I flinch as if she’s struck me and stalk out of the cottage, her accusations chasing me. Nothing I haven’t heard before, I remind myself. Nothing I don’t already know. I am like him. I will hurt her. It’s in my nature.

I stalk to the one place I know I should avoid. I walk over muddy earth, my boots sinking into the ground. He’d hate that. Me tracking mud inside. I don’t use my flashlight to light the way as I retrieve the key from my pocket and unlock the padlock, push the door open. Feeling for the switch I flip it and light up the room. I’m instantly confronted by the evidence of my brother’s rage. His hate. The whip on the floor. The broken cane. Mercedes’s shoes discarded, one in a corner, the other upside down a few feet away. Her clothes, torn from her body. If I look close at the whipping bench, I see blood too. Hers?

At the fireplace I stack wood. Using old paper for kindling I light it and it takes immediately. The logs are so dry they’ll go up in no time. Satisfied, I straighten, watch the fire grow, flames bright and hot.

I take the bottle of scotch I drank from the last time I was here and carry it to his chair. No one sat in that damned chair but him. Ever. It’s huge, like a fucking throne, the leather creased and worn. I switch on the CD player, my grandfather never understood streaming, and Matthäeus Passion blares at a volume that at first makes me flinch. I drink straight from the crystal decanter.

This is what he’d listen to after the punishments. While we lay limp trying not to make a sound. Like what he’d done was some sort of holy rite. During the punishments there was silence. Mostly. Because it was a game to him. How long until we’d scream. And woe to he who wept. Tears are weakness. Screams are also weakness but somehow less so. Take it like a man, he’d say. And until you did, he kept going. Never tiring. Taking a sick pleasure from it.

I spent some time over that bench but not nearly as much as my own father, even as an adult man. Never as much time as Theron. He was always finding some way to make trouble. Like he didn’t learn. Or maybe he just wanted grandfather’s attention desperately enough that he didn’t care if it was good or bad.