MORIANI HOME
"Your father?" Claire asks, holding
a hand full of trembling fingers to her mouth.
Ryan nods, his lips held tightly
together.
For a quiet moment, the information
seems to be sinking into Claire's consciousness, but then she snaps her
head back and forth sharply. "No. I'm not letting you do this. I'm not
letting you rewrite history just for the hell of it."
"I am telling you the truth!" he
shouts. "How do you not remember? I'm amazed it hasn't come back to you
a thousand times already, after all these years -- I've always sort of
expected it to." He pauses thoughtfully and his voice takes on a decidedly
more ominous tone. "Or maybe it has and you just don't want to recognize
it."
"Stop playing these mind games with
me!" she protests, throwing up her hands and turning her back to him, although
he sees that momentary pause of consideration before she speaks.
"They're not mind games. This is
the truth, plain and simple. You have to believe that." He reaches up tentatively
and touches a hand to her shoulder. It seems as though she is going to
accept the gesture and his hand begins to settle down, but she jerks away
suddenly and violently.
"Get the hell off of me!"
"You have to believe me, Claire."
She doesn't say anything. At first
he thinks it is another of those pauses, and in a second she is going to
explode. But the explosion doesn't come. There is something about the intensity
with which she remains focused in the other direction that makes it clear
to Ryan what is happening.
"You do remember, don't you?"
The only response he receives is
a quick shake of the back of her head.
Inside that head, though, things
are anything but simple. The images are replaying themselves, washing over
Claire one after another, over and over again. They're the same memories
she has always had: bits and pieces, never a complete scene, just flailing
and screaming and pain and shame all crashing into one another in a quick
sequence of flashing images.
Only this time, something is different.
The face -- she can see it. The hands feel the same as they pin her down;
the breathing is the same, heavy and hot and sickening; but the face is
there now, and it's different. It isn't the distorted image of a teenaged
Ryan that has always floated over the top of these images. It's Stan, his
face clear and filled with something that terrifies Claire even through
the distance of all these years.
"You are remembering. I'm telling
the truth, aren't I?" Ryan calls out to her.
Suddenly she whips around, her face
crunched up and her teeth clamped down over her lower lip. Ryan reaches
out to grasp her -- he doesn't know why, it just happens -- but she pushes
right past him.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he says.
"I never did."
"Damn you," she growls through pooling
tears as she retreats to the other side of the cellar. She sits down on
a crate, her back to Ryan, and he watches as the erratic spasms of crying
overtake her body.
END OF EPISODE #190
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