Forbidden Love - Segment 42

[itztigress3]

Segment 42 – Family Secrets
POV: Emily
Word Count: 4664
Warnings: None

February 13, 2008; Wednesday

I was very grateful that Zac had stayed with me the two nights; I really had not wanted to be alone. The doctor released me early with instructions to see my OB, which I went ahead and made the appointment and with a few different prescriptions which Zac and I went and filled before going to the studio. Because my apartment was small, we were meeting my brothers and his there for lunch.

He and I arrived first which was fine with me.

“Do you have my phone?”

“Craig has it; he took it last night so he could remove whatever Gary put on it. I believe he had to consult the police before doing that too.”

I sat down at his desk and turned the computer on; he wondered what I was doing until he saw where I was signing in.

“Emily, I really don’t think that’s a good idea. You were there, why would you want to watch it?”

I looked at him and back at the screen, proceeded to log in and view the last file. I had to see them being arrested, I had to feel secure knowing the police did arrest them. He watched me fast forward through the morning without looking at the screen. He watched the screen though, and all day they just sat there until the police came in that is, then they tried to leave out the back door but police were waiting there too. I only needed to see them handcuffed to know they were arrested. I then closed the windows out and checked the company e-mail; I had gotten three from Stephanie.

“That’s odd.” I said.

He looked at me. “What is?”

“Stephanie said we are missing a box of t-shirts and a box of your drumsticks, normal ones you use. Yet, I did inventory last week and everything was here.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, she sent four more items an hour later. Mostly shirts.”

He had me move and he read the e-mails, checked something, and then checked cameras, knowing it was there Friday and gone today helped narrow his search. It didn’t take him long to find the person walking out the backdoor.

“I guess we can eliminate a thief and a spy.” He said.

He called Taylor and Isaac and after a brief discussion they agreed to file charges, so he called the police and once they arrived I went to set up the conference room for lunch. I didn’t need to be involved with that. Zac was able to handle it before Taylor and Isaac arrived with the catering they had picked up. They set it up quickly in the conference room complete with plates, spoons, drinks and everything. I waited at the door for them to arrive. The van pulled up at five after noon and they got out, Christina was with them.

“Why are you always late?” I asked.

“My fault! I couldn’t decide what to wear.” Christina said.

I smiled and let them inside, she still did not know and she was under the impression that the boys wouldn’t be here so when she came in and they were all standing there she just froze beside me.

“They don’t bite, well, Zac might we let him out of his cage for a while.”

“So mean to me.” Zac said.

She looked at me and then the three of them. “Are they real?”

I walked over and pinched Zac lightly. “Aw!”

“Yep, all real. The conference room is this way, lunch is ready.”

“She really is mean to you.” Christopher said.

“You have no idea.” Zac said.

Christina had to be prompted by George to move, Hanson waited until she was past and followed the rest of us, and I lead them to the conference room and let them inside. They were impressed, everyone fixed plates and sat down, I was flanked by Zac and Christopher but Christina took Zac’s other side. It was quite for a bit but Christina broke the silence.

“I’m sorry about your impending divorce Zac.”

He glanced at her. “I’m not. But, I can’t really talk about it because it’s not final yet.”

“Not a problem, I know how that goes. What do you plan to do with your new found freedom?”

“Yeah, Zac, what do you plan to do?” Isaac asked.

I took a sip of the soda I had gotten. “I figured he’d want to date a bit, see the world with someone new, someone willing to. Then decide what the future holds.”

“What she said.” Zac said.

“Dating is nice, look around and see what’s out there.”  I caught the tone and looked at her.

“Too bad George asked you to be his wife.”

“There are lots of women out there that like Zac Hanson; I can set you up with a few of them.” She said.

Isaac gagged some on a fry or soda, I wasn’t sure which. Taylor just stared. Zac looked at me, it was my decision to tell them or not. I pouted and he gave me his best serious face.

I sat him back some.

“Actually Christina he won’t need you to set him up with anyone. He’s already got a girlfriend as soon as that divorce is final.”

