Chapter 3

I'd tried not coming back before.

After the third girlfriend, the one who tried to stab me with a knitting needle, I'd packed a bag and left.

Got a job in a diner three states over.

Three months later, Dad showed up.

With Tom and Billy.

They found me during my shift. Knelt in the middle of the diner, crying about how I'd abandoned my poor, aging father.

My boss looked at me with pity. The customers stared.

I tried to sever ties legally once.

"It's all national databases now, son," the tired legal aid lawyer told me. "He files a missing person, mentions you're 'vulnerable,' they'll find you."

After the fifth girlfriend, the one who actually managed to break my arm before Dad pulled her off, I called the cops.

Sheriff Brody listened patiently.

Then Dad arrived.

The whole town, it seemed, turned out to vouch for him.

"Ethan's a good boy, Sheriff, just... imaginative. Reads too many strange books."

"He's always been a bit fragile, that one. Not like Tom and Billy."

"He makes things up, Sheriff. Always has. Used to steal things too, when he was a kid."

The Sheriff patted my shoulder. "Son, maybe you need to talk to someone. A doctor."

He left.

That time, Dad didn't just beat me.

He locked me in the old root cellar up on Miller's Ridge.

It was damp, cold. Nothing but a bucket for water and another for waste.

A week. I nearly went mad in the dark.

This time, when I crept back into the house, bruised and bleeding, Dad was asleep.

Tom and Billy were waiting up.

"Just be quiet, Ethan," Tom said, not unkindly. "Don't make trouble."

Billy took my duffel bag, the one I always kept half-packed, and emptied it. He smashed my burner phone, the one I'd hidden, under his heel. My laptop followed.

Something inside me snapped.

I stormed into Dad's room, flipped on the light.

He blinked, then scowled.

"If you don't want me to get married, just say so!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "Why do you make them hate me? What did I ever do to you? I do everything you say! What more do you want?"

He didn't say a word. Just reached for the heavy oak chair by his bed.

He swung it like a baseball bat.

I ducked. It smashed against the doorframe.

I scrambled out of the room, out of the house, and ran.

I had one last hidden phone, an ancient flip phone, stashed in a loose board under the porch.

I called Dave, my college friend, the one who'd suspected Dad.

"Dave, you gotta help me. Call the state police. Not local. Tell them... tell them my father is trying to kill me."

It took an hour, but a state trooper car, blue lights flashing silently, pulled up.

Two troopers. A man and a woman.

Dad was polite. Concerned.

"My son, Ethan. He's... unwell."

The female trooper, Officer Ramirez, looked at my battered face.

"Mr. Thorne, we need to ask you some questions. And we'd like to see the inside of this... Pioneer's Home."

Dad agreed. Too easily.

"Of course, Officer. But tradition dictates only a woman about to join a family, or the female head of a family, enters with me." He smiled at Ramirez. "Perhaps you'd do us the honor?"

I screamed. "No! Don't go in there! It's a trick!"

Ramirez looked at me, then at her partner. He shrugged.

She went in with Dad.

Ten minutes.

She came out, her face unreadable.

She walked over to me.

"You're a sick individual," she said, her voice flat.

Dave had driven down. He'd arrived just as Ramirez came out. He rushed over.

"Ethan! Are you okay?"

Ramirez said something to him, quiet, urgent.

Dave's face went pale. Then he looked at me.

He punched me. Hard. In the jaw.

My leg buckled. I heard a crack. Searing pain.

"You bastard!" Dave screamed, his face a mask of rage. "What you did to them!"

The male trooper pulled Dave off me.

Officer Ramirez spoke into her radio. "False alarm. Domestic dispute. Subject appears to be delusional."

They left.

Dad dragged me, my leg screaming, to the old pigsty behind the barn.

He threw me in.

The stench of old manure and something else, something rotten, filled my nostrils.

He locked the gate.