Words.

They were words.

And words couldn’t hurt, right?

So why was I hemorrhaging from the inside out?

"Why?" Head bowed, he pressed the palms of his hands against his forehead and shook his head. Sounding beyond broken, his voice was strained when he said, "Why did you have to do that to her?"

I barked out a laugh of disbelief. "You're lying." When Daryl didn’t agree with me, I rushed straight for him. "He's lying," I repeated, urging him to look at me. "Right, D?"

One look in his eyes and I knew.

I just knew that it was true.

"You knew?"

He didn’t deny it.

My breath hitched and I jerked away from him. "And you didn’t tell me?"

"Molls –" his voice cracked. "I'm so fucking sorry you had to hear it like that."

"Hear it like that?" I shook my head, not bothering to blink away the tears that were streaming down my cheeks. "You knew? All this time? You knew and you didn’t tell me?"

"I couldn’t," he whispered brokenly. "Dolly –"

"Don’t call me that!" I screamed, as I bolted for the front door, desperate to get away from these monsters. "Don’t ever call me that again!"

Daddy!" I cried out when I burst through the front door of my house. "Daddy, where are you?"

"I'm here, Molly," he replied, coming bounding out of the kitchen with a look of concern etched on his face. "I'm right here, sweetheart."

"Dad –" Gasping for air, I staggered into the foyer, barely able to keep my footing. "Dad."

The moment his eyes landed on my tear stained face, his entire expression fell. "He told you, didn’t he?"

He told me?

He told me?

Oh my god…

"You know?" I cried out hoarsely, as the floor stared to spin beneath me.

Holding his hands up, my father moved slowly towards me. "Sweetheart, what did he tell you? I promise that I can explain everything –"

"Everything?" I screamed, shaking violently. "I don’t understand anything!"

"Molly, let's both sit down and we can talk this through…"

"What's to talk about?" Pressing a hand to my forehead, I blinked rapidly, trying to re-train my vision as it blurred in and out. "You knew he knew? He knew, and you knew, and they knew…whoa –"

"Molly –" Closing the space between us, my father caught me just as my legs gave out beneath me. "I've got you, sweetheart."

47 Molly

"Here," Dad said, setting a can of soda down in front of me. "Drink up. The sugar will help with the shock."

My father was a brilliant man, and right about a lot of things in life, but if he thought that a soda was going to help with this particular influx of shock, then he was dead wrong.

When I came around after my fainting episode and told my father what they had said, he didn’t deny it like I desperately needed him to do.