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had the decency to ask.
    No, it's just...I need to tell you something...
    "I'm a sick man, Gillian, " my father said.
    Don't I damn well know it.
    "I've been ill for quite some time, and they've advised me to avoid stress. My heart..." He put a hand on his chest over the offending organ for dramatic effect. "It isn't so good anymore."
    "And...w hat? I'm supposed to take pity on you?"
    He looked almost sulkily at me. "No. I'm telling you why I can't talk about this anymore."
    "Too fucking bad."
    "Watch your mouth."
    "Or what? Don't act like you're my father, Jim . It's a little too goddamn late for that."
    " I want you to leave now. You ruined my life with this same crazy bullshit, and I only let you in because I hoped that maybe you'd finally come to your senses and realized what really happened, what I really did for you. I hoped we could try to fix the past, salvage something, but no, you're as stubborn as your brother was. Neither of you knew how to be loved."
    I 'd expected resistance, excuses, even pleas for forgiveness. What I hadn't expected was finding my father so utterly embroiled in delusion that he genuinely seemed to believe he had done nothing wrong. And even though such an attitude seemed perfectly suited to the monster that had chased me in my dreams for the better part of my life, I found myself appalled and stunned into silence seeing it here.
    " Now, please Gillian," he said, rising from his chair, hand still clamped on his chest, "I'm asking you to leave...before I have to call someone."
    " And who would you call?" The temporary paralysis his words had inspired melted quickly under the heat of renewed anger. "Mom? Can't do that. She's buried in wormy earth, driven there by a cancer I'm sure came about as punishment for a lifetime of looking the other way while you raped your children."
    His face crinkled in disgust. "You're a vulgar bitch, you know that? How dare you come into my house and say such things. Haven't you caused enough trouble? We could have been a family. I loved you. I loved your brother, and look what you did. You took something special and you perverted it, made it ugly. Now get out of here, Gillian. Get the hell out of my house."
    I stoo d too, my body positively thrumming now. "Or what?"
    "I'm an old man. Old and tired and sick. I was a good father to you. You just didn't know how to be loved, and you made me regret ever trying. I won't try again."
    "Love? Molesting children is not love, it's hate, no matter what way you try to justify it in that sick fucking head of yours. And how exactly have you paid for trying? Eight years of a twenty-five year sentence? Then what? You've been sitting here in the safety of isolation, able to convince yourself that you never did anything wrong, never having to face me and answer for what you did. Never calling to ask my forgiveness. I bet you never bother to visit John's grave either, do you? No, because I guess it would be too much effort for you to beg forgiveness from a child you don't even have to look in the eye."
    My father's face wa s slack and pale. Standing less than three feet from him, I knew that if I swung a fist, I could hit him, knock that look of self-pity off his withered old face, smash the teeth that smiled at me while he ran his rough hand up my inner thigh, shred the tongue that whispered false promises and veiled threats, blind the eyes that peered at me through lids hooded by arousal. I could have ended it right there and then, and though I wasn't sure if it was something of which I was capable, I was aware on some level that things had changed over the past few months. My chemistry, perhaps, as the experts would say. My wiring.  In layman's terms, the things that made me tick had been altered and not yet tested. Because every time I woke from the dream, it was without a piece of my restraint. I had felt it around my own family, felt my control weaken around Jenny and Chris. If I lost it completely, better it be with the man