Sold #3 - A Haunting Hope

Chapter 16

"My father found out he had a brain tumour not long after my mother got pregnant. She didn't want me but he made her promise to keep me because the doctor told him he had maybe five or ten years left. He knew his tumour would kill him so he wanted some part of him to live on." Darcy began slowly, making sure to ease into the subject the best way she knew how so that if he didn't want her to go on, he could stop her. But Michael was astounded to hear her explanation and the way that she talked about it as if it wasn't a big deal. It only reminded him of how strong she was and it had been her strength and her beauty and her utter state of perfection that had captured him and he could understand why her father had wanted to keep her and carry on his name. "I was five years old and we were watching the ice hockey championships on TV while he gave me a piggyback ride around the living room, explaining the rules to me and dramatising all the bloody fights to make me laugh. Out of nowhere he let out a cry and dropped me onto the sofa as he fell to his knees with another of his headaches. Until then it used to be stress and arguments with my mother that would set them off but for a few months before that day there was no trigger."

Michael was captivated by the way Darcy chose to explain the details of her life to him, staring off into some space beyond his right shoulder as if she could see it all played out before her. She laughed briefly, with a beautiful smile that brought a smile of his own to his lips as she talked about the hockey game, only for it to fade instantly when she explained the triggers that caused her fathers outbursts. He wanted to tell her that she didn't have to go on, able to tell already that it didn't have a good ending, even though he had suspected as much since it had resulted in her spending her life in the boarding school. But what she was telling him was so different to what he had thought that he didn't want to hear how she had been hurt, he just wanted to hold her in his arms and protect her forever. And when she went on, her words flew out of her as if she was in shock; as if she couldn't stop talking until she had finished telling him everything and hearing her that way, he realised that she needed to tell him as badly as he needed to protect her.

"Mom shouted at him for dropping me and almost hitting my head off the wall but when he got back to his feet he just had that same old look on his face, the one he got every time he got mad. The doctor said it was something to do with the tumour swelling and hitting a nerve which caused violent outbursts and when mom saw his face she told me to go to my room but daddy said no. He said he was teaching me important things and I should watch the end of the game. They argued for barely a minute before daddy grabbed her by the throat and pinned her against the wall. He was so mad...screaming at her that I was his daughter and mom would do as she was told and leave us alone and that if she didn't leave him to raise his daughter as he saw fit then it would be better for everyone if she wasn't around anymore."

"Did he kill your mother?" Michael asked uncomfortably, uneasy with the subject but knowing he had to speak to break her concentration on that invisible spot she was staring into as it all replayed before her. He had to make her stop before she broke down and his voice accomplished that but he could never have guessed the words she said in reply to his question, laughing it off and shaking her head.

"No. Sometimes I wish he would have though. But no, daddy wasn't a killer and he wasn't a bad man. He was just sick. There was nothing they could do, the tumour was inoperable." He couldn't believe what he was hearing, that Darcy would have preferred if her father had killed her mother but on hearing her fathers temper, tumour or not, he rather felt it explained and more than justified the temper and foul mouth Jonas had insisted she had as well as the sweetly quiet way she allowed him to work so often and for so long without complaining. Through everything she said though he could still hear a resounding love and affection for her father in her voice, as if she would have done anything to make things different.