Heart To Heart
When they returned to the safehouse, Zorah’s legs were feeling like quivering jelly.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” she whispered to him as they sat outside the house still in the back of the SUV.
“You don’t have to. We can stop right now. Orlando and Icaro will take care of everything, and you don’t need to do anything.”
“His arrogance was astounding,” she looked towards the house and sighed. “The way he shut my mother down so easily. He lied with such conviction. I know my mother is now back in her room pacing and wondering which of us were lying.”
“He was convincing. If I didn’t know the backstory, I would have suspected your mother was barking up the wrong tree.”
“I was scared for a moment,” Zorah admitted. “I’ve been there when he’s punished her. I was frightened he would hurt her, and we’d be listening in and unable to stop it.”
Chester cleared his throat, “your mother deserves a good smackdown, Zorah but not at his hands. I wasn’t lying when I said Sidonia’s aunt was being made aware of the affair between her husband and Zipporah. Before this day is done, your mother’s affair with a married man will be exposed. Your mother is going to find herself losing her job in the church. The nuns will not want her living there so she will be homeless. Your uncle is not going to be there to protect her once he eats a bullet.”
“Why do I feel guilty?” Zorah asked quietly. “I know I shouldn’t. I know she’s a horrible human being. I know she hurt me. I know she has no real love for me in her heart. She let a monster of a man destroy me body and soul for years. She,” she took a breath, “for all intents and purposes didn’t stop her family from bartering my life in exchange for the assassination of a man who wasn’t even my father. She lied to her entire family about who my father was, and a teenager ended up dead. He was only eighteen and while he was a vile excuse for a human being who made your life a living hell, Dad, he might have turned his life around. He died because Mom lied about him being the father of her child. He might have insulted and humiliated her to the point she attempted suicide, but she lied! She’s a horrible person, Dad. Horrible”
“She is.”
“Then why do I feel bad knowing her entire life is about to explode in the worst way possible? She’s going to be living on the streets, with no income, no savings and education to fall back on. She’s only ever cleaned the church. She has no other life skills. What is she going to do?”
“She’s going to have to do what you were forced to do for the first twenty-one years of your life, Zorah. She’s going to have to survive and find a way to make it day by day.” Chester reached and tugged her hand and held it between his. “Honey, you feel badly because you have a heart of gold, and this is dark, scary, and unsettling. I want you to really think hard on whether or not you want to confront Ippocrate because meeting your mother is only going to be a fraction of how it will feel to be in front of him.”
“I’m scared of him gaslighting me the way he did Mom today. What if I get in front of him and he tries to make me doubt the things which happened?”
“We won’t let it happen. One of the things Orlando and I insisted on is you are not to be alone with him at all. Me, Orlando, Dagoberto, Chester, Vodingo, some guy named Amauri, Keturah will be there,” he squeezed her hand. “We will be right there with you all the time. You won’t be alone with him.”
“I don’t want to cry in front of him,” she confessed quietly. “I felt so angry I cried with Mom there and I don’t want him to see my tears. He doesn’t deserve to see my tears.”
“You’re right but sweetie, he doesn’t get to control your emotions. If you want to cry, then you are fucking cry. It’s not a weakness to cry. It’s not weak to express your anger and frustration with tears. It doesn’t give him the right to steal the feelings you have. Own them, Zorah. Take ownership back of your emotions. You told me when we talked this week you learned how not to cry when he would hit you with the flogger. You could bear the pain. You don’t need to hide anything because you are trying to please him. Let it all out.”
“Does he deserve to see my tears?”
“No. But you deserve to shed them.” Chester tipped her chin with his fist, “you’re allowed to cry. You only give him ownership of your tears if you allow it but otherwise those tears are yours. Your screams, they’re yours. Your laughs, they all belong to you. He doesn’t get to control those. Not now. Not ever again.”
“How did you get so wise?”
“I got shot in the back and lost the use of my legs which required me to have to undergo extensive amounts of psychotherapy.” He deadpanned. “No, really, Zorah. There was so much psychological therapy. The program in Switzerland had mandatory therapy twice every single day.”
“Did they tell you things like your emotions are yours?”
“No but they did encourage me to cry a lot. I was really angry, Zorah but I kept it all inside. I was so worried about increasing Dane and Orlando’s guilt I internalized all my own grief. I kept making it seem to everyone I was far stronger than I was because I knew they both harbored their own guilt. I learned to let it out. You are entitled to let it out. If when you tell the giant blowhard, Giannone how he hurt you and it makes you cry, it’s okay. Those are your feelings. His opinion of those feelings is irrelevant. You’re facing him for you, not for him. What he thinks or feels is irrelevant. This is for you.”
She nodded. “I’m glad you’re here with me, Dad. I really am.”
“You know who else is here with you?”
She frowned at the question and then followed the direction of his gaze to see the man leaning against the frame of the front door.
“Icaro.”
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