Aberration

by Lisa Regan

  My father motioned in the direction of the study. “Isaac the father?”

  I shook my head. “No, he’s just a colleague.”

  “Where’s the father?”

  “He’s dead.”

  If my father was surprised, he didn’t show it. His bushy brows crinkled. “Was he going to marry you?”

  My breath caught as I thought of the ring Jory had bought for the purpose of proposing to me. I thought of the inscription inside the band. Love always, J. It had taken me weeks to look inside the band and read those three simple words. “Yes,” I breathed. “He was.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled the ring out to show my father. I couldn’t bring myself to wear it, but I carried it with me. It made me feel like Jory was with me. If Blake Foster had access to my house, I didn’t want him finding the ring.

  My father studied it for a long moment. He read the inside of the band and handed it back to me. “Nice,” he said.

  I thought he would have more questions, but he said nothing as he stepped toward me and wrapped me in a long, warm hug. “I’m sorry,” my father breathed into my hair. “You could have called us. We would have been there for you.”

  Fighting tears, I squeaked, “I know.”

  He released me, clearing his throat, and said, “So your mother tells me you’re here about Blake Foster.”

  I filled him in as quickly as I could. He scratched his head as I spoke, the lines in his face creasing with each thing I told him. He let out a long sigh. “He was always fixated on you. I had hoped he was dead. Never could fathom why the DA tried that little prick as a juvenile. He should still be in prison. Then again, I arrested the grandfather twice for raping little Sarah Foster, and the DA could never make it stick. Fucking lawyers.”

  “We interviewed her today,” I said.

  “That’s a sad story,” he said.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  We fell into an easy silence. My father’s frown slowly turned into a grin, making him look ten years younger. He touched me under my chin. “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  I smiled back at him. “You too,” I croaked.

  The next day my mother made a Thanksgiving feast large enough to feed our entire neighborhood. Both Isaac and I tried to help, but she would not hear of it.

  “Stay out of her way,” my father advised.

  Isaac was content to watch college football with my father while I paced the house, my stomach in knots. My thoughts kept drifting back to Dale, who was likely dead. Blake Foster hadn’t left any bodies behind before. I thought of Dale’s father. Dale usually spent holidays in the nursing home with his dad even though the senior Mr. Hunter didn’t remember his son. At least the older man wouldn’t be waiting for his son to show up. At least he wouldn’t be disappointed when Dale did not come.

  Isaac caught me in the upstairs hallway on his way to the bathroom. He tugged at my elbow. “Would you just sit down?” he whispered.

  “I can’t.”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he said.

  “That’s the worst part,” I mumbled.

  “Look,” he said, keeping his voice low so that my parents would not overhear him. “I know what you’re going through—”

  “Do you?” I shot back.

  His Adam’s apple danced in his throat. He looked away from me for a long moment. When he met my eyes again, his gaze was hard and closed-off. “Dinner is almost ready,” he said. “Just try to enjoy this time with your folks. That’s all I’m saying.”

  He left me standing in the hallway and went into the bathroom. I went downstairs where my mother had set the dining room table as if she were having twenty people over instead of two. The delicious smells made my mouth water, not for the first time that day. The baby thumped and rolled. Isaac came to the table, but neither of us had much to contribute to dinner conversation. Thankfully, my mother talked enough for all of us, covering all things baby, from her own pregnancy to possible names for her grandchild.

  I ate until it felt like my belly had expanded two more inches. My mind was still on Dale. I tried to focus on something else—like Isaac. As I watched him from across the table, I realized I didn’t know a damn thing about him. I had been in his home. He’d been at my side daily for a month, and yet I knew absolutely nothing about his life. He wasn’t married—you didn’t bring a woman home and sleep next to her on the couch if you were married. I wondered what he had meant by his comment in the hallway. He knew what I was going through—had he felt the kind of guilt I was feeling now?

  I had tried several times to dredge up memories of him from the Sala investigation, but almost the entire period of time remained a blank spot in my mind. Thanksgiving dinner left me sluggish. I went to bed early but slept fitfully, and when I dreamt of Isaac, I knew it was half-memory—one of the trivial things my mind had pushed aside in favor of remembering snippets of the attack—snippets I wished I could destroy, snapshots I longed to burn.

  In the dream, I stood in the crowded sex crimes division of Baltimore’s police department. Isaac had caught my eye early on in the investigation because he was cute, and that charming half-smile he sometimes wore made me feel warm and tingly all over even from across a crowded, noisy room.

  Then, one day he walked into the division with a full-blown grin so sexy I thought my knees would buckle, and on his hip he carried a little girl with long legs and eyes like his. She kept three fingers in her mouth as she looked around the buzzing room, a small twinge of uncertainty furrowing her delicate brow. She couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. After a slow scan of the room, she wrapped her tiny arms around Isaac’s neck and held on tight.

  I woke with a start, sitting up abruptly. I felt like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. The baby kicked vigorously. Sunlight streamed through the gauzy curtains. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. 8:30 a.m. I’d slept over twelve hours, but I didn’t feel rested at all.

