Chapter Thirty-Two

The car-ride to the airport was surreal. I kept glancing at my father, in disbelief that he was sitting only inches away from me. I once even poked him, which made him glance at me as though I was acting irrational and I think I was.

"I can't believe he let me come." I say finally, the silence was beginning to get overbearing.

"Has he hurt you?" My father's voice was sudden, as if he had been wanting to ask me that this whole time but held himself back from doing so.

"No." I say, in a defensive tone that surprised even me. "He has never hurt me, well, physically."

"I find that hard to believe." He replied, "The way he acted when he said you could come, Mirea, I'm afraid he may hurt you when you come back."

"He wouldn't do that."

"Are you defending him?"

I stare at my father in disbelief, "Absolutely not, I just-"

"Because it sounds like you're defending him."

"I'm not defending him."

"Don't tell me he's grown on you."

"Dad." I stop him before he could spew anything else as ridiculous as me liking Inanis Messor. "I live with the guy; I know how he acts. I feel like I know him, and I know he wouldn't harm me in a physical way."

"So, you'll just let him insult you and throw casual threats at you every hour? Is that it? The way he threatened you tonight, God, Mirea, I wanted to kill him right there."

"You don't understand him like I do." I argued, "That's just what he does. He threatens people when he's feeling-" I pause, as I was going to say Inanis threatens people when he's angry, but really, he threatens people when he's happy too. He just likes to make threats, but I have never seen him actually act upon them. Inanis isn't one to 'feel' things often, so when he does he goes to the extreme. I can't exactly hate him for being dramatic, when that's all he knows. "He's a liar." I say finally, "He's a liar, he loves to lie, it's what he does best, trust me."

"So, the man who kills people for a living won't hurt you because he's such a good guy? I believe that."

"Why are you acting this way?" I shift uncomfortably in my seat, "Can't we just be glad that I'm able to come home for a week? I don't want to talk about Inanis for the rest of this trip."

"That's just it, Mirea." My dad shouting, making me jump, "You coming home with me shouldn't be a 'trip'. This is a fucking mess. You should be making something of yourself right now. You should be going to job interviews and discovering who you want to be. Not caged up in some damned mansion like a prisoner."

"This is how it is, dad. I wouldn't change a thing."

"My life isn't worth this."

"I said I wouldn't fucking change a thing, I'd do it over and over and over, so drop it."

"You've fallen in love with him, haven't you?"

"Excuse me?"

My dad took his eyes off the road and stared at me, "Jesus, Mirea."

"I don't love him, that's vile! How could you even ask me something like that?" My heart was racing from my rising temper. I understood why my father was so angry, but he had no right to make such absurd claims.

"It makes sense." He said, "His mother complaining about how he's been putting his work second."

My eyes widened, "Oh my god." I say, "Is that why she let you come to the mansion? Because I'm a distraction to her son and she wanted to get rid of me?"

"I approached her." He informed me.

"You were at the killing today, weren't you?"

"Of course I was."

And just like that, my anger evaporated. "Why would you do that?"

"I thought the only way to get to you was to get to his mother."

I narrow, "You knew Inanis's mother?"

"No, in fact I've never seen the woman before. I've heard of her though. I knew she was his mother because I've been told the only person scarier than the Bone Cutter was his large mother with the personality of a viper." He scoffs, "I overheard her yelling at an intern about Inanis not focusing, or something like that. So, I approached her, and began to form a deal."

"And she actually agreed to help you."

"It had nothing to do with her wanting to help me."

"She just wants to control her son." I say flatly, and that makes him glance at me.

"No, Mirea, she's a mother just like any other, albeit ferocious and terrifying, she only wants her son to be successful, I can't blame her for that."

"And I'm a distraction." I repeat, "I get it."

"You should be happy." My father said with a lighter tone, "Perhaps you may just be the first Bone Harvester to divorce the Bone Cutter."

For some reason the idea of divorcing Inanis made my stomach hurt, and I stared dizzily out the car window in silence for the rest of the drive.

We eventually make it to the airport, and we board our flight back to Oregon.

Back home.

I managed to fall asleep the entire six-hour plane ride and awake with my father shaking me. "We're here, Mirea. We are finally home together." I felt my chest swell and my eyes grow wet as we exit the airport and the gorgeous city of Portland lay in front of me.

The sun had just risen, and everything felt new, and yet nostalgic and normal and I wanted to laugh and cry.

The car ride home felt like it lasted an eternity. Finally, the familiar iron gates appeared, and my father pulled into the front driveway. I nearly hop out of the car to see my childhood home standing before me as though it were welcoming me back with a warm smile.

