Page 214 - Till the Last Breath . . .

off. ‘I was consumed by guilt. I was no less a monster than that man. I

didn’t know how to come to you and apologize. I didn’t know what I could
have done to make it better … I needed to die.’
‘I need to go,’ she said as a lone tear trickled down her cheek. She got up

and turned her back on him.
‘I tried to kill myself,’ he mumbled.

She turned to look him in the eye, still fuming but a mush of emotions
inside. Almost instinctively, her searching gaze caught his hands—both

wrists had huge scars running through and through. Someone must have
found him quickly after he did that because the wounds appeared deep

enough to prove fatal within fifteen minutes. They were determined cuts
that ran deep, not superficial grazes that suicidal teenagers have.
‘Did you cut …?’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Nothing worked. I drove our car off a flyover. I ate a bottle of sleeping
pills … I lived. I lived to face you,’ he whimpered like a little girl.

‘When was that?’ she asked with a trace of emotion in her voice. ‘Wait?
Was it when you and Mom …?’

‘We never went to Europe. I was in a hospital for a month,’ he clarified.
‘And Mom? You never thought about her? Does she know? Had you

died, what would she have done? She has a daughter who doesn’t talk to her
and a husband who constantly tries to kill himself? WHAT THE FUCK
WERE YOU THINKING? And just because you tried to kill yourself

doesn’t mean I will forgive you. How can I forgive all those years you were
right in front of me and I couldn’t tell you anything. HOW DO YOU

THINK I FELT when you were going to parties with the SAME MEN
WHO RAPED ME! How can I forget all that? JUST BECAUSE YOU

TRIED TO KILL YOURSELF? You know what? I wish you had died! You
deserve to!’ she bellowed and melted into a big pool of tears.

She slumped on the couch, scrunched herself into a little ball and hoped
she would disappear. She wept and she could hear her father sob like a little
child. She was angry, distraught and vulnerable. Slowly, a montage of

pictures with her father and her started to float in front of her eyes,
interspersed with images of her dad lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of