  I threw the covers off my body and bypassed the bathroom in spite of the fact that I had to pee very badly. I found Isaac alone in the kitchen, making toast. A steaming cup of coffee sat on the counter to his right.

  He smiled when he saw me. “Morning.”

  I advanced on him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Tell you what?”

  “I remember you,” I said. “Sort of. I mean I remember some things—they’re fuzzy, but now I remember—you were married. You had a kid—a daughter.”

  For the first time since I’d met him at the Bittler crime scene almost two months ago, Isaac’s face registered shock. He was suddenly naked before me, and his skin was gray. He swallowed. “You want to know why I didn’t volunteer to you that my family is dead?” His tone was so low I had to strain to make out his words, but the slight tremor in his voice was unmistakable.

  “You could have told me,” I said.

  “Why? It’s not relevant.”

  I stepped closer to him. “Not relevant? You know an awful lot about me. You know I lost my sister and the father of my child. You know about Nico Sala. You’ve been in my home. You’re standing in my parents’ home. You could have told me.”

  “You’re upset because we didn’t exchange secrets like a couple of adolescent girls?” he asked.

  The ice in his voice made me rear back a little. “You know that’s not it,” I said.

  He walked away from me, toward the living room.

  “Isaac,” I said as he reached the doorway. Tears stung my eyes.

  He turned back to me. His tone was matter-of-fact, like I was a witness he was interviewing. “Why didn’t you tell me about your lover—that you’d been seeing someone, and that he was dead? You didn’t even tell me you were pregnant. I figured that out on my own. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
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  My voice came out small and shaky. “I didn’t want to talk about it,” I said. “It was—it was too painful.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  He turned to walk out of the room. I didn’t want him to go, but I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to comfort him, I realized, but I didn’t know how. “Isaac,” I implored.

  He stopped and put his hands into his jeans pockets. His shoulders drew up, tension radiating from his frame. His back was to me. “My wife was driving to the bank. She had just picked up my daughter from daycare. She was going to stop at the bank on the way home. She wasn’t going to be long. They were stopped at a red light. It turned green, and my wife pulled out. Some jackass coming through the light on the cross street thought she could make the left—squeeze by even though the light had already turned red. She T-boned them. My daughter died at the scene. My wife died in surgery six hours later. The other driver had a broken wrist. The DA charged her with vehicular manslaughter, but she pleaded down to reckless endangerment. She served eighteen months.”

  He still wasn’t looking at me so he didn’t see the tears flowing freely down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop them.

  “Eighteen months,” he repeated.

  Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  WYATT

  November 26th

  His sister had grown fat and ugly. Although Wyatt had kept track of her, he hadn’t seen her in over twenty years. He had spied on her for a few days before deciding to confront her. Gone was the lovely girl from their childhood with pixie-like features, shiny brown hair and a slender but shapely frame. Now her soulful brown eyes were swallowed up in her chubby face. Her once svelte figure was draped in flab. Everywhere she went, she walked in a slow waddle. She did nothing but go to and from work and clean her trailer obsessively.

  The last time he had seen her he had been in county jail waiting to find out which juvenile detention center would become his home until his eighteenth birthday. His public defender had arranged the meeting at her request. It was the first time he’d been able to talk to her since the night he’d murdered their parents. His memory of the meeting was hazy save for her broken eyes. Those eyes had given him nightmares. Even after all the times she’d been hurt, her expression was never as tortured as it was the day she visited him in jail.

  In his childhood, Wyatt had come to know her expressions well. He always knew when she had been hurt. Her cheeks turned pink, her eyes glassy. She looked like a spooked rabbit, like an animal that knew it was defenseless prey and was just waiting for the inevitable.

  Wyatt had no idea how long their grandfather had been abusing Sarah, but Sarah was ten the first time Wyatt walked in on them. They were in the Fosters’ kitchen. Wyatt didn’t remember where his parents were when it happened. Wyatt came home late that day. He’d been at baseball practice. His parents had forced him to join the school’s team even though he hated it. They had left Sarah in the care of their grandfather.

  He didn’t even stop when Wyatt walked in. Sarah had puked a little on the counter. The smell wafted over to Wyatt, hot and rank.

  When it was over, Sarah sank to the floor, hugging herself and rocking back and forth. Their grandfather zipped his fly and smiled at Wyatt. “Hey,” he said, as if everything were perfectly normal. He squeezed Wyatt’s shoulder, his thick fingers digging into the soft hollow above Wyatt’s collarbone. The pain caused Wyatt to gasp. “Don’t tell your folks, okay?” He leaned in, his breath right on Wyatt’s neck, and said, “Or I’ll kill her and dump her body in the woods.”

  Then he’d left. Just like that.

  Wyatt was too stunned to respond. He stood there like a piece of furniture, vaguely aware of the sound of their grandfather’s car pulling out of their driveway. The sound of Sarah’s whimpering brought him back. He helped her get cleaned up, gave her some children’s Tylenol like his mother did when she was sick and made her a grilled cheese. They didn’t talk about it right away, although Sarah begged him not to tell their parents. She slept in Wyatt’s bed after that.

