The Truth About Unspeakable Things by Emily Myers (people reading books txt) 📗

the glittering, one-shoulder dress my sister insisted on, and replace it with blue jean shorts and a plain white t-shirt.

My bed is fixed. My bag is packed. In a final act, I make my way to my vanity and sit once more on the gold upholstered stool. It’s there that I find my heavily painted reflection. So many times before, I’ve sat in this spot. Each time I’ve seen something different. From curly Q curls to inflamed, teenage skin, to the utter panic I felt when I left home for college, to now . . . I’m a grown woman, and for the first time in my life, I think I know what that means.

I remove my fake lashes and unpin my tightly wound hair. I wipe the lipstick from my lips and the base from my face.

“Let go of what once was and embrace what is,” I say aloud.

Tonight, I say goodbye to my father. I say goodbye to the man who raised me, who watched me perform in the Christmas musicals, who sat in the high-school gym as I cheered. I wish I could believe he wasn’t always this monster, this animal. I wish I could hang onto the moments that were good. But after everything that’s happened, everything I’ve learned, I can’t. He was always a monster. Like Beaux, he was just really good at hiding it.

I take a single bottle of perfume, a few pieces of my favorite jewelry, and the green box filled with memories of Ezra and me and I shove them in my duffle bag.

This room was many things for me, a haven at the center of a tragic world. Now, it is the coffin of the girl who once was.

I turn out the light and close the door behind me.

* * *

I walk into my father’s office and drop my duffle bag at his door before taking a seat. He’s on the phone. It sounds important. I stare at him, lips pursed, until he excuses himself from the call.

“Emma, you look like you have something on your mind,” he says, clasping his hands together.

I nod, though I can’t bring myself to form the words. My dad nods his head and stands, pouring himself a drink from his bar cart. “I think I know what this is about,” he says, moving closer to me. He leans up against his desk. I readjust myself so that my body is further away from him. “You’re upset that your sister made it down the aisle before you. But I’ve got to tell you, Emma, marriage isn’t all it’s cracked out to be,” he says, sipping his scotch.

I’m suddenly reminded of my parents’ impending divorce.

“I mean, no offense to your mother,” my father goes on to say. “But marriage is hard and—”

“Is marriage hard or is being faithful hard?” I ask, cutting him off.

My father is shocked at my statement. Our eyes lock. His fist tightens around his glass.

“What do you know?” he asks me. His cheeks are blazing hot.

“I know that Mom is beside herself trying to figure out what Irreconcilable Differences means,” I tell him. “I know that you wouldn’t just abandon your family unless you had a good reason too, even if your only reason for staying was for perception,” I say. “So, tell me Dad, who did you get pregnant?”

I’m bluffing, of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. The more I press him on the divorce, the more I work up my courage to confront him about Club Gent.

My dad sets his glass down on his desk and moves past me to close the door to his office. As a child, I always wondered what those closed-door conversations were about. Looks like I’m about to find out.

My father doesn’t speak as he makes his way back across the room. He moves around his desk and takes his seat across from me, clearly in an attempt to regain dominance. I’m just thankful for some distance between us.

“Emma, I don’t know what you think you know,” he begins. “But your mother and mine’s relationship is a private matter.”

“You didn’t deny it, Daddy,” I say. I uncross my legs and lean forward in my seat. “So, who is it? Someone you met on a business trip? Or one of the women you drugged and raped at Club Gent?”

There it is—the unspeakable truth that can’t be unspoken.

The veins in my father’s neck throb. He loosens his tie, popping his knuckles as he clasps his hands together.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything,” I tell him, leaning back in my chair. “I just wanted you to know that I know. I know about the club and what happens there. I know that you not only cheat on Mom, you do it with inebriated, unconscious and at times, underage girls.”

Emotion wells inside me as I confront my father, my father. Don’t think it hasn’t dawned on me how truly messed up this is.

“Emma, I think you’re confused,” my father starts. That phrase! That condescending, egotistical phrase that Beaux has used on me a thousand times. Is that where he got it from? My own father?

“I saw you last Friday night,” I say. “Only I didn’t look like myself. I was wearing a waitress’ outfit and a short, brown wig. You ran into me and the blonde girl I was helping escape as you came out of the restroom.”

All the blood drains from my father’s face.

“I also saw that you weren’t alone when you were in there. You left that girl lying there like a piece of trash,” I scold him.

“What are you talking about? How could you . . .? Those girls are . . .” he starts, but I cut him off.

“Those girls are young, naïve, inexperienced, young women with everything in front of them and everything to lose, and you and your brethren of sick sadists manipulate and use them,” I tell him. “I know, because I’ve met them. I’ve interviewed them. Hell, I practically was one of them.”

“No,” he gasps. “No,