They ordered hibachi after all the news crews had left. It was a quiet affair when they all sat around the table to eat. Emory kept glancing at Khal as though she wanted to say something, but she never spoke.
Rene didn’t even know what to talk about.
‘Hey so, the other day when I was being drowned by a psychopath’ wasn’t exactly the best start to a conversation with your five-year-old, or anyone else for that matter.
Rene realized he was ravenous. The hospital food had been adequate, but he’d really been missing a well cooked meal. He went to town on his hibachi, and realized he was almost done by the time the others were a quarter through. He looked around sheepishly at their plates, then took a drink of water to wash down what he’d eaten, and set his fork down so that his stomach could catch up with his mouth.
Emory looked over at him and smiled.
“Daddy, I had another dream about the magic woman while you were gone.” Emory stated.
“You did?” Rene looked at her curiously. “What did she say, darling?”
“She told me she was sorry for scaring me before. She wanted me to know that she meant you no harm. She…” Emory suddenly glanced at Khal, then looked down at her fork.
“What is it?” Rene asked.
“It’s nothing.” Emory said, poking at the food on her plate with the fork.
Khal spoke up, “What did she say, Emory?”
Emory looked at Khal, and Rene struggled to read her expression.
“She said sometimes we hurt the ones we love, and it’s not okay. And she said we have to make it up to them. She believes we can always do the right thing, in the end.” Emory said.
Rene was impressed by Emory’s maturity. The fact that she was having such dreams as a 5-year-old was incredible. He wondered what show she had been watching lately or what book she had been reading to influence such thoughts.
“She sounds very wise.” Khal said, smiling.
“Just remember that doing the right thing in the end doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll deserve forgiveness.” Ari pointed out. “Sometimes someone can do something so horrible that there can be no forgiveness.”
Rene nodded in agreement.
Now Khal was staring at his own plate, lost in thought.
“I’m not so sure about that.” Khal said. He glanced up at Ari. “I see your point, absolutely. But I find that there is a lot of strength in forgiveness. To have the power to let go of the hurt someone has caused us is such an important thing.” He looked from Ari, to Emory, to Rene. “I’ve been exquisitely betrayed in my life, to the point where I thought I wouldn’t be able to recover from it. I was wronged deeply by someone I cared so much about that it burned in me, threatening to consume me. I thought there could be no coming back from that. But then I realized why this person had done what they did, and I felt for them. I genuinely did. I loved them so much, which was why it hurt as much as it did. I let go of the pain they caused me. I forgave the hurt, and I became a better person for it.”
“How did they hurt you?” Emory asked curiously.
“You don’t have to answer if you’re not comfortable.” Rene pointed out.
“It’s okay.” Khal shrugged, then looked at Emory with a smile. “They tried to kill me. They thought I had hurt someone they loved, and they tried to get revenge. Of course, I would never hurt a soul, but I understand where they were coming from.”
“They tried to kill you, and you forgave them?” Ari asked.
Khal nodded, and dug into his meal, taking a heaping bite.
“I don’t think I could ever forgive that.” Ari said.
“You’d be surprised what you’re capable of.” Khal said after swallowing his bite. He smiled at Ari.
“I’ll never forgive the man who killed dad.” Emory said, glaring down at her plate.
Rene almost choked on his bite of food. They hadn’t actually told Emory how Misha had died, only that it had been an accident. He glanced up at Ari, who looked just as surprised as him.
“Your dad’s death was an accident.” Rene said, not entirely sure why he was saying that. He was just as sure as everyone else that Mr. Scott had been drinking when he’d accidentally killed Misha, which made it less of an accident and more of an asshole move to get into the car in the first place. Mr. Scott had been sent to the hospital after the incident, but no reports had actually come out on his blood alcohol content. And since he was one of the wealthiest men in town, it appeared that most of his actions had been swept under the rug. The library had still deposited his more than generous check, and there hadn’t been even a whisper of consequences for literally killing a man. Rene tried not to think about it too much, as it got his blood boiling.
But here he was, trying to placate Emory, and tell her that she shouldn’t feel anger for the asshole who had killed her dad.
“Dad was killed by Mr. Scott.” Emory insisted, looking at Rene as though daring him to lie to her.
“Who told you that?” Rene asked.
