at seminary. We can pick up where we left off later. That is, if I haven’t dropped down dead by then, naturally. When you get to my age, every passing minute is somewhat a surprise, to be honest.” His laugh was raucous; he might well have been in his late eighties, but his constitution seemed strong. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the old guy’s mirth, though. I’d caught and stuck on a word he’d just said: seminary.
Seminary?
It wasn’t a word you heard often these days, but I knew what it was. Fix had been in seminary? That image just would not compute. I frowned at him as he placed his hand into the small of my back and guided me away from the old man.
“Who was that?” I hissed.
“Father Gregory Richards. He’s officiating your sister’s wedding.”
“And you know him?”
“Barely.” Fix shrugged, navigating his way out the front of the building, pushing me in front of him. As soon as we were outside, I dug my heels into the gravel, refusing to take another step.
“You went to seminary, Fix? What the fuck were you doing in seminary school?”
“Learning, mostly. Getting an education.”
“A Catholic education? In order to become a priest?”
“I thought you knew,” he said quietly. “You heard the conversation I had with Franz in the auto shop before…”
“Before you killed him? Yeah, I heard what you both said. I thought it was code or something. I didn’t think he meant…I didn’t think you meant…Oh, fuck. So… Great. You’re a kidnapper. You’re a murderer. And now you’re a fucking priest.”
“I’m not a priest anymore.” Usually pale as ice, his eyes had darkened and taken on a stormy, malevolent edge.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Fix!”
“I’m sorry. It just didn’t seem like pertinent information.”
“I don’t—” I shook my head. “God, I just don’t understand you!”
“Are you supposed to? Is understanding me gonna make any of this easier?”
He was so fucking infuriating. He had a point, though. Knowing a detailed history of his life wasn’t going to change anything. It was just…really? He went to seminary school? “How long were you a priest? Did you have a parish? Were you always this…”
“Fucked up?” The sun lanced down through the trees, hitting him from behind, and there was a moment when his dark hair turned to burnished copper. His broad shoulders were tensed; his whole body seemed to be tensed, actually, though I couldn’t figure out why.
“Yeah,” I snapped. “Have you always been this fucked up? How did you end up transitioning from weekly bake offs and charity drives to killing people, for fuck’s sake? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. You’re a walking dichotomy.”
“I was never a very good priest,” he said softly. “I wanted to be good at it for a while there. Helping people gave me a purpose and a direction I hadn’t experienced before. But in the end, that collar I wore around my neck every day ended up strangling the life out of me. Something happened, and I left. In the end, it wouldn’t have mattered, though. I would have gone eventually. It just wasn’t who I was.”
It was so strange to hear him speak this way. I’d gotten used to the idea that he was an evil, mindless psychopath, but the mental image of him that had just conjured itself inside my head conflicted with all of that.
“Don’t,” Fix growled under his breath. “Your thoughts are written all over your face. You’re wondering if this is all a phase. If I’m going to wake up one day and want to be holy, righteous, pious Father Marcosa again. I know you’re wondering that. Don’t waste your time. I’m never going back, Sera. This is who I am now. Who I’m always going to be. I won’t change for you. I won’t be redeemed. Nothing on this earth would make me tuck my tail between my legs and run back to be forgiven. I don’t want it. And let’s face it. At the end of the day, I don’t deserve it.”
I stared at him, trying to read him. It was impossible. He was an expert at shielding his emotions, secreting them away, hiding them from the outside world. I knew so little about him, really, but I knew this for sure: it would take a crowbar and a lifetime of effort to get this man to open up. Things had gotten so confusing. I still didn’t know if I should have been afraid for my life or not, and there I was, trying to decide if I wanted to own up to the perplexing feelings I was rapidly developing for this man.
“I don’t care if you change your mind about your path or if you don’t, Fix. I just need to know one thing.” I held my breath, waiting for him to answer.
Fix took a step forward, bowing his head so that he didn’t tower over me quite so badly. “Like I said. Ask away.”
Here went nothing.
“Where do you keep your guns?”