I had pretty clearly been an accident.
My sisters had all been born almost exactly a year apart, each in February. You could be forgiven for thinking this a mere coincidence if you didn't know my father. The man controlled every little aspect of his life down to the minutiae. He planned everything of import down to the smallest detail. My sisters and their births were part of this planning; I was not.
Five years after the youngest, Tabitha, I was born in early November to very little fanfare. I was a mistake, so I was not celebrated in the way my sisters were. My father never acknowledged his mistakes. In his view, they were to be learned from and then left behind.
This mindset also applied to me.
I have few memories of my father from my early childhood. He was a distant presence, not often home, but when he was it was best that he was avoided. He could be whimsically cruel, and seeing me had a tendency to incite that cruelty. I learned at a young age that I was to stay away from him if at all possible.
My mother was also aloof when dealing with me, though there were times that she could be a nurturing presence. When I was miserably sick with the chicken pox at age 5, she was there, soothing me with calamine lotion and kisses. When I was 7 I broke my collarbone, having fallen from the towering oak tree in our backyard. She rushed out the backdoor when she heard Caitlin shouting for her, and she held me while we waited for the ambulance. For nearly a week after, she doted on me. Until my father returned home from business, and she once again put me at arm's length.
I was closer with my sisters, especially Tabitha. While our age gap meant we had little in common, from the time I was in grade school I could remember them being fiercely protective of me. I was off limits to local bullies, who lived in fear of their retribution. Caitlin in particular, who so looked like our mother, could be wrathful in dealing with anyone who hurt someone she loved.
Which is why it was particularly painful when she, too, became distant as she grew older. The same happened with Cara not long after, and eventually even Tabitha began to treat me with a cold indifference. By the time I turned 13, the entire family acted as if I didn't exist. Conversations would cease when I entered the room. My sisters would find excuses to be elsewhere if I tried to spend time with them. I was a stranger in my own home.
I will admit, at that age I spent a great deal of time in my room sobbing my heart out over their lack of care and attention. The bullies at my school, noting the lack of intervention from my now-grown sisters, swept in on me and made my life a further hell. My grades began to plummet, and I was surly and unkind to everyone around me, even the few friends I had at school.
Thus the impetus for me to be sent to boarding school just shy of my fourteenth birthday. There, I flourished. No daily reminders of a family that did not care for me. No casual cruelty from my father. No bullies waiting for me in school bathrooms. Not that boarding school didn't have its share of bullies. I just learned swiftly how to avoid them, and within a year it was no longer an issue.
When I turned 14 I was perhaps five and a half feet tall and just over 100 lbs. By my fifteenth birthday, I had put on four more inches and half again my weight. A year later, I was just over six feet in height, and I was growing stronger with each day. By the time I graduated, I was six-foot-three and nearly 220 lbs. With few hobbies and fewer friends, I had focused intensely on fitness and self defense classes. Initially the martial arts were part of a childish fantasy about beating up my father, but eventually the discipline and serenity that came with them were my primary focus. It helped that the skills I learned made me feel powerful in a way I had never felt before.
I did not see my family after being sent to boarding school. Not once. I had infrequent letters from my sisters, mostly Tabitha, up through the end of my second year, but after that my letters home went unanswered. I remained at the school for holidays along with a handful of other children of wealthy families who could not be bothered to deal with their offspring. I was, for all intents and purposes, alone in the world.
My senior year was... eventful. At least, as far as I was concerned. Seniors on our campus were afforded far more leeway and privileges than the underclassmen. We attended dances and other events held by a nearby school for girls. We were allowed off campus and into the nearby town to go shopping (if we had funds to do so) or to see movies. We could even date, though we had a strict curfew. Not that this did me a great deal of good, as I had little spending money to speak of, merely a monthly stipend of $100 for personal needs. But it did allow me to meet girls my age and learn how to flirt.
Well, to the degree that any 17-year-old knows how to flirt. I was unsuccessful more often than not, especially as they began to learn that I did not have access to funds in the way most of my classmates did. But I was tall, and relatively handsome, I was the only boy in my class who was able to grow a beard (I cultivated that facial hair in a way that some might call obsessive), and I was strong and dangerous in my own way. Eventually these traits caught the eye of a girl from that nearby school.
Naomi was from an incredibly wealthy family, and had a confidence that can only arise from being completely comfortable for one's entire life. She was absurdly naive about some things, but she saw me and wanted me, and like most spoiled girls she got what she wanted. We began dating within a week of meeting. We had sex within the month. I was in heaven.
But spoiled girls are also fickle, and eventually Naomi grew bored of the poor rich boy and moved on. She was never unkind to me, she just simply told me we were done. I was initially upset, but one of her friends swooped in to comfort me, and after that I had a steady supply of girlfriends who wanted to be there for the handsome young man who had no one else.
I had a wall around my heart, however. I never learned how to let someone close to me. I think I instinctively believed that doing so would lead to pain; I had no experience to tell me otherwise. I was certainly friendly, and I could be charming, but that wall always remained. I broke a few hearts that year, when I could not tell one girl or another that I loved her in return.
When graduation came, I held out hope that I might finally see my family. It had been four years since I had seen them. Two since I had last heard from any of them. But I foolishly believed they must still love me and want to see my success. I was wrong. No one attended my graduation. I didn't even receive a call. When all was said and done, I was gathering up my belongings and wondering how I would get home. I gave away most of what I had acquired over the years at school. I packed up what little remained, and using my monthly stipend I bought a Greyhound ticket home.
Riding a bus for 1,500 miles is not an experience I would recommend, especially if you are larger than average. On the first leg of my trip, I spent my time cramped in a tiny seat near the front of the bus, before changing buses at a terribly-lit station in a shady part of a large, Midwestern city. I immediately took the very back seat, by the restroom. It was less crowded, and I could stretch my legs some, but the smell of the restroom made for a less than desirable trade-off. I dealt with it.
The trip took just under two days. It was miserable in a way only those who have taken such a journey can imagine. I stepped off the bus and still had over thirty miles to go to get home, and only seven dollars left to my name. So I did what I thought best: I called a cab, and hoped that my parents would not be so unkind as to not pay for it when I arrived.
The cab ride felt interminable. I began, finally, to recognize places as we passed them, and eventually we turned up the long drive to my parents' home. It was not what comes to mind when the word "mansion" is used, but it qualified in most other aspects. It was large, somewhat palatial with a sort of ranch-house quality to it. There was a detached garage to one side, where my father stored the two vintage cars he'd had painstakingly restored (though not by his own hand; he had paid a pretty penny for them). The back yard had been, at one point, like a large playground for me and my sisters. I wondered if the swingsets and the playhouse were still there.
I told the cabby someone would be out shortly to pay him, and tip him well, and I grabbed my suitcase and made my way up to the front door. Initially I thought to ring the doorbell, but this was my home as well, was it not? I pressed the door latch and it was open, so I let myself inside. I could hear nothing in the house, but it was a large place and someone was likely home somewhere. I looked back at the cabby, held up a finger, and then closed the front door behind me and set my luggage against the wall.
I walked into the reception area, and everything looked precisely as I remembered it. I let out a sigh of relief; I had half expected that my parents had sold the place and I was walking into a stranger's home. I glanced around to see if anything had changed, but only some minor details were different. I listened intently, but could hear no one in the house.
I wandered through the ground floor rooms until I found myself outside my father's study. It was a place I had not been allowed for most of my childhood. But I was a grown man now, and despite the fear that gripped my belly, I opened the door and let myself inside.
