The Colonel Gave My Wedding to His Sick Sister novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Memorial Toast

Ginny's POV

My father sat alone in the MP station on a plastic chair, still in his gray suit from the hospital.

He had folded his hands between his knees, and he looked eighty.

The CID agent set a recorder on the desk, and Kirk stayed by the door with his arms crossed.

I sat across from Dad and did not say hello.

"Ginny," he said. "Thank you for coming."

"I came because the agent said you'd talk."

"I'm going to say it in order."

He stared at the recorder instead of me.

"Last Saturday, I stood behind your mother and nodded while you knelt in the dirt. I saw you couldn't stand up, and I told myself you were tired."

"I was drugged, Dad."

"I know that now. I didn't know it then, and I should have. I've seen soldiers come out of surgery with eyes like yours."

His voice cracked, and he waited until it was steady.

"On Sunday, I swore to a magistrate that you had been violent since you were a teenager. That was a lie, and I told it on paper."

"Why?"

"Because your mother said you'd hurt Livia, and it was easier than arguing."

"It's always been easier than arguing," I said.

His face folded.

"When you were eleven, in Stuttgart, Livia told us you had pushed her down the cellar stairs."

I went cold.

"We lived on the second floor. There was no cellar," Dad said. "I knew it then, Ginny. I stood in that kitchen and I knew it, and your mother looked at me, and I let it stand."

"I was eleven."

"You were grounded for a month. I watched you cry in the hall and said nothing."

The agent's pen stopped moving.

Kirk shifted at the door, and I did not look at him.

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