Chapter Text
I found myself vibrating - my entire body suffused with emotion, but I couldn't tell whether or not it was rage or disbelief or shock.
My father's handwriting, neat and pristine, filled page after page of white space with words. He always wrote his manuscripts first in long hand, despite his easy embrasure of technology; he was a well respected novelist, if not a famous one, and I had read other stories he had published without any feelings of grief.
My stomach turned as I set the pages down. My hands trembled; I clapped one over the other and held tightly to it.
Every family had secrets. I knew this. Jemma MacBain was abused by her mother's boyfriend when she was a little girl. Thomas Farland's grandfather had robbed a bank. The heroes in the books and movies I'd read as I was growing up were always hiding things - being able to wield magic or entering a wardrobe to discover new lands and peoples.
But my family was normal. We were. We were a cookie cutter mold - Alpha and omega and four children. Dad owned a garage; Papa wrote.
I'd never known Papa to embrace his kinks outside of the bedroom, and so I had to assume that what I had read was the actual truth.
He hadn't even bothered to change the names.
How could they - was -
Oh God, was my whole life a lie? What else were they hiding from me? Did my brother know, too? Was I the only one who had been kept in the dark? Did they laugh at me whenever I wasn't at family supper on Sundays?
My head fell forward onto the desk and I breathed out a shaky exhale. Absentmindedly, I smoothed the edges of the paper back in place until not a single sheet was out of order.
Perhaps if I read it again, I would be able to tell that it was fiction.
I glanced furtively around me; I was alone in the room - as far as I knew, I was alone in the house. The late spring wind blew through the open window and I saw the curtains - yellow curtains, Papa's favorite color - flutter at the edges.
I tried to swallow down my discomfort, but I was still jittery, and so I poured two finger's worth of brandy into the cup that resided on the side table. I knocked it back quickly, ignoring the unpleasant taste and alcohol burn.
And I read the first sentence aloud.
"Sam Winchester had an idyllic life."