"Your Dad?" Dominic asks, I can hear the shock in his voice. "That man is your father?"

I nod slowly. "Unfortunately." I say quietly. 

Dominic is quiet now. He is patient with me, allowing me to take the time I need before I delve into all this. He seems to understand somewhat, now, of how hard this subject will be for me to talk about.

I take a deep breath. "For as long as I can remember he has always been a raging alcoholic." I begin. "In fact my earliest memory of him is him sauntering into the house reeking of liquor and unable to steady himself. Liquor always turned him into this horrid person, and since he never went more than an hour without having a drink of something with alcohol in it he was never a nice man.

"My mother and he met when they were young, in high school I believe. They got pregnant with Max around the time they graduated, which then caused my Dad to take an office job he didn't overly like with people he definitely didn't like, in order to provide for my mother and Max. And then they had me five years later and he took on even more work to keep up with the bills." I remember Max telling me all this when we were kids, he made it into a fairytale type story for me. "I'm not quite sure when the drinking began or if he had always been like that. But eventually he went from drinking daily, to drinking constantly throughout the day. He became resentful towards my mother, he resented her for how his life had turned out, that he was stuck in a job he hated because she got pregnant so young. 

"He began to blame her for every little instance and inconvenience to him. If dinner was late, if the house work wasn't kept up with or even up to his impossibly high standards, if she wasn't wearing a smile and a pretty outfit when he came home at the end of the day, if she said no to making him another drink..." I trail off hoping Dominic got the idea. "Soon the liquor wouldn't be enough to satisfy him and his resentful ways and instead he became violent. He would be violent towards my mother, he would take his anger out on her. 

"He was always so angry, so frightful." I whisper shaking my head. "I couldn't see it back then because I was only so young, but looking back on it now and even over the past few years, I can see how broken he made her. He made her miserable just as much as he claimed she made him miserable. Except in my mothers case she suffered in silence, she never uttered a word that would tell anyone that she was unhappy. She was truly depressed and it hurts so much to know this now. Now that it's too late." The last part came out quieter than intended as emotion began to overwhelm me. I took a minute to compose myself before I continued. "One night, she came into my room, it was very late at night or possibly very early in the morning. I had thought it was a dream because she had appeared to me like an angel. I remember it so clearly, she had told me she loved me, she told me that she always wanted me to remember that she loved me.

"I woke a few hours later, believing it all to have been a dream because as she had appeared she had also disappeared as if she'd never been there. I got up for the toilet when something caught my eye, but I didn't inspect it until I was on my way back to bed from the bathroom. There was rope tied to the railing of the staircase, and she was just..." I shake my head, unable to speak the words.

One of Dominic's hands leaves mine as it comes up to cup my face, his thumb collecting my fallen tears. "I'm so sorry." He whispers to me.

"I had screamed so hard, finding her like that, there was nothing else I could think to do but to scream." I tell him. "After that my father had only gotten worse. Since my mother was no longer around to be his punching bag, that job then fell to Max and I. The older we got, the tougher our punishments and our beatings were. 

"Max was always my best friend, he was the only person I really felt I could trust to be myself around. And I didn't really trust anyone else to not hurt me, so growing up I didn't really make friends all too easily. I had people I was friendly with, and people I dated here and there, but I never felt fully comfortable around them and there was always a part of me that felt I couldn't trust them not to hurt me the way I'd been hurt for so many years.

"Over the years my father would find some light in an epiphany he'd had and he'd stop drinking. He'd swear he was a changed man, that he'd give up the drink for good. But he would never last longer than 48 hours before he'd fall back into his old routines." I tell Dominic. "I grew accustomed to that life, to having to do what I could to survive. I worked my ass off at home in hopes that it would reduce the amount of punishments I would receive, and it did work for the most part. And I worked my ass off at school in hopes that one day I could finally be free of him, to be free of that life."

"That's why you came to America, to escape?" I can hear the sorrow and the pity in Dominic's voice.

I shake my head at him. "I came to America to survive." I state firmly. "There would be no escaping him, he proved that by showing up last night. But survival has always been my goal and I believed the further I could get from him then the better my survival chances would be."

Dominic nods his head, seeming to understand.

"Oxford was my dream school, to follow many literature heroes of mine. But Max gave me a chance to come here, to come to NYU. I had a better chance of survival here, on another continent, than to be only a couple hours drive away from him." I explained. "I was miserable there. I had no friends, no real friends after Max left. I had no one to confide in or anyone I felt safe with. If I had stayed in England I would have continued to receive punishments my father was so fond of, and I knew if that continued then I wouldn't be strong enough to keep going and I would end up like my mother." I gulp.

Dominic caresses my face tenderly. "I'm very glad that you didn't give up. I'm glad that you kept fighting, that you chose your best chance of survival and came here." He tells me softly.

I give him a weak smile. "I didn't tell him I was leaving him. I didn't utter a word about it to my father. I knew that if he found out that he would lock me in the house and I would be a prisoner like she was. He knew she wanted out, that she wanted more of a life for herself, and he practically kept her chained to the property." I pause, trying to find my way back to where I was in telling Dominic why my Dad had shown up the way he had. "So, after graduation, Max had it all planned out for me. He had booked the plane tickets for me. One day while Dad was out at work, I packed up what I could and I caught a cab to the airport. I left without telling him where I was going or that I had even left at all. I left packing till the very last second because I knew he would catch on if I had begun to pack any earlier."

Dominic nods as if understanding and agreeing.

"He would have been furious when he got home and discovered I wasn't there. I can only imagine the mess he'd made of the house after he lost his last skin and blood punching bag." I shake my head. "He showed up because he wanted to drag me back to England. He came to take me back and force me back into the life I once had."

"I would have never let that happen." Dominic tells me firmly. "I would have never let him take you."

I give him a sad smile. "I don't know how he found me. He must have known that Max was the only one I knew and trusted enough to get me out of that life. But I have no idea how he came to find our apartment building."

"I do." A voice pipes up from the doorway.

Dominic and I both turn our heads at the same time to see Max standing in the doorway.

"You do?" I ask confused.

Max gives a small nod as he comes into the room and takes a seat on the arm chair opposite the sofa Dominic and I were seated on. "He's been calling me for a week. After the first call I started declining and ignoring all his calls. The first time I only picked up because I didn't recognise his number." Max tells us.

"How does that explain how he found the apartment though?" I ask him.

Max lets out a heavy breath. "Over the years that we were apart, Ellie, I would always send your birthday presents to the house. I made the mistake of pulling my return address on the parcels, not thinking anything of it at the time. I never thought that he would keep that address." He explains. "I could have moved since the last time I sent you a birthday present, but it was his only lead. He came to our apartment on the off chance I still lived there."

I turn my head to look back at Dominic now, who was already watching me. Our eyes met and I could see the sadness in his gaze. "So that's the story of who he is, who we are, and why last night happened." I say to him quietly.