Page 132 of A Foster Fling

“More than the doctor ever did?” He guesses.

“Why am I really here Waif? What did you want from me? It can't just be about making me remember.”

“It's not. You have to finish what you started Sayler. You have to end him for everything he's taken, for everything he's done. I've been watching you, Say. Even though you’ve thought he was gone you watch over your shoulder. You needed to see his rotting corpse to know he was dead and you didn't get that. Now you're going to keep running, the fear won't stop. That shadow overhead won't justgo, you have to chase it away. No more jumping over fire. It's time to face the flame.”

“If you know where he is why don’t you just turn him in? I imagine detective Wraith is still looking?”

“He’s never stopped, no. But he can’t do what needs to be done and even if he could it wouldn’t help you.Youhave to do this, Sayler. No one else.”

“Dowhat!?” I’m too fucking tired for anymore cryptic bullshit.

“You have to kill him. Like you meant to.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone. Not anymore.” My hands slap to my thighs. “It brought me nothing but misery in the end. No one was really hurt except the innocent. I thought they were dead, and that was my excuse for telling myself I’d done the right thing. Now it’s gone. It’s gone and I’m just a murderer.”

“That’s not true. You were out of your mind with fear, Sayler. You didn’t want to hurt those kids.”

“But I did.” I did and I’ll wear the scar on my soul for eternity.

Two monsters. Five innocents. Four, now that I know Waif survived. I couldn’t tell you their names or anything else about them. I only knew they were there because of the rooms they occupied in the same hallway we all did. I remember a small girl with red hair and nearly white eyes. Until Cae said he saw her too, I thought she was a ghost.

Now that’s all she can ever be.

“I did hurt them. I killed them. Because I was a coward.”

“Sayler, they were going to kill because of what theythoughthappened to Tilda. They didn’t actually know and they were going to blame you anyway.” He squints in disgust and wipes a hand down his face. “They were going to blame you because you were their favorite to punish.”

Admitting that makes my ankles burn as if with fresh wounds. He’s right. They had planned to punish me lethally.

“It doesn’t excuse what I did. Nothing I went through warranted hurting others that had nothing to do with it. My emotions have always been out of control. That night was no exception. I refused to learn how to control them and innocent people,children, suffered for it.”

“Do you remember what detective Wraith said to you? About how we were treated? I was there on the other side of the wall and I heard everything.”

Again, the memory consumes me.

——

“I assure you kids, saying things like ‘it’s to help you’ or ‘you’ll feel better’ it doesn’t make it so. In my experience, it ends up hurting you even more. Your brain gets on page with the predator and they’re no longer seen as a threat. You’re groomed to believe that there is something wrong with you if you don’t want their attention. They condition you to be used as a weapon against yourself. You don’t see it now, but when you do, I hope you get the help you’ll need.”

I didn’t allow anything he said to sink in. I just shut it all out. He was wrong. Even if what I had been doing with Tilda was wrong, she never hurt me and she never wanted to. She only ever showed me kindness and I wouldn’t tarnish that with the ignorant opinion of a stranger. The doctor on the other hand…

I pushed it so far back into my mind, it was lost to me. Gone, for a long, long time. When I did remember, I still didn’t see her as the bad guy. She was one of my saviors.

“Have you ever lost someone?” I’d asked him, Cae had perked up beside me.

“I have.” No darkness compared to the shadow crossing his face.

“It was bad?” I shouldn't have felt sorry for him, I had my own tragedies, but I couldn’t help but wonder how he got through it.

“It was the worst.” He sighed and cleared his throat seeming to understand how much I needed to hear his words. “I thought I fell in love once. We found out we were having a baby, figured the next step was getting married. I also loved her, it's what I wanted. She seemed on the same page, but when our daughter turned three I finally admitted something was wrong. It finally became clear she didn't love me. It took me too long and she took our daughter. On a deathly level.” His baritone voice cracked, proving the sorrow was far from gone. “I was left for dead right beside her.”

“That is bad.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “But it taught me that there are people out there who are very good at convincing you you’re the bad guy. That you’re to blame for your own misery, and sometimes theirs. We might be on some levels, but never to the point we were punished for.” He tilted to make sure we kept eye contact. “You did nothing to deserve what those people were doing to you. Any kindness was used to manipulate you. Don’t ever mistake that kind of kindness again. Learn from the monsters.”

——

“It’s not the same, Waif.” I grit my teeth. “He was talking about us being molested. He didn’t even know how bad it really was and even if he did he wouldn’t be telling me I’m still that innocent little girl.”