The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 443

He looked down at his calloused hands, falling into a crushing silence.

The only sound in the living room was the slow ticking of the antique clock. Outside the window, the sparrows had quietly flown away.

"After Sloane left, I often think about the past..."

His voice grew even raspier, sounding like a rusted saw dragging slowly across a piece of dead wood.

"Her mother had only been gone for three months when I married Willa. Lexi was only two when she came to this house. She could barely walk. Sloane was seven years older, already in elementary school. Back then, I convinced myself the house needed a woman to run things, that the girls needed someone to take care of them. But really... I was just making excuses for myself."

"Business was brutal. I was always out hustling, and I dumped the entire house onto Willa."

"Willa... sigh. She isn't inherently evil, but Sloane wasn't her own flesh and blood. How much love was she really going to give her? I knew exactly how much Sloane suffered under her. I knew all of it. I just pretended to be blind."

"There was this one time Willa threw out the few pieces of clothing Sloane's mother had left behind. It wasn't anything valuable—just some old sweaters and dresses that had been sitting at the bottom of a trunk for years. Sloane came home from school, saw the empty trunk, and didn't cry or scream. That night, when the whole house was asleep, she sneaked out the window. She was ten years old. In the dead of winter, freezing temperatures, she ran all the way to the neighborhood dumpsters and dug those clothes out of the trash, piece by piece."

"When I came home the next morning, she was crouching in the stairwell, hugging those filthy clothes covered in cigarette ash and rotting food. She was shivering uncontrollably, her face streaked with snot and frozen tears. When she saw me, all she said was... 'Dad, I miss my mom.'"

Jackson choked on his words. His Adam's apple bobbed aggressively as he covered his eyes with a trembling hand, his shoulders shaking silently.

"She was only ten years old."

He swallowed hard, his voice dropping to a devastated whisper. "Since she died, she's never once visited my dreams. All these years, not a single time. I guess she still hasn't forgiven me."

He kept his back to Jackson. He didn't turn around. "No. I just came to see how you were doing."

"Garrison, wait!"

Jackson's voice chased after him, cracking with a desperate, suppressed hysteria that sounded terrifyingly close to a beg. "I heard—I heard a rumor that a mysterious patient was brought into your hospital... someone who looked exactly like Sloane. Is it her?"

Before he even finished speaking, Jackson's legs gave out, and he collapsed heavily against the floor.

He slumped awkwardly on the cold tiles, a dull thud echoing in the room. He sat there crumpled, his back hunched, looking up at Garrison with tear-filled eyes, the tears spilling out of his sunken sockets and trailing through the deep wrinkles on his face.

"I'm begging you. If Sloane is still alive, just let me see her once. Just once. Please!"