“Kids at school.” Emory said.
“Why didn’t you say anything before now?” Ari asked.
Emory shrugged.
“You never have to forgive Mr. Scott.” Khal said, looking directly at Emory. “He’s not a loved one. He’s nothing to you. The anger you feel towards him is totally valid. He belongs in hell with the excruciating burns of a thousand hot pokers. If he were your father though, or your grandfather, or someone you loved very much, you might feel differently. You might want to defend his actions. To realize he didn’t mean to do what he did. But since he’s not, and he took someone very special to you, I can see why you would hate him.”
Rene was speechless. His stomach squirmed uncomfortably at Khal’s words. The man had never spoken this much to Emory in the entire time he’d been there, and now he was giving advice like he was a close family member. Rene was too shocked and too worried about Khal’s mental state from the recent torture to say anything to contradict him. He began to wonder if it had been the best idea to have Khal stay there after all.
He glanced across the table at Ari, who was eating away at her dinner, looking unconcerned.
Rene wondered if he was worrying too much. Everything he had been through had fried his nerves. Was he too anxious about an innocent conversation?
“So we only forgive them if we really love them?” Emory asked, puzzled.
“That’s right.” Khal nodded, before taking another bite of his meal.
Rene had to think about that.
*****
Emory was at school, Ari was teaching a yoga class, and Khal was showering when there came a sudden knock at the door. Rene, who had been staring at the news on his phone, jumped, startled by the sound. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths to steady himself. It came to mind, not for the first time, that he was clearly going to need therapy to process everything he had been through. He’d never been this jumpy before in his life.
He stood up from the couch and walked over to the door. When he checked out the peephole, he saw a young woman who looked very determined.
Great, another journalist, he thought.
He opened the door and peeked out.
“Morning, can I help you?” Rene said, possibly more curtly than he meant to.
“Mr. Bloom, I am so sorry to bother you like this. I know this is probably horribly inappropriate, and this is the last place that I should be…I…”
She trailed off, biting her lip anxiously.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Rene asked, wanting nothing more than to close the door and go back to zoning out.
“My name is Jane Aquino. I’m- I’m Jeff Aquino’s daughter.”
Rene’s stomach lurched. He was tempted to slam the door in her face. How dare she come to his house, after everything that had transpired. But something in her expression had him curious. He wanted to know more about this young woman who had the audacity to approach him after her father had nearly murdered him.
After he had killed her father…
“The man who abducted you was not my father. Not as I ever knew him. My father wouldn’t have hurt a fly. He was a vegan, who loved animals, and volunteered for the animal shelter. He used to take my brother and I down to the lake to pick up trash. I saw him help people and turtles cross the road multiple times. There wasn’t a cruel bone in his body. I don’t know if he developed a brain tumor, or had a traumatic brain injury that I don’t know about, but I know he doesn’t fit the profile of a serial killer. I’ve researched them extensively for my criminal justice courses at the college, and he had none of the markers.” She blurted all of this out without taking a breath, and Rene was struck by the sincerity with which she spoke.
She’d started to cry, and was wiping tears off of her cheeks.
“I’m sorry to come at you with all of this. It probably sounds insane, but it’s the truth. At least, my truth. I don’t know what changed in him, and now we’ll never know because they cremated his body.”
She was staring down at the rug on Rene’s porch, clearly at a loss.
Rene wasn’t sure why he did it, but he stood back and held out a hand, gesturing her inside. The logical part of his brain was screaming for him to get this woman as far away from his house as he could, but the curious side of him won out. He also looked at her and saw a young woman struggling with the loss of her father. She hadn’t just lost him to death. In her mind, he had become an entirely different person. She’d lost a Saint to utter darkness.
She sniffled and pulled a tissue out of her pocket to wipe her nose as she stepped inside.
“Thank you. Again, I am so sorry. I know this is wrong. I know about some of the things they say he did. I just can’t reconcile that person with the gentle giant I grew up with.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Rene muttered. “I can’t say I saw any of the man you’re describing. If something did change his personality, then it was all consuming.”
She swallowed and nodded.