She looked shocked really. “Already? Geez Zac you should at least have some fun before you settle with someone else. Explore and have fun.”

Everyone looked at her and then him, including me. Should be do that? He’d been tied down with Kate since he was 15 and he would be tied to me for the rest of his life. Should he have that time to do that? He didn’t respond quickly either and I wondered about that, but he laid his hand on my thigh gently and smiled at me before looking at her. His hand never left my thigh.

“No. I settled with Kate, I don’t see myself as simply settling with the new girlfriend. I see her as someone I can trust, someone who would not mind exploring and having fun with me. I’m not simply settling for her, she is the person I should have been with. Besides, I cannot do one night stands or random hookups; I’ve never liked that concept.”

I saw Taylor and Isaac smile and I saw Christopher and Aaron do the same.

“She must be one hell of a woman for you to jump right back in immediately.”

“Technically I jumped before I even filed, I jumped 11 months ago. But, recent events means I don’t really have to wait until it’s finalized either.”

She looked shocked at that. “Who the hell is this woman? I may want to meet her before we go home. Approve of her I would image your brothers would want too also.”

“We already do.” Isaac said.

She looked at me. “Do you know this woman?”

How she had not put it together by now I had no clue, maybe she just wasn’t because I was an employee as well.

“I know her very well, in fact I know right now what she wants is to change the subject and to do that it means that she needs to say this. Christina, Zac is taken already when his divorce is final. His girlfriend then will be me. We’ve been technically seeing one another 11 months. I am sorry I didn’t say anything in December but he’d just filed and there are circumstances and things you’re not aware of yet. When I can, I will explain them to you if you need me too. Now, let’s move on.”

Everyone but her went back to eating; she sat confused and looked concerned.

Zac looked at her. “Don’t worry Christina; Kate was cheating on me the whole time we were together. It’s not something I would do to Emily because I know she loves me and she’s not going to do that to me.”

“So, Emmy this is where you work?” Joshua asked.

“Yep. Five days a week, seven when Taylor is being a slave driver and wants me to do inventory.”

“I only did that once!” He said.

“He can be a slave driver though.” Zac said.

“I never said I wasn’t.” Taylor quipped.

“Do you have an office?” Jason asked.

“Yep. I have a box to be exact. I’ve been meaning to ask, was that a broom closet or something before you stuck a desk in there?”

Zac kind of scooted away. “Maybe…”

“So, I have a broom closet for an office. For the record, the four of us need to talk about that.”

My brother’s laughed. “And so it starts…” George said.

“What starts?” Isaac asked.

“She maybe the baby sister, she might even be the only girl. But, rest assured she can probably take any of you any day.” George said.

“Be fair George, Zac wouldn’t really fight her, the other two maybe, but not Zac.” Aaron said.

“I’m not stupid, you don’t piss women off. Besides, Emily is too nice to be violent.” Zac said.

I didn’t say a word, finished the plate I had and slid it away.

“Emmy, have you been wearing your halo?” Christopher asked.

“Oh, he’s fully aware of how I can be when I’m mad. It’s not likely he’ll forget that and that really wasn’t totally pissed, that was just upset.”

He looked at me. “That wasn’t you being mad?”

“Mad, yes. But not pissed off. You haven’t seen that yet.”

“Take our word; none of you want to see that.” Aaron said.

Taylor, Isaac and Zac looked at one another a few times and decided not to ask, so they didn’t. I had the sneaking suspicious that they would know soon enough. I let them all get done eating and having dessert and kind of talking a bit before I got Zac’s phone and wrote that I wanted them to take Christina out, explained why. He refused, saying she needed to know as well and that Taylor and Isaac needed too also. I tried, right?

“So…my loving adoring very sweet brothers…” I said.

All five of them looked at me and I saw 5 very nervous faces. Taylor and Isaac wisely moved to the sofa where Christina rolled too, even Zac moved away from the table.

“I’m going to assume that Christopher told you he watched the video and I’ll assume he told you what was said during the video.”

“He did.” George confirmed.

I looked at each of them. “So, Adam was lying about our father being worse than him. Right?”