  Wyatt had never told their parents about the things his grandfather had done to him as a young child, and they had never noticed his distress or the bruising. They dismissed his nightmares as night terrors. “It’s normal,” his mother said. “It will pass.” His grandfather had never told him not to tell, and Wyatt had been too afraid of ending up like one of the animal carcasses in the tire ring to tell. As a very young child, he even began to think it was normal. But what he was doing to Sarah—Wyatt knew that was not normal. Not right. He had to tell. He didn’t want to—he was still terrified of his grandfather even though he had turned his sadistic tendencies toward Sarah—but he thought of Kassidy Bishop and how she had saved him. Wyatt didn’t want to be like those other kids who had kept walking while three bigger boys tortured him. He decided he could be brave like Kassidy. He could save his sister.

  It had taken a lot to convince Sarah though. She was humiliated and ashamed. She never wanted to talk about it—not even to Wyatt—let alone to their parents. But he had convinced her that the best thing, the right thing to do, was to tell. Their parents would make it stop. They would stop Grandpa and punish him. That was their job. Sarah wouldn’t even have to talk. Wyatt would tell. He would finally stand up to the man. He would handle it, and then everything would be okay.

  But their parents didn’t believe him. They laughed at him. Scoffed. They even talked about punishing him for telling such serious lies.

  Wyatt thought that Sarah’s face could not look more stricken than when their grandfather hurt her or later when their parents did not believe it. But he was wrong.

  When he’d been allowed to see her, after his conviction but before he was sent to juvy, there was something so ravaged in her, something so irreparably damaged that it hurt him to look at her. They’d spoken, but he only remembered the last four words she said to him before they hauled him away.

  “You made it worse.”

  Once he was released from juvy, and later after he finished his studies at Drexel University, he considered going to get her and taking her with him, getting her away from Sunderlin. But he’d never been able to face her.

  Now he sat inside her trailer, waiting for her to return home from her job at Wal-Mart and looked around, wondering if she’d spent any of the money he’d sent her over the years. The place was cozy, but none of the décor appeared to be particularly expensive.

  He’d followed Kassidy and Isaac to her trailer, and then spent two days skulking around Sunderlin, trying not to draw attention to himself. He’d stayed at a motel near the interstate, staying in his room most of the time except to visit Lexie’s grave. He’d left something there for Kassidy. A sign. His way of saying that he knew she was onto him. Wyatt was so caught up in thoughts of Kassidy that he didn’t even hear Sarah come in. She stood before him holding her blue Wal-Mart smock in her hands. Her mouth hung open. She swallowed twice and said, “Blake?”

  “I used the key you keep in the hanging flowerpot outside. Very clever.”

  “You’ve been watching me?”

  “I’ve always kept an eye on you,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you come back?”

  He dropped his gaze to the surface of her kitchen table. The wood was dull from her repeated buffing. “I always made things worse,” he said.

  “You could have come back.”

  He couldn’t look at her. His throat constricted. He drummed his fingers on the table. She stepped closer and put her purse and smock on the table. “That woman came here looking for you—the one you were in love with—she’s with the FBI now.”

  “I know.”

  “What did you do? Did you kill people?”

  Wyatt sighed. “That’s not important.”

  She stood before him wringing her hands. When he looked at her, he saw
worry lines around her eyes. Her lower lip trembled. It took him back to their unfortunate childhood. He had to look away. Her voice was so quiet he almost didn’t hear her. “Why didn’t you kill him?” she asked.

  A slow burn started in Wyatt’s stomach. His bowels groaned. “I was in jail.”

  She stepped forward and slapped the table. He jumped, his startled gaze going back to her face. Tears trickled from her beady eyes. “After that,” she said. “After you got out. You never came back. You could have killed him. You were out for a whole year before that bastard dropped dead. Why didn’t you do anything?”

  Paralyzed, Wyatt stared at her. He had no answer. None that would make sense to her. He had never remembered killing their parents. When he was released at eighteen, he didn’t feel like a killer. It was over a decade later that he’d killed the pastor in the airport bathroom. He had no real memory of the act, although that incident had woken something in him. It was only after that that he’d worked up the nerve to kill. He had tracked down his grandfather only to find out the man was long dead.

  “I was too late,” Wyatt said. “I was going to, but he died so suddenly.”

  Sarah slapped him, stinging his skin. His head whipped to the side. Pain shot through his neck. “If you cared about me at all, you would have killed him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Wyatt whispered. Suddenly, he was thirteen again and nothing he said or did could help her or stop bad things from happening to her. Just like the night he had told their parents what their grandfather was doing to her and they had laughed at him, he could not look at his sister.

  Several minutes passed. He sensed Sarah’s anger waning. Finally, she asked, “Why are you here?”

  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He put his head in his hands. His neck throbbed. “I’m going away for awhile. I want you to come with me.”