Chapter 7 Guilt

Dinner was mandatory. Bethel had made that clear.

Clarisa walked into the formal dining room. The table was set for six, loaded with silver and crystal. Roast beef, truffle mashed potatoes, glazed carrots. The smell was overwhelming.

She sat at the far end of the table, opposite her father, Jethro. He hadn't spoken a word to her yet. He just chewed his meat, looking at his iPad.

"So," Kaleigh said brightly, breaking the silence. "What did you learn in that place, Clarisa? Did you learn to weave baskets?"

Brady snorted into his wine glass. "Probably learned how to dodge work detail."

"As long as she broke her bad habits," Helen said, smiling tightly.

Clarisa held her knife and fork. Her hands were trembling. Clink. Clink. The silverware hit the china plate.

She put them down.

"I learned a lot," Clarisa said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried.

She stood up.

"What are you doing?" Brady asked, annoyed. "Sit down."

Clarisa began to unbutton her left cuff. Her fingers were slow, deliberate.

"You asked what I learned," she said.

She grabbed the sleeve of her black sweater and yanked it up. Hard. Past her elbow. Past her bicep.

The room went silent.

The skin of her arm was a ruin.

There were circular burn marks-cigarette burns-scattered like constellations. Some were old, silvery white scars. Others were a deep, bruised purple, the puckered skin of keloid tissue that spoke of more recent, but fully healed, trauma.

And the tracks. Not from shooting up heroin, but from forced sedation. Bruised punctures where needles had been jammed in without care.

Helen dropped her wine glass. Red wine splashed across the white tablecloth like a gunshot wound.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

Clarisa walked around the table. She stopped right next to Brady. She shoved her arm into his face.

"Look at it," she commanded. "This is what I learned. I learned how to smell burning flesh. My own."

Brady recoiled, pushing his chair back. His face drained of color. "You... you did that to yourself."

"Did I?" Clarisa pointed to a scar that wrapped around her wrist. "This is from the handcuffs when I refused to sign the confession. And this?" She pointed to a burn. "This is because I was too slow during the drill."

She looked at Kaleigh. Kaleigh's hands were over her mouth, tears streaming down her face.

"It's horrible," Kaleigh sobbed. "Sister, why would you hurt yourself like that?"

Clarisa stared at her. "Stop acting, Kaleigh. The audience is captivated already."

"We didn't know," Jethro said, his voice hoarse. He finally looked up from his iPad. "The brochure... it said it was a therapeutic retreat."

"You didn't want to know," Clarisa corrected. "You sent me to hell because it was convenient."

She slowly rolled her sleeve back down, covering the horror.

"I'm not hungry," she said.

She turned and walked out of the room. The silence she left behind was heavy, suffocating, and filled with the stench of their own guilt.