I enter the house to see nothing has changed, even the smell was the same.

My father followed me in, and gave me a wide smile, "You have a whole week, whatever you want to do, we will do."

What I wanted was to sit on the couch with my father and do as we always did together, every night that he wasn't working. I'd have my notebook with me, and he'd have a beer in his hand, and we'd watch the news so we knew what was going on with the country. My father was the governor of Oregon, so the news channel was the only thing that was on our television. I learned to pay attention to the current events, but I was more interested in the revolutionary aspects of the people.

The anti-technology movement that was sweeping across America was my only obsession before my marriage to Inanis.

Now, I hadn't thought about it in weeks.

My father told me to go upstairs to my room and get some sleep. Despite sleeping the entire plane ride here, the moment I stepped into my bedroom, I felt a pull to my bed as though it were singing to me.

I plopped onto the soft mattress, the same mattress that I had slept on for years. My blankets were the same, warm, and gentle, and terribly inviting, and at that very thought, I closed my eyes, and drifted to sleep.

I dreamt of nothing, my happiness and relief carried me like a glittering fog, and I awoke to the afternoon sun shining through my bedroom windows, and for a moment, it felt like I wasn't married to America's Bone Cutter.

I sat up, staring at the white walls that I used to secretly doodle on and then cover up with a poster, or poem that I wrote. I hopped out of bed and pulled open my closet door. My clothes hung quietly just like they've always did. My clothes, not clothes Inanis has bought for me.

My clothes.

I pulled out my favorite pair of jeans and laughed at myself wearing them in the mirror.

I think I was drunk on joy.

Finally, I leave my bedroom and go downstairs where my father is preparing lunch. He's an awful cook, so he settled with sliced fruit and cheese and I didn't care as I sat at the kitchen table and watched him place a plate in front of me.

"Your smile is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." My father says, his own smiling making it onto his lips, "From the misery you seemed to be in yesterday on stage, to this, it's almost unbelievable."

"I'm just happy to be back." I say, grabbing a piece of watermelon and biting into it. "I don't think I've ever been so happy in my life."

"You and me both, sweetheart." He kisses my forehead like he always had done when I was a child and sat beside me at the table.

"So," I say, wiping my hands on my jeans, because that is something I can do without Inanis calling me a slob, "what is your plan for the day?"

"Whatever you wish."

Whatever I wish. That is not even a privilege I would have had back before I was married. My father had always been a busy man, so he rarely was home, and rarely when he was that he'd want to leave and actually do something.

I took advantage of this opportunity. "Let's go to my favorite trail. The one where we got lost on and ended up on the Washington border."

My father's smile widened, "A humiliating memory."

"My favorite memory."

"If that is what you want to do." And it was.

Not even half an hour later, we were out the door. We spent the entire day hiking and talking and getting to know each other. My father told me everything he has done for the past two months, which consisted mainly of him trying to find a way for me to get out of Inanis's grip.

I told my father how dining with the president was, since that was the last day the two of us got to speak with one another. I told him about meeting many different governors and mayors and the true scum in politics. My father seemed all-too familiar with those type of people, he worked with them, and even then, most people would claim he was scum along with them.

I made sure to skip over the parts where Inanis and I were intimate, not even the physical aspects, but the intimate conversations he and I would have. Like the time when he got drunk and confessed how he couldn't stop thinking about me. Or the time I had woken him up in the middle of the night to beg for Rodney's life, only to have him agree to spare him just because I asked him to. Or even the time Inanis had bought Leech, and on the car ride home, I secretly watched him caress the dog like the delicate thing it was, as though he actually cared about the creature.

And then I thought back to the very last words he spat at me last night before slamming the door in my face, "Had we not gotten married; I'd tell you to never come back."

"Mirea?" My father's voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

"Hmm?" I turn to him.

"You looked terribly somber just now."

"Did I?" I blinked a few times, realizing the affect Inanis truly had on me.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I was just thinking." I grabbed his arm and pulled him along with me, "It was nothing really. Let's keep going before it gets dark and we get lost again."

The sights and sounds of the Oregon trails should have put me at peace, but they didn't. Once we returned home, I found myself slightly less happy then when I had left, though I couldn't figure out why.

My father turned on the television and patted the seat beside him for me to sit. I gladly sat in my usual spot, the same seat I had sat in for the past eleven years of my life.

For the rest of the night we sat together, and watched the news, all the current events that I had no idea about flashed before me, but I payed no attention to any of them. Instead, I leaned my head on my father's shoulder, and comfortably fell asleep.