None of them said a word, no one nodded or shook their hands, and no one hands down denied it. It was just silent. As even the four behind me had stopped talking and looked at us.

“I’m not picky here about who answers the question. Christopher, Craig said you heard that part of the video. Did you tell them about it?”

He only nodded, but kept his eyes on the table. I sat there and waited, they knew better than to do this they knew it wouldn’t be a question I would simply forget.

“Ok, so there are five of you surely one of you can answer that question. If Christopher told you everything he said you should know.”

I saw George and the twins exchange looks, but no one said anything.

“Ok, let me reintegrate what he told me in case you’ve forgotten. He said the reason I was suppose to marry him was some deal he had with Dad, where he provided an obedient, compliant wife like our mother.”

“Mom was pretty much compliant Emmy. She did everything he asked without questions. She was very submissive to Dad in a lot of ways.” Jason said.

“He told me you all knew but you didn’t have the heart to tell me the truth.”

I laid my hands on the table to steady them; this was being ridiculous how hard was it to say he lied to me? It couldn’t be that bad to simply say he lied to me and move on. There silence was pissing me off. I knew which would snap the easiest so I looked at Christopher and he looked very nervous when I did.

“Christopher Alexander!” I snapped.

All of them flinched even though I said his name, they knew the routine here I’d move up if I had too.

“Emily, what exactly did Adam tell you? Christopher heard most of it but he couldn’t hear every single word.” Joshua said.

“He told me dad never wanted a daughter for a reason, that dad was not like him. When I said Dad wasn’t a rapist like him, he told me none of you had the heart to tell me and then said Dad was worse than him because he preferred young girls. He said Dad never touched me because while the five of you tolerated him hitting me and making me cry, you would not tolerate if he truly hurt me and that you would kill him if he did.”

“Emmy…”Jason said.

“NO!” I shouted. My hands slammed onto the table top which shook the whole table, liquid in the cups vibrated and all five of them sat back and looked at me.

“There is no way in hell that is true. Adam lied to me, he was just trying to…” They were all looking at me now, but I stopped because that look was not one that I particularly liked.

Had Adam really been telling me the truth? Was my father, a man I looked up too still, a pedophile?

“No, he’s not… he never…he was…” I couldn’t complete a single sentence. My mind raced through memories of being there, trying to pinpoint if he had ever said or done anything out of the ordinary toward me. No one said anything, no one really moved. I could feel the shaking in my hands and laid them on my thighs, I pressed down intentionally to distract my brain with the pain. If Adam had not lied to me, that meant all five of them knew about him, he said all of them had not been able to tell me. I couldn’t think of a single time where he had showed any indication or interest in me beyond being his child.

I looked up from the spot I had focused on at George.

“George.” I said.

“Yes, Emily?”

“You are the oldest; therefore it should be your place to explain this to me. So, get your ass over here and explain it to me.”

He got up and came around the table, sitting where Zac once was; he turned my chair and his to facing each other.

“You really should not be concerned with this Emily.”

I looked at him. “Really George? They included me in their arrangements, he was going to trade me for an obedient wife. He was going to give me to Adam, who by the way had he not been arrested mentioned getting married this week. So, unless you can give me a very damn good reason why our father potentially liking little girls, then I strongly suggest you start talking. It is my concern. I should have been told years ago.”

He was quite for several minutes. “Emily…”

“Don’t. I have been through enough this week due to Gary and Adam. I am sure you know the details of that too, so don’t fuck around any longer. Whether you intended for me to know or not, is irrelevant. Adam said it. You explain it. When did you find out?”

His shoulder hunched some and his eyes roamed the room before they landed on mine. “The first thing you should know is that Dad has never been accused, arrested, or charged with anything beyond a burglary charge when he was 18. If you don’t believe me, ask Craig because he did the background for me a few years ago.”

“Craig knew?”

“He didn’t until you moved out of state, without us being near you I felt someone else needed to know. He was moving too, so I told him.”

“Ok. So, he’s never been charged but there is obviously something that concerned you enough and its obvious Adam knows as well.”

