Sublime

“Within your secrets lies your sickness,” Dr. Talbott had said to me when I talked to him long after David’s death. If David never sustained a lasting recovery, it was because he never let go of his secret, there were some bars that never came down. His secret is still with him. He still walks alone.

I’m aware that Chloe may have no memory of me at all. She’s too young. But I want her to grow up knowing that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her. I’d always thought the father/daughter thing was overstated. But I can tell you, it’s real. Sometimes, she looks at me and I just become a puddle.

She looked up from her purse and said, “That’s really up to you.” She lit her smoke, sat back, and looked at Roy. “He’s at home now. His home. Not some foster hell hole with a dozen other filthy kids. Which is where he’ll go—where you’ll both go—if I go to prison.”