Page 48 of Phoenix
And so, I leave you with this, my beloved boy, I know who killed your mother. It wasn’t anyone connected to my old life. It was Robert, the man who took your brother and kept him prisoner, along with the poor little girl who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I love you all, and I sincerely hope I am once again with my Mia, my home.
Dad
X
Chapter 18
Phoenix
As the paper scrunches up inside of my white-knuckled fists, I can’t help but let the first tears of grief and anger fall. Everything I thought I knew has just been blown to pieces and I both hate and miss my father even more. It feels cruel to find out such things when he isn’t even here to answer any of the thousands of questions now swimming around my head. The day he died gutted me just as much as when I was seven years old and had had to witness the moment when my mother was blown away to her death in the house fire. And all this time, it was the motherfucker who had had my Jess locked away with my…brother.
Shit! I don’t even know how to comprehend this information. So, in true Phoenix fashion, I lose it big time. I return to my primitive instincts and begin throwing and kicking everything that’s within reach. The living room, a space that suddenly feels much too small for my fury, becomes the foreground to my destruction.
“Warren?” a small, almost fearful voice whispers. When I turn to look at Jess, she sees the rage on my face and physically withers. It only frustrates me more to know that I’ve caused her to feel frightened, so without any words, I storm through into the busy bar so I can make my way to my bike. A good, hard ride across the desert is the only thing that’s going to stop me from losing my mind altogether.
Just before I reach the door, ignoring the looks of confusion on the regular’s faces, I hear someone who I can’t face seeing right now.
“Phoenix!” he shouts with anger in his voice, which sends my blood pressure to boiling point.
When I turn to face him, we look so alike I almost laugh at myself for not seeing it before. People seem to step back from us, as though we’re about to draw guns at dawn, their heads ping-ponging between us.
“Say something!” he snaps, as if unable to bear the tension. My ability to hold my tongue has always freaked out my hits, more than the actual torture of physical violence. The waiting, the anticipation, the needing to know what’s going through my fucked-up head. Usually, they’re best off not knowing.
I step forward, huff through my nose, but otherwise remain silent.
“SAY SOMETHING!” he eventually shouts.
I snarl, showing my teeth like a rabid dog, then step forward with my pointer finger out, getting ready to go to war with him. However, when I see Jess suddenly step out from the back, I hold my breath. She’s crying and holding onto her arm like she used to when she first arrived, when she was still terrified of me. Her eyes hold me for a moment or two before I can stand it no longer and flee through the entrance to the bar, slamming it so hard, the glass shatters.
I ride my bike so fast through the darkness, so recklessly along the dusty roads, I no longer know if I’ll survive the night.
_____
Jessie
When I see the glass shatter into a thousand tiny fragments, I run back to Louisa’s room and hide. I don’t want to face the anger and destruction; I don’t want to acknowledge the fact that my Warren is one of those men I need to fear. It’s too much for me to make sense of, so I retreat and hide away to protect my heart. It might only have been part full, but it was safe. When you have so little, you covet it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. I can’t risk losing what little I have, so here I shall stay until it’s safe to come out again.
“Jess?” I hear Jake calling as he comes through the door and into the back. “Jesus Christ, he’s broken everything! Jess!”
“Check the bedrooms and I’ll check out back,” Warren’s uncle says to him, “she could have run away.”
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Jake replies as he begins pacing across the tile floors outside. “She fears the outdoors. After all, it’s where she was taken.”
“Oh my God, what a mess!” The older man sighs. “I could kill your father again right now!”
“Don’t call him that,” Jake says sadly, “I’m not ready to call him that yet.”
I begin to let their words sink in, confusing me even more because the only father he can be talking about is Robert. Surely, the man I had met before wouldn’t refer to him as Jake’s father so insensitively. I’m trying to think it over when the door bursts open and the light streams through to reveal my hiding place. It brings back a torrent of painful memories and I begin trembling.
“Oh, Jess, oh, baby, no,” Jake says with concern seeping through each of his words. “Come here, baby.”
As soon as he wraps his arms around me, I release a flood of tears and begin whimpering all over him. Just like he used to, he rocks me gently and offers soothing sounds while letting me get it all out.
“I-is this to do with me?” I ask with a painful lump in my throat. “Did I do this?”
“No, no, no,” he says sadly, “in fact, this has to do with practically everyone but you. He loves you.”