“When you were eight I came to the house to get something, I believe it was a book or something for college, I don’t really remember. Anyway, you, Christopher and Aaron were in the backyard playing and Dad was in the living room. The doors were open so he never saw me come in, but I paused because he was looking at your baby album. I glanced briefly and saw pictures I took of you when you were three and four, it was a hot fucking day and you had a t-shirt and panties on. I didn’t think much of it because I’d looked at them many times since then, just remembering those days.”

“I know what pictures you’re talking about, I have them too.”

“Yeah, I went up to the room and got whatever it was I needed and I remember stopping by the window to watch the three of you play for a bit before going back downstairs. When I came back down I heard him…”

“You heard him?” I asked.

“Please, Emily…”

I sat there for a moment. “He was jacking off to pictures of me when I was three and four?”

“No! Hell no I would have snatched you out of that house if he had. Your album was put back up and the one he had I had never seen before. The girls looked pre-teen age, so I confronted him about it. Interrupted him when I screamed what the hell, he said they were adults but looked young. I think at that moment I was willing to believe any damn thing but the truth. I excused it, believed him. But, it made me question things.”

“Like?”

“Why he didn’t want daughters, why he only wanted sons. Why he kept your hair rather short until you started school, why he dressed you like a boy a lot.”

I had to think about that one, I’d never noticed that really. I knew I was a tomboy but really there were differences.

“It was after your eleventh birthday that I noticed he was looking at you differently, just the way he watched you play or even when you were just watching TV. I also noticed he was starting to hit you harder, maybe even harder than he hit us. I cornered him again, reminded him that you were his own flesh and blood, his daughter and that he was acting strangely toward you and that I didn’t like the way he was looking at you.”

Again, I pressed my hand into my thigh, more to keep from throwing up than anything else, but I sat quietly because I knew he wasn’t done.

“He insisted he was not seeing you as anything more than his daughter. By now I think the truth had sunk in to me so I told him if he ever touched you inappropriately, if he ever thought about doing something like that to you, that I would kill him. I told him that I would tell each of his sons and that if any of us noticed anything wrong with you, any signal that he might be making you uncomfortable, we would kill him.”

“We couldn’t stop him from hitting you Emily, but none of us could image letting anyone get away with hurting you like that. When George told us what he saw we started watching also, because while we knew it was wrong of him to hit any of us, that was far worse in our minds.” Joshua said.

My mind raced through memories, remembering that after I turned 11 they did watch me more, subtle things that probably should have made sense by now but I had never considered them. I turned my fingernails inward, dug them into my palm to help ease the ache in my chest, to help squash the nausea threatening to take over. A question came to mind, they had blamed him hitting me when I was thirteen and fourteen on mom dying.

I looked at George and he probably knew the question. “He wasn’t hitting me because he blamed me for Mom dying, was he? There was some other reason why.”

He fidgeted in the chair. “No, he was not hitting you because Mom died.”

“Then why the hell was he hitting her?” Zac asked.

We both looked at him. “I said that out loud didn’t I?” he asked.

I nodded. “It is a legitimate question though and one that I was about to ask.”

“We did not see the signs of him hitting you. We probably should have though. When Craig came to Christopher he came to me and I took Joshua and Jason and the three of us had a chat with Dad.”

I waited on him; he took a sip of his drink and then took a deep breath.

“You know Dad banned sex talk when you were almost 12, we weren’t allowed to discuss it with you or anything and he denied you every class there was. He did that for himself, so he wouldn’t have to hear it, so he wouldn’t have to answer questions or explain anything to you. I guess he thought biology would just stop if you knew nothing about it.”

“I am still scared by that day by the way.” Christopher said.

Zac chuckled and Christopher shot me a look. “He knows all about your day from hell.”

Christopher just put his head down on the table.

“When you hit puberty it was harder to ignore that you were indeed a girl, a young woman. Until you began to change physically, it was easy for him to simply pretend you were a boy. It was harder for him to ignore the changes, he hit you because he could not deal with his own urges and thoughts, we suspect he didn’t stop after that talk.”

