The Trauma Child by C.G. Twiles

Author:C.G. Twiles [Twiles, C.G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

Iwas glad the ride home was a short one because I was so distracted. The roads were hilly and twisty and I drove extra slowly so I’d get back alive. Once your parents die instantly from a truck swerving around a blind corner, you don’t take curves lightly.

I didn’t know what to think about Pearl claiming that Arial sounded like Maybelle. I only had Pearl’s word about any of this and for all I knew the woman—who looked to be in her eighties at the least—was suffering mental decline.

Was she suggesting Arial had inherited Maybelle’s nasty disposition? That everything going on with my child wasn’t PTSD, wasn’t a brain tumor, but was, in fact, genetics?

After she’d shared her contention that my daughter’s outburst at the supper had sounded like Maybelle, I’d stammered, “Well, that is something!”

Then I told her I needed to get back home.

At the door, Pearl had said, with a pitying tone, “I know this is all a surprise to you.” She encouraged me to look through the material I’d found in the basement. “Might be more information in there,” she’d said. “And the historical society. Last I knew, they had quite a bit on Viola.”

“Pearl, this inn…” I’d asked with dread. “It wasn’t where the house is, was it? There aren’t bodies in my backyard, are there?”

Viola’s inn was supposed to be on the outskirts of town but perhaps Pearl had been trying to spare me from the truth. If, indeed, any of this was true.

“Oh no, dear, no,” she’d said, patting my arm. “Earl bought that property from a tobacco farmer. You should be able to find records in the town hall. I didn’t mean to scare you that way.”

I’d nodded and then walked down her driveway in a daze.

Both hands tightly clutching the steering wheel, I kept up a steady, low chant of profanity until I was parked behind Debbie’s van in my drive. For some reason, cursing helped release tension.

I was actually kind of angry at my great-aunt. Couldn’t she see that I had enough going on? She knew what had happened with Kevin. She knew I was having trouble with Arial. Yet she thought I also needed to know about my great-great-grandmother, the serial killer?

And to know that my soft-spoken, pure-hearted grandfather had been raised by a mother so emotionally embattled that her parenting style had sent two of her sons to an early death?

No wonder my grandfather never talked about his family.

My mind zinged around, touching on one belief, then flitting off to land on another. Pearl’s grasp on reality may have eroded to the point where she fabricated stories (though she seemed perfectly lucid?). Or she may genuinely but mistakenly believe in overblown family lore.

Or… it was all true.

Debbie was on the porch. As I poked my head around the doorway, I saw she was reading. “How’s it going?” I asked.

Arial and Nashua were on different levels of the jungle gym—Arial atop the platform, and Nashua digging his way down the slide with both feet.

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