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would that bring you here?"
    " I'm having trouble sleeping," I explained, "because of nightmares. Memories of things that happened to me when I was a child."
    Now he did meet my eye, and his stare radiated coldness . "And what do you think I can do about it?"
    " You can answer a question for me. That's what you can do."
    " About what?"
    " You know what."
    " I don't have any answers for you, missy. None that you'd care to hear anyway. I tried to talk to you when it mattered, when all the misery could have been avoided, back when we were buddies, you and me. Remember?"
    My recollection of this was vague at best. What I could recall was my father with tears streaming down his face, eyes bulging with fear and anger and pain as he alternated between slapping and screaming at me: Why? Why did you do this? I'm your father for fuck's sake! Do you want them to take me away? And my mother, sitting in the kitchen, weeping silently, her flour-covered hands in her hair, fingers like glimpses of bare skull between the dark strands.
    " Try again."
    He sat down in a well-worn chair opposite me and sighed, rubbed a hand over his face. "Why are you really here?"
    I close d my eyes for a moment and saw the faces of my family, the unit that had carried me this far through the battlefield of my own psyche. I saw Jenny, weeping; Sam, scared half to death; and Chris, with hurt and hate in his eyes as he loaded up the car. I imagined what it would feel like if their absence wasn't so temporary, if that departure had been the final one.
    Then sweeter memories flash ed behind my eyes.
    I remember ed making up excuses on my lunch break to visit the bank where Chris was a teller long before we knew each other. He'd worked just down the street from the library where I'd been employed since college.
    I remember ed the day he'd asked me out, our first date, the first kiss, the first time we'd made clumsy but sincere love in his apartment. The day he'd proposed.
    I remember ed all of this, and was reminded just how very much things had changed. It was not too late for me to save my relationship with my children, but what about Chris? Had he already decided we were through? And if so, how badly did I want to fight to change his mind?
    Perhaps I was wrong about how good a liar I was, and all along I'd been lying to myself.
    I raise d my head and looked at the old man sitting across from me. I hardly recognized him now, but I saw the awareness in his own eyes, the denial of guilt, the need to be a victim for fear of having to face again the darkness he'd allowed to consume him once upon a time. The darkness that consumed his children. The very same darkness that had touched me in my dreams all these years later and would consume my family if I let it.
    " Why did you do it?" I asked him, anger burning like hot coals in my chest. "Why did you hurt us?"
    My father seemed to sag, withdraw into himself as I watched, the result, I suppose, of having his estranged daughter, his victim , walk back into his life after a million years of enjoying conveniently rewritten history, only to have her throw the truth like ice-water right in his face. It gave me pleasure to see him affected this way.
    " I never did anything to you."
    " If you honestly believe that," I told him, "then I'm sorry for you. That you can sit there and lie to my face after what you put me through..."
    "I never hurt you is what I'm saying," he protested.
    "What's the difference?"
    "There's a big difference in the eyes of the law. If you'd told them I was doting on you instead of hurting you, everything would have been different."
    "But you were hurting me. Both of us. You were..." The words stuck in my throat. I realized I hadn't said aloud the things he did to me and John since that night Chris and I had sex for the first time. Even then it had been like trying to regurgitate barbed wire. Even then it had been the abridged version.
    Stop, stop. Wait.
    What's wrong? Did I hurt you?
    At least Chris had