Ill-Gotten Memories

8. Deeply Indebted

After my turbulence with Cheryl, an officer escorted me to a room labeled "interview" on the door.

My face was still hot. It burned with the fire and brimstone she hadn't thought twice to spare me from. It was funny how quickly she could open old wounds while making fresh ones. She was truly a skilled abuser.

Must have been hereditary....

My fingers tightly grasped the edge of this monochrome table I was waiting at. My jaw was tense, shoulders low. I felt like I could run a marathon. The state of normality had evicted my life. Pam was gone, my father was murdered, I couldn't even remember last night, and now the plague of Cheryl's poison was coursing through my body.

There was warmth in the fan-shaped wall sconces shining an amber light over me. I relied on their steady burn to distract myself but I just couldn't concentrate, no matter how hard I tried. This wasn't the mental state I wanted to be in when they started asking me questions about my father. But what help was I going to be to them anyway?

The things she had shouted at me stirred in the pit of my stomach. I felt so... powerless; too weak to withstand their weight. In spite of my healing, and all my unlearning, she mastered my pain in moments. The nine years worth of suffering I was so desperate to undo began to fix on my mind.

It didn't occur to her that I had lost someone too—someone I would never share a genuine bond with. A man, deemed my father, that wanted no such connection to me. In the end, it shouldn't have mattered—I paid his debts with my own body, and was forever haunted by the despicable acts they performed on me. And still somehow, a part of me would always... want his love. She discarded the fact that I was his daughter though, and relished his disdain of me.

But unbeknownst to my half-sister, an entire infrastructure was built around this system of abuse and neglect. She didn't know that when he was giving her a hug, or a kiss on the forehead, that I was watching. She didn't know that every time they embraced, I went upstairs and put a blade on my arm.

Neither of them ever realized how broken I was.

Prying into my thoughts, a woman entered the room, toting a file. She was wearing a white turtle neck, a graph-checked vest, and a gray suit jacket. I felt severely underdressed for the occasion because she was probably the most sophisticated person I had ever seen.

"Hi Barbara, I'm detective Judith Woods." Her brown, cat-like eyes observed me. I became a pane of glass in her presence.

She was no doubt expecting me to at least greet her, but I didn't utter a word.

"I'm very sorry about your father." Detective Woods' tipped her head to the side as she offered her condolences. She then descended to a chair across from me, opening the file she had brought with her. "And I know this is difficult, but I need to ask you a few questions to help us find his killer. I won't take much of your time."

"Okay." I nodded.

She flipped to a blank page, and pressed her pen against the paper to begin. "When was the last time you spoke to him?"

It took me a moment to remember. It was when I started having panic attacks every other day because my neighbor kept hitting on me—even though I was engaged to Glen. The man wasn't convinced he was fully committed to marrying me, though. Looks like he was right.

"A few years ago. I needed help finding a new apartment."

Hastily, she scribbled down my answer. "About how many years?"

It was the summer of '81, if I wasn't mistaken. "Three."

She peered over the file. "Why would you go that long without speaking?"