“I understand. Really, I do. I can’t even fathom what you’ve been through.” She said. “I figured something must be wrong when he dropped off the face of the earth a few weeks ago. He used to work almost six days a week at his tattoo shop, and then one day he just didn’t bother showing up to work. I couldn’t have possibly imagined he’d be hurting anybody. That he was kil- he was…well.”
She sucked in a shaky breath and wiped her face again with the back of her hand.
“He was my best friend. The thing he became, I couldn’t have imagined it in a million years if I tried.” She said.
“Your father was a tattoo artist?” Rene asked, absently running a hand over the tattooed area on his back.
The motion was not missed by Jane. She looked at him curiously.
“Did he tattoo you?” She asked. “I’d heard rumors, but I wasn’t sure.”
Not that it was any of her business, but Rene nodded. She seemed to realize how awkward her question was so she said nothing. At least she didn’t ask to see it.
“Was your father by any chance obsessed with ancient Egypt?” Rene asked.
Jane frowned and shook her head.
“I never heard him mention it. If he was, he kept it from us.” She said. “He was just a happy hippy tattoo artist.”
He was a lot more than that, Rene thought.
“Listen, Jane-“
“Were you the one that killed him? I mean, to protect yourself?” Jane asked.
The question dropped a lump like a boulder directly into Rene’s gut. He didn’t want to answer, but he slowly nodded his head.
“I know you had to do what you had to do to escape.” She said. “I understand that. And I’m so sorry you had to make that decision. So many young men will never go home now because of his actions.”
“I’m sorry.” Rene said, and he meant it, from the bottom of his heart. He wasn’t sorry that he was alive now, to come home to Emory. He wasn’t sorry that a serial killer was off the streets, never able to harm another soul again. But he was sorry, genuinely sorry that he’d had to take a life. And he was sorry that Jane had also suffered a loss so extreme that it was likely she would never recover from this.
She shook her head.
“No, I’m sorry. I should have known something would happen. I should have seen some kind of sign that he was changing so drastically, but there was nothing. Nothing I could pick up on. Maybe I was blinded by my love for my father, for the gentle giant I knew all my life. I wish I could have done something sooner.”
“I wish I could have known the man that you knew, growing up.” Rene said. “He sounds wonderful.”
It was strangely cathartic, talking about all of this. Getting to know that there had been a human behind the psycho who kept him in the basement.
“Thank you.” Jane said quietly. “Thank you for letting me say my piece. For letting me into your home. Thank you for your understanding.”
“Thank you for having the strength to come here.” Rene said. “I wish the circumstances had been different, but I’m glad to have met you, Jane.”
He held out a hand and she took it hesitantly and shook it.
“Goodbye, Mr. Bloom.” Jane said, smiling for the first time since she’d gotten there. “I wish you a speedy recovery, and I hope for nothing but the best for you and your family.”
“Goodbye, Jane. Take care.” Rene said. He opened the door for her, and she gave him one last glance before she headed outside and down the driveway toward her car.
Rene waited a moment, then closed the door behind her. When he turned around, he jumped in surprise to see Khal standing there shirtless, wearing only pants and drying his hair with the towel as he’d just gotten out of the shower.
“Who was that?” Khal asked.
Rene considered lying at first, but he didn’t want to keep things like that from Khal. Not after what they’d been through together.
“That was the daughter of Jeff Aquino.” Rene said, trying not to stare at the healing wounds on Khal’s bare chest. All the signs of the torture he had endured. “Apparently, her father used to be an entirely different person. It’s likely he had a brain tumor or a TBI, but we’ll never know since he was cremated.”
Khal frowned, “You let her into the house?”
“She wasn’t doing any harm. Actually, it was nice to talk to her. To get a different perspective on the man that took us.” Rene said. “I guess he was a tattoo artist.”
“That would make sense.” Khal said. It was clear that he was very unhappy with Jane having visited, but he said nothing else. Khal turned to leave, and as Rene watched him go, his eyes were drawn first to the ankh tattoo on Khal’s back, in the exact same spot at Rene’s. It had healed so well that it almost looked faded.
Rene’s gaze went left from the tattoo and he was shocked to see a number of marks on Khal’s back. Marks that were definitely not new, not fresh or given to him by Jeff Aquino. These marks looked like whip marks. Rene wanted to say something, but he was at a loss for words as Khal headed back to the bedroom to get dressed.
Stories From Montana 