“No, they didn’t stop until I left. But, it wasn’t as hard or as often. So, he basically admitted that he hit me because he was afraid of what he would do or how he felt?”

“Keep in mind Emily, he’s never been arrested or charged or even accused of anything. As far as we know the only offense he has is that album of pictures and I couldn’t find it after that one time. I have no idea where he kept it. Unless you’ve been keeping a lot more from us, there is nothing that says he would actually hurt someone.”

“That we know of is that is, but there could be things no one’s found? Adam seemed to know quite a bit.”

He got my hands and uncurled them. “You did that when you were younger too. Dad promised you to Adam in exchange for a woman that would be obedient and like Mom in some ways. We never fully understood how he found Adam more suitable, he said it was because Adam could provide for you like he wanted. None of us liked the idea and we told him that it was wrong and bad and we should have done a lot more to stop it. Dad was trying to do what was best for you, maybe getting you out of the house was better for him for some reason.”

I just stared at him, had he just insinuated that Dad was getting rid of me because he could no longer handle that I was a girl? A connection formed in my head, from photos, and I remembered that Dad was older than Mom and it took quick math to figure out that Mom was 16 when George was born. None of them stopped me when I got up and ran from the room, I ran to the bathroom because I felt sick. I washed my face off afterwards and sat in the floor. It was Zac who came into the bathroom about fifteen minutes later. He didn’t say anything just walked over and sat down beside me, I moved into his lap and curled up, let him hold me there.

“Are you ok?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“What caused you to run, up until then you were shaky and I saw the nails in your palm. But, you stared and then you ran.”

“I remembered something, Mom was younger than Dad, I’ve always known that but I never really bothered to add or subtract. Dad was 18 when George was born, but Mom was only 16 and she would have gotten pregnant at 15. What if she wasn’t a willing participate in that?”

“Do you believe she would have stayed with him through five more kids if that were true?”

“I don’t know Zachary, I never met her. The reason Dad approached me on my 16^th birthday about that arranged marriage was because I had to sign and I couldn’t until I was 16. It’s the same age Mom was when she had George. He banned all talk of sex inside that house, never allowed me to take any class that pertained to sex. Yet, he was willing to marry me off to a rapist?”

He kissed my forehead. “None of us can know what your father was thinking at the time. Maybe you are right and you looking like your mother and being the same age as her was too much for him and he was afraid he may hurt you. Then again, maybe it simply was he wanted a wife and Adam could provide it. But, really you are safe and that’s what matters.”

I finally got up and we went back to the conference room. George was waiting outside the door and Zac left me there with him and went back inside.

“I’m sorry he brought it up Emily. We never told you because we have no verifiable proof that he ever did anything.”

I looked at him. “Mom was 16 when she had you. You were there did she really want to be with him or was she just staying because she had too?”

“She seemed liked she wanted to be there. She loved us and she always wanted a daughter. Evidently Dad didn’t. Emily, this is not something you should worry about. You are over 21 now, you have your own career here and you have a life here. Christina doesn’t quite approve of Zac’s cheating on Kate, but really I’m glad he’s here because I can tell he loves you.”

“I thought Adam was just trying to pull my emotions around, because he knows it’s a sore subject. When he brought it up I just…I knew I needed to ask because he seemed serious.”

“We probably should have told you a long time ago that we suspected, but we have no proof that he ever was. Aside from a few weird looks when you were eleven, we never detected that he ever considered you in that manner.”

I nodded and stood there for a moment before he hugged me.

“You’re going to be ok Emily. Zac is here and Craig is too, Christopher isn’t far away either.”

I let him hold me there for a little bit then we went back to the room and finished lunch. The older ones were heading home after leaving and Christopher was going home too. We said bye to them about four and then I helped clean up.

Zac drove me home that afternoon and I asked him to stay long enough for me to shower because I needed someone to clean and bandage the bite mark on my back, I couldn’t reach it. He sat on the bed while I showered and after being bandaged, medicated, and dressed he kissed me and went to Taylor’s house.