“Your father abused you,” I say. We’d touched on this topic before. But it feels like there’s more leftto be said here.
And that—maybe, just maybe—Lucio wants to say it to me.
For a second, I think he’s just going to ignore my probe.
“From the beginning,” he answers emotionlessly.
I feel myself being pulled into his world, his past. I feel the need to reach out and touch him.
I settle for moving a little closer.
“Didn’t your mother try to stop him?”
A flicker of resentment passes across his eyes. “She mostly just sat and watched,” he tells me. “Itwasn’t cruelty on her part. It was helplessness.”
Lucio breaks eye contact and gazes out into the distance like he can see the memories playing onceagain.
“If she so much as made a sound, he would turn on her. He had brok
