Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 54721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
The desolation within her soft sobs makes me question what kind of monster I am. Because no matter how much it kills me that I’ve hurt her, I’m not changing my mind about anything.
Quietly, I shut my door again and lock it.
Moving to the bed, I sit on the edge and open the drawer of the bedside table. I pull out the thick hardback book. The dust jacket is bright white and on the front is a black-and-white picture of my father. The publisher chose to go with a candid taken during his trial. It was of him sitting at the defendant’s table, leaning back in his chair to talk to me and my mother as we sat in the front row. My stomach cramps seeing eight-year-old me sitting there, in my Sunday suit with my hair slicked down. I look terrified and out of place. My dad is smiling, holding hands with my mom, propped on the low wall that separates the front of the courtroom from where the public sits. He does not look like a man on trial for multiple rapes and murders but rather a good father and husband who has been separated from his family.
Nausea wells and bile surges up my throat as I read the title of the book. “Chip Off the Old Block.”
I don’t know how much input Arco had into this book. I only know he sold his prison diaries to a biographer, but the title is a direct message to me.
When I visited my father in prison before he died, he knew exactly why I was there and he played right into my fears. Arco sat across from me, thick, bulletproof glass separating us. We communicated through a phone, but it didn’t lessen the crudity of his words.
“My jizz is what knocked up your bitch of a mother,” he told me with an evil glint in his eye. “You got my fucking DNA, boy. You’re my son no matter what some paper says. A regular chip off the old block.”
It’s what he used to say to me growing up. Arco wasn’t a tender man and he didn’t believe in hugs or cuddles. He was funny, gregarious and everyone loved him. But he never told me he loved me and he never hugged me. That’s because he had no conscience and no capacity to love.
He could only deceive.
And murder and rape.
Arco used words carefully and when he called me a “chip off the old block,” he did it with intent. When I was little, I only wanted his pride in me and I’d beam when he declared such. Now it makes me physically sick to think of his DNA coursing through my body.
I’m wondering why the biographer focused on that phrase. It was clearly in the diaries and perhaps my dad wrote about that last encounter between us. Maybe he had a good laugh over how easy it was to terrify his grown son who was a big, tough hockey player.
My fingers play at the edge of the book. I want to read it, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I know Simone bought a copy and she read it.
“It’s nothing but drivel, Van,” she had said with a wave of her hand, like it was nothing more than a nuisance, like a gnat buzzing around her head. “The biographer didn’t do much other than regurgitate Arco’s words with bad literary prose and he comes off like the lunatic he was. None of it’s credible.”
I didn’t have the guts to ask her what it said about me and she didn’t offer. I think she figured I’d never read it and what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.
Taking a deep breath, I open the cover of the book and stare blankly at the title page. My hand shakes as I grab a chunk of pages and start flipping, not with any real intention of reading anything. It’s a victory just opening the book.
But a phrase catches my attention as a chapter header whizzes by and I stop, flip back to the spot.
Chapter 5: Unveiling Shadows
I skim the first few paragraphs and realize it’s about me. Or rather, Arco’s reflections about his only son who was called Grant VanBuskirk at the time.
I think I might vomit and my brain is telling me to slam the book shut. I think of the weeping woman on the other side of the door who doesn’t think this is a big deal.
That I can persevere.
I inhale deeply, blowing out slowly.
Try to calm the frantic racing of my pulse.
I focus on the words and start reading.
Within the faded pages of Arco’s diaries lay a chilling chronicle of his observations on Grant, his son. The entries, devoid of warmth or remorse, offered a disconcerting glimpse into the mind of a convicted serial killer. Veiled within these revelations, the secrets of Grant’s young existence came to light, raising unsettling questions about the twisted threads of their shared bloodline.