It was a nightmare come true. Kyleigh had come tearing up the stairs, her hair still mussed from sleep, her legs bare underneath her wrapper.
“Roman! Ryder!” she cried. “Wake up! Look at the headline,” her voice trembled, shoving the newspaper at us.
My brother and I slowly roused ourselves. There was nothing we loved more than to be woken by our sister, but this time was a little different. Usually we were stirred awake with kisses, purrs and meows, but right now our little sister looked wild-eyed, her wavy chestnut hair in disarray as she burst into the room.
“What is it?” growled Roman. “What’s so important?” he yawned.
I too, took my time, stretching my arms before heaving my big frame out of bed to head for the bathroom.
“What’s up baby?” I tossed over my shoulder, getting ready to take a leak.
She stared at us.
“Do you have another sister?” stammered Kyleigh, looking confused.
That was enough to stop me. I swiveled around, pinning her with my gaze.
“What do you mean?” I growled. Roman too, sat up straight, suddenly at full alert.
Kyleigh lifted the paper, shaking it at us. “It says here that the House Emergency twins molested a girl years ago, and that she was your sister,” her voice trembled. “What sister? What’s going on?”
My shoulders slumped. It was a secret from our past, back when we were little more than boys. Somehow the press had sniffed it out, dug up dirt, and were smearing our names to paint us as celebrity criminals. I grabbed the paper from Kyleigh’s hand and the headline told me everything I needed to know: “HOUSE EMERGENCY TWINS CHILLING MOLESTATION CONFESSION IN NEW POLICE REPORT.” Oh shit. They’d gotten a hold of a police report? How had that happened?
But the first order at hand was calming Kyleigh. I reached over to stroke her shoulder, urging her to sit, but she twisted out of my grasp with her hair flying.
“You molested an underage minor? Who was your sister?” she hissed, her fists clenched. “Who is this girl? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Baby,” I said, sitting heavily on the bed. “This is why we were so insistent about keeping our affair with you under wraps. Unfortunately, we have a past which does involve another sister,” I said slowly.
“What sister?” Kyleigh positively shrieked, her anger and rage overwhelming her. “Tell me!”
“Shh,” soothed Roman. “We’ll tell you everything, but just sit for a moment and breathe. It’s a complicated story.”
Kyleigh took a few deep breaths and perched on the corner of the bed, visibly trying to contain her anger. I could tell that we had no choice but to tell her the whole story now. Well, either that or let her find out through the news.
“We never talk about our mom,” began Roman slowly, “because most people think she was a pill-popping drug addict, and a crazed pscyho. At least that’s what Dad wanted everyone to believe.”
“The worst part is that he’s sort of right because there’s a little bit of truth in every lie. Mom was a little unhinged. She was a free spirit of sorts, and marriage was never really her thing,” he continued. “She had us young after getting married, and didn’t see any need to change her lifestyle. She was still going to music festivals, parties, and bars, and pretty much dragging along a huge double-wide stroller to the most unlikely of places.”
Kyleigh’s silent, merely looking at us with big brown eyes.
I sigh. Here was the hard part. “When Ryder and I were about five, she met some hippie musician dude and had a torrid affair. It was hurtful to my dad, especially since he found out about it in the worst way possible – my mom announced that she was pregnant with another man’s child and was leaving him to tour with the musician. But my dad is an old-fashioned, religious man. He wanted to work on the marriage and somehow, against all odds, persuaded our mom to stay and to give it another chance. It couldn’t have been easy, and he must have humbled himself, but somehow he persuaded her not to abandon her sweet boys.”
“So she broke up with the father of the child and came back to us for a while at least. It was one of the happiest times of our lives,” said Roman. “After a scary period of our parents arguing and fighting non-stop, our mom was back and expecting a new baby. Ryder and I were beyond excited to welcome a new little sister.”
“But the thing is, after Marygold was born, my mom spiraled into severe post-partum depression. She totally shut down and Marygold had to be taken in by a foster family for a while. There was no way our parents could handle a newborn on top of rambunctious toddlers and a marriage that was unraveling. As a result, we didn’t know Marygold for the first few years of her life.”
“Honey, this is where it starts getting bad,” Ryder says, taking a deep breath. “Marygold came back and was the sweetest thing. She was just a little girl, so there’s no excuse for what I’m about to tell you because yes, it is like the newspapers say. Ryder and I fondled her. We were just boys. We were twelve year-old kids, and I realize that that’s not an excuse at all, but I guess …” he shrugged helplessly.
“What did you do exactly?” asked Kyleigh, her eyes wary.
I answered. “We touched our half-sister’s vagina and breasts when she was asleep, sometimes when she was in her bedroom, and once when she was sleeping on the couch. There’s no excuse for it, and we’re ashamed to this day,” I stated sorrowfully.
“But why?” asked Kyleigh, looking utterly confused and despondent. “Why would you do this to a five year-old girl?”
“Baby,” I said, my voice almost breaking. “We’ve asked ourselves this many times. The truth is that there’s no answer. Roman and I were boys then, and we’d led an unsupervised life. My mom was in the throes of depression, our dad was always working, and we were getting older. We wanted to explore sex and girls’ bodies. So we touched the one girl who lived in our house. It’s still no excuse,” I confirmed, barely able to meet her eyes.
“But didn’t your parents do anything about it?” asked Kyleigh. “Surely they punished you,” she added.
“Yeah, we were punished,” I sighed. “Our mom sank into an even greater depression so she was useless, but our dad? He confronted us. And we told him the truth. We told him that we’d touched Marygold when she was sleeping. He moved her out of the house immediately, and put her in foster care for a while as he tried to figure out what to do.”
I sighed again. This had been more than a dozen years ago, and yet the story was still painful to recount.
“Our dad spoke with some elders at our church, and they decided that the best thing would be to send Roman and I to a forced labor camp. So we went for three months.”
“Were you cured?” asked Kyleigh.
“I like to think so,” rumbled Roman. “We’ve definitely never done it again. But honey, we’re twenty-five now, and not children anymore. The thought of touching a little girl makes our skin crawl. We’re mature now, and those were sins of the past.”
“It makes my skin crawl too,” said Kyleigh faintly. “Where is Marygold now?”
This was the hardest part of the tale to recount. “Marygold passed away soon afterwards,” I said slowly. “After my brother and I were sent off to labor camp, Children’s Services permitted Marygold to return home. One day, my mom was driving with Marygold in the backseat when she lost control of the car and careened off a cliff near our house. Marygold was thrown and immediately killed. My mom? Well, she was never the same afterwards. I don’t think she ever recovered,” I said quietly, “which is part of the reason why Dad divorced her. He couldn’t live in the past anymore, grieving for a child long gone.”
“But if Marygold’s gone and this all happened when you were twelve, then how did the papers find out? Surely your record was expunged,” Kyleigh said.
“Baby, I don’t know,” rumbled Roman. “My dad called the sheriff’s office to report us, but no charges were ever filed. Instead, the local sheriff gave us a strict talking-to and then we were shipped off to rehabilitation. So we’re not sure how the story was leaked either.”
“But it sounds like the gist of the story is true, isn’t it?” asked Kyleigh weakly.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “It’s mostly true. Blown out of proportion from events long ago, but yes, unfortunately it is true.”
Kyleigh sat silently, her expression unreadable as she reflected on our confession. Not only were her celebrity stepbrothers child molesters, but we’d molested a relative. Granted, it was decades ago, when we were merely boys, and our repentance is sincere. But I understood Kyleigh’s apprehension because was our relationship with her some kind of bizarre remembrance of bygone years? Was Kyleigh a ghost of Marygold?