The Institute, Daddy Issues(42)

“You must have loved her to take beat­ings for her,” Dr. Lucy said softly. “Did you have any sib­lings? Did they ex­per­i­ence this treat­ment too?”

“I had three younger sis­ters,” Salt said. “My mother would send them to bed as soon as we heard my father at the door. She tried to send me too but when I got old enough to know what was hap­pen­ing…” He shook his head. “I re­fused to go.”

“Oh, Salt…” I whispered, look­ing at him. “So…it wasn’t just once?” When I’d seen the marks on his back, I had hoped it was a sin­gu­lar oc­cur­rence or at least that it hadn’t happened more than a couple of times.

He looked back at me. “Once a week at least. Un­til I got old enough to stop him. Now you know. This is what I did not wish to tell you but now you know, Andi.”

If Dr. Lucy no­ticed his slip in us­ing my real name, she didn’t men­tion it. She was simply quiet while we looked at each other.

I didn’t know what to say. I had the sud­den urge to go to Salt and hug him, even though we really weren’t the hug­ging kind of part­ners. I star­ted to do it any­way but then I felt weird and stayed where I was.

“I wish I could have been there,” I said thickly. “I wish I could have shot the bas­tard right through the place where his cold, dead heart should have been.”

Salt smiled mirth­lessly and there was a chilly gleam in his pale eyes.

“This I took care of my­self when I was old enough. Not with a gun, though. With these.” He held out his big hands, the hands that had touched me so gently last night.

I shivered a little. I had seen Salt use deadly force be­fore, twice dur­ing our part­ner­ship. It al­ways bothered me a little how cold he was when he killed—how it didn’t seem to faze him a bit. Now I wondered if this was the reason why. If he’d really killed his own father, what other killing could or would bother him ever again? Everything after patri­cide is just kind of an­ti­cli­mactic.

“Mishka, how do you feel about what your Papa just told you?” Dr. Lucy asked quietly. “Are you frightened at all?”

“Of course not,” I said, still look­ing at Salt. “He would never hurt me. Never.”

“Then you do trust him. And I want you to no­tice some­thing else—some­thing that just happened. When he told you about his past trauma, your re­ac­tion was very pro­tect­ive—you wanted to shield him from harm and make him feel bet­ter.”

“Of course I did,” I said, look­ing at her. “What kind of per­son would I be if I didn’t feel that way?”

“But my point is—why is it all right for you to feel that way to­wards your Papa but not for him to feel that way to­wards you?”

“I…I don’t know,” I said, frown­ing.

“Be­cause it would make you weak?” she sug­ges­ted. “Vul­ner­able? These are your words I’m us­ing here, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” I shif­ted un­com­fort­ably. How much had she heard while Salt and I were sit­ting out­side her of­fice ar­guing?

“Think of what you’re miss­ing,” Dr. Lucy ar­gued softly. “After your father left you, I’m sure you missed him—missed sit­ting in his lap, feel­ing his af­fec­tion. This is what your Papa is of­fer­ing you now—all the things you missed as a child. The love, the nur­tur­ing, the un­con­di­tional af­fec­tion and the feel­ing that all of his at­ten­tion is centered just on you, his pre­cious little girl…” She spread her hands. “I’m cer­tain that your mother did the best she could to fill in the gaps but—”

“Not really,” I said bluntly. “My mom was a barely func­tion­ing al­co­holic. She was usu­ally way too deep into her wine bottle to bother with things like shop­ping for gro­cer­ies or wash­ing clothes. Let alone in­cid­ent­als like cud­dling or story time.”

“So cud­dling and story time—that kind of af­fec­tion was what you got from your bio­lo­gical father?” she asked.

I nod­ded, try­ing not to think about it. Try­ing not to re­mem­ber how hor­ribly lonely I’d been after Daddy left the pic­ture for good. He was the one who al­ways helped with my home­work, who made sure I had clean clothes to wear, and who cuddled me in his lap while he read me stor­ies at bed­time. After he left, there was a huge hole in my life that my mom hadn’t even tried to fill. Just think­ing about it made the hole open up again—a hole so deep and dark I felt like it might swal­low me forever.