Cornered by Ariana Gael

ever do? Besides try to protect you from this horrible thing?” Annie cried.
    “You let me believe my kid was a loser! You sat there knowing the truth this whole time, while I looked my daughter in the face and called her a quitter! I rode her case for being a dropout and for wasting her life, all because you didn’t tell me. How many times did she sit there in that chair—not sayin’ a word to stand up for herself—and listen to me run my mouth about how she coulda been somebody, if only she’d finished what she started? Do you know how I must have sounded to her? And you’re both sitting there the whole time knowing what happened to her! You let me believe that she just dropped outta school, when the whole time you knew why she did it! How could you let me treat her like that?”
    “I tried to warn you, Frank. I told you that you were being too hard on her, to give her a break!”
    “Oh, don’t even start that! ‘Give her a break?’ Someone who has a hard time waking up for class in the morning needs a ‘break.’ Michelle practically had to run away, afraid for her life after that monster put his hands on her!” Frank wretched as he spoke those last words, physically ill when the full force of his wife’s explanation hit him. His little girl...
    “Frank, please. At least sit down, this isn’t good for you,” Annie began, guiding him to the sofa. The fight had gone out of him as he realized what secret he had been kept out of and why. He let Annie take him by the arm and sit him down, leaning him back against the couch cushions while he cried in soft sobs.
    “I just don’t understand, Annie. Where’s Michelle? I gotta talk to her. I gotta tell her that I’m sorry. Is she even okay? How did I not know if my own little girl is okay?” he cried.
    “Shhh, Frank, it’s okay. The last thing she wants to do is talk about it some more, and certainly not with her dad. She’s fine,” Annie promised him. “She just needs some time.”
    “Bullshit!” Frank yelled, becoming angry again as he sprang up from the sofa with an energy he hadn’t had in a long time. “She needs her father to go rip that guy’s face off his head and feed it to him through what’s left of his mouth! Who was this guy, anyway?”
    Annie wrung her hands, horribly aware that this situation had blown itself into a full-fledged hurricane. “I already told you, Frank, it was one of her professors. But she just wants to let it go and put it behind her!”
    “She’s not doin’ so hot at getting over it, Annie! Have you taken a good look at her lately? She goes from being an A student to being a waitress, and dates that loser guy in the meantime. What she needs is someone to pick her up and tell her she didn’t do anything wrong, and that I’ll kill the guy if that’s what it takes to bring her back to life. Now, are you comin’ or not?” Frank slung his work jacket around his shoulders and wrestled his arms into the sleeves. He was old and injured, but it was still easy to see where he had once been an impressive man.
    Annie shook her head. “I can’t go through this again,” she whispered. “This time it’s your job. I already heard enough to keep me from sleeping for the next hundred years.”
    Frank nodded before turning to leave. At the door, he turned back and kissed his wife quietly on the forehead, then walked out of the house.
     

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
    Lars turned off the hot water and reached for the towel he had flung over the shower rod. He was disappointed to see grease from his hands smearing across the faded white towel, a sure sign that his hands hadn’t come clean again, not that they ever would. The black slime under his fingernails and around his cuticles and embedded in the grooves of his fingerprints were marks of the job, just like the navy blue coveralls or bandana he kept in his pocket for wiping his hands before touching anything important. He couldn’t be sure, but even after a shower every