"What would you care to know, my sweet?"
"How did you meet?" she asks.
It is an innocent question. And because my Bella is so innocent, she could never know the depths of her father’s depravity. She could never know the injustices he served to not only me but countless others. And she could never know the deepness of the despair this memory invokes in me.
I will forever remember the day that I met Ray Rossi.
He found his way into my room at the sanitarium, and I assumed he was another doctor. Someone else sent to pry the secrets from my mind. But he was different. Both in dress and decorum.
He was powerful.
He told the nurse to go, and she listened, hesitating only briefly at the door. She informed him that I was dangerous. He met my eyes and smiled.
“He is a child.”
The nurse left, and Ray sat down with me. He wasn't like the others. He did not ask me questions. He did not ask me to talk.
Instead, he handed me a workbook. It had puzzles and math equations. Things that I liked. I wondered how he knew.
I had done some of my own, on the paper they sometimes let me have. The doctor would stare at my scribbles strangely. He tried to make sense of them, I think, but he never could.
This man, though, he understood. And this is exactly what I tell my Bella.
"He brought me puzzles."
"At the sanitarium?" she asks.
I nod.
She waits quietly. Hoping for more. I don't know what to tell her. There are so many things. Things I have waited to say.
Hateful things. Painful things. Things that tear at the very fabric of the man I am now.
I want her to know what a coward her father is. I want her to hate him as much as I do. To understand that given a choice, he would probably betray her too.
He would rather leave her here with me than risk his own life to get her back because that’s the kind of man he is. But for as long as I’ve waited to say these things, I can’t seem to tell her now. Not yet.
“He brought them to me every week.”
"So you liked the puzzles," she says. "I see you working on them sometimes, around the house."
"Yes."
"Because you're smart, Javi."
I don't reply.
My mother always said I was smart because I was good at science. Like her. But I was never good at people.
"And then what happened?" Bella asks.
I try to recall the exact order of events. The time that I was locked away, and for how long. At first, I had counted the days and weeks and months. But when Ray started coming to visit and bringing me the workbooks, the counting ceased. I spent my free time completing the books. They became more and more challenging over the course of his visits. And I always wanted more.
Sometimes, I completed them too soon, and I had to wait days for another. Until finally there was a day that Ray came back, and he wasn't alone. He had a different man with him this time. And he asked me for the workbook. The workbook that had been the most complicated one he'd ever brought me so far.
I gave it to him. He smiled like he was proud of me. He hadn't even checked it yet. But he told the other man he didn't need to.
He handed it off to the stranger who inspected it with a furrowed brow. That man looked at